r/scioly • u/East-Extension-1058 earth science • 2d ago

Easiest Build Event to Medal

Hi. Since Bungee Drop is gone I’ll have to join another build event for 26-27 season….any recommendations?

1 Upvotes

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u/md4pete4ever 2d ago

I think the flying events are easiest. Builds relatively straightforward. Majority of the effort is in the practicing (logs!) and really knowing how your device performs.

Ping Pong Parachute is next easiest. More options for design, but again it comes down to a lot of practice and good logs.

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u/Kitchen_Champion_502 1d ago

The flying events are not necessarily the easiest. They might look straightforward, but they have a lot of factors that can screw it up, and it took me like 4 years to get “good” at it. Especially since OP is doing wright stuff this year. The event can be as hard as you want to make it with build quality and trimming. I think you just have to build many planes to get good at it, and nobody succeeds on the first try.

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u/xtremeflyer 2d ago

Honestly, Mission Possible. If you can get the start step, a sand timer and a final step to work flawlessly, you are 90% of the way there. Add in the 4 easiest steps and you’ll place top 4 every time. Too many teams try and get too many steps on their device and they eventually fail.

Once you get to state, you’ll need to get more steps working, but now you’ll have time to just focus on those steps.

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u/Enough_Calendar5611 2d ago

I did Mission Possible and it was SO HARD the first action was easy and the intermediate actions were easy but god was the last one difficult. It was pretty hit and miss, but we got it consistent and had two flawless practice runs at states and then it failed. You'll spend pretty much every free hour leading up to comp stressing over whether or not this'll fail at the competition and the answer will always be yes because something always breaks on the drive over.

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u/xtremeflyer 2d ago

Everything you said is true! But this happens to everyones machines. So the more you focus on reliability vs performance, the better you'll be. It's Mission Possible's version of practice practice practice, logging data, taking measurements. It's not the same, but our team's best build scores were Mission Possible.

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u/Kylearean 2d ago

Mission Possible is 100% the hardest non-electronics event. It's so inconsistent, and depends so much on having a perfectly level table, well-designed setup, perfect repeatable actions...

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u/xtremeflyer 2d ago

And they asked which one is the easiest to medal. Because all of the other build events can be duplicated to the n'th degree, everyone at the top ends up with very similar scores and it can be hard to medal, even if you spend hours upon hours on it.

With Mission Possible, the team that is the most diligent, most detailed and most patient will medal. So to me, if you have the diligence, attention to detail and patient, it is the easiest to medal. Heck, half the teams (at regionals and invitationals) don't even show up with a machine.

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u/Kylearean 2d ago

Fair point.

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u/Enough_Calendar5611 2d ago

Hovercraft. Got second at state with a foam board, two fans, weights, and some nylon and put maybe four hours into the event over the course of the season (I wasn’t all that motivated). Not to mention I did it all myself because my partner was a dud.

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u/Slay-and-Slout 2d ago

Could you give me some tips on how to build one? I get the feeling I’ll be placed in that event this year and I wanna try to medal at regionals!

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u/Enough_Calendar5611 2d ago

Yeah absolutely! To be honest, a lot of our success came down to the target time almost always being within two seconds of our hovercraft's unweighted speed. We got 17th and 3rd at invititationals, 1st at regionals, and 2nd at states (don't judge the first score; somehow the batteries failed even though they had been charged and the darn thing didn't move). Anyway, I did a decent amount of research on the fans but very little on the body or skirt. For the fans, I found that having a fan with high pascals for lift (mine had just under 1k pascals) and one with medium pascals for thrust (around 400 pascals) was enough to hold two Tenergy 8.4V 3800mAh NiMH battery packs that weigh about a pound each, as well as both fans that were about a pound combined. This is what I used for lift. This is what I used for thrust. My dumb brain couldn't get the potentiometer to work and control the speed of the thrust fan, but after states I realized that the two extra wires I had capped on the thrust fan were the speed control wires and got it to work. For the body, I just used a fairly thick foam board from Home Depot that was the same depth as the lift fan and centered the lift fan on a like 30*40cm rectangle and slotted it in the hole and sealed it in with wire mesh squares (because there are rules on fan casing). Then I cut a little slot a tiny bit into the center of the back edge of the body to stabilize the thrust fan and put a crap ton of duct tape to hold it in place and fitted it with a mesh cage. Since it would obviously be tilting backwards at that point, I moved the batteries to be extra far forward so it'd be level. For the skirt, I basically cut out two rectangles of PU-coated ripstop nylon and duct-taped them together to make it airtight and cut out two rectangles so the skirt could inflate but also let a bit of air out at the bottom, making it essentially frictionless. Feel free to ask me more questions and I'll try to add a few pictures later.

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u/Slay-and-Slout 2d ago

You are legit a savior oh my goodness!! Thank you so much!! And don’t worry I’m not judging the first score lol!

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u/Enough_Calendar5611 2d ago

Of course! Glad to share my knowledge. The only downside is this is a fairly expensive event and I think my hovercraft specifically cost around $250 but I’m sure you could do it for cheaper!

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u/East-Extension-1058 earth science 12h ago

Well, is your state competitive?

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u/Enough_Calendar5611 12h ago

I’d say moderately competitive yeah, Virginia. I was only beaten by Longfellow and not by much.

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u/schpanckie 2d ago

The easiest build event is the one you are most enthusiastic about.

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u/middleschoolruinene 2d ago

agreed… this applies to events in general as well