Duration

[kateak]

I finally hit 2 minutes!!!!

[VeritasEnVida]

thread seems to suggest substituting carbon fiber for the wood fuselage or middle shaft. Is that what people have been doing?

[chalker7]

thread seems to suggest substituting carbon fiber for the wood fuselage or middle shaft. Is that what people have been doing?

Definitely not, solid carbon fiber is actually incredibly dense and you will struggle to reach the minimum weight if you use it for your fuselage. I would suggest using individual fibers for strengthening if you are having problems with a wood fuselage.

[NinjaChicken]

Apparently the top score at the invitational I was at this weekend was 224 seconds (3 min 44 sec)

I don't know if they had a Chinook design, but if they did, that's still 1 min 14.7 seconds.

All the top 6 scores were above a minute 30 sec

[chia]

Ugh, I've been having trouble getting our copters past 45 seconds - a far cry from my 1:55 state copter last year. I've found it's harder to build a copter with a parter than by myself (I worked alone last year except for winding/launching at competitions), since things end up uneven when each person builds different parts of the same helicopter. Somehow everything ends up heavier, too - our second attempt was a whole 4.2 grams - which is probably the bigger issue.

[mrsteven]

Ugh, I've been having trouble getting our copters past 45 seconds - a far cry from my 1:55 state copter last year. I've found it's harder to build a copter with a parter than by myself (I worked alone last year except for winding/launching at competitions), since things end up uneven when each person builds different parts of the same helicopter. Somehow everything ends up heavier, too - our second attempt was a whole 4.2 grams - which is probably the bigger issue.

heres my opinion on all engineering events: DO. THEM. ALONE.
I've never had a partner and the one i was stuck with for last year i dropped. Its impossible to do a good job with another person breathing down your neck. when it comes time to fly, i grab a random person on my team to do it with and instruct them specifically where to hold and how hard.

build alone. The advice of an introvert

[illusionist]

I agree. While it's great to have someone else to talk over ideas with, when building it is always best to do it on your own (unless you really need an extra set of hands to do something). I've tried building a helicopter this year with a partner, and it didn't go too well

[chia]

I would (and I probably will build another one by myself this weekend), but the thing is, literally nobody else on the team has the faintest idea how to start building any sort of "light" construction event, esp. the flying ones (wright stuff/heli) except for kjhsscioly, and we'll only be on the team for so long/can only take on so many events, so we've got to pass on our meager knowledge somehow, and we don't have terribly much time to build any more "practice/trial" helicopters than what we'll need for competition.
Well if that wasn't a run-on sentence, I don't know what is.

[mrsteven]

i run into the same issue. I do all the small wood-based events due to my knowledge and now the robotics ones b/c im in robotics lol

I'm planning on making a binder with all my research and trials condensed for the kids in the future. And trust me, I have a TON of research into this so essentially this binder will be the ultimate guide to wright stuff/helicopters in the future if our coach can not loose it until then...
Although im only a Jr so I have another year to make it and compile more and more data

Note that some of that research will actually come from scioly quotes from people here. This is an amazing resource and I'd direct anyone to look through these posts but since i know kids are lazy imma condense them into about 20 pages (along with more pages from other places) with the very important ideas and concepts

[chia]

Theoretical knowledge is vital and this site is beyond awesome, but it's simply not possible to get the hang of it until you build something yourself, or at least watch/help someone build one. I build a cruddy little 10-second copter back when it was a trial event that broke when it landed, but I learned loads from it, especially since it was such a new event back then.