TARC team budget?

So I am considering the possibility of starting a TARC team that has presented itself to me. Can someone with TARC experience give me an idea of how much to budget? I realize there are all sorts of variables so a ball park - say plus or minus $500 is plenty close enough for my purposes. Thanks.

-Dave

I'm going to be watching this thread. I've thought on doing the same.

https://rocketcontest.org/about-the-contest/faq/ ( It's entirely possible I've misunderstood the question )

Q: How much should my team expect to spend to build and test-fly the rockets for the TARC competition?
A: Based on experience from previous years, teams that are fully successful and complete a good qualification will have flown at least 10 practice flights and have built several rockets. The total cost of entry fee, rocket motors and rocket parts to do this is typically about $500 if these are purchased from our recommended vendors. It is possible to spend less than this if the team is experienced and efficient, or much more if the team does an exceptionally large number of practice flights.

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However, if you get the finals you also need a travel budget to get there, food, housing, etc.
Not everyone needs to go, but there has to be at least 2 (1 team member + the adult supervisor). If the entire team wants to go and you live far away the travel expense could add up quickly

This year the registration fee was $125. If you don't have GSE then add cost of a rail and launch controller. Rocket building supplies. Recovery. TARC approved altimeter. We used CTI motors so you need hardware and delay drilling tool. We spent $438 on motors for practice and quals. You are probably looking around $750.

You should be able to get started for about $500 to $1000 (using your increment)

Registration $125

Altimeter $25-40 The Firefly is inexpensive, but once it is in the rocket, there is no indication that it is still working. I think the peanut is ideal. Audio feedback and output and you can download flight data to work out flight characteristics such as descent time. You need AT least one.

Parts for model rocket $50-150. Materials for building model rockets are pretty inexpensive. OTOH you'll need more than 1 rocket per team. Stuff happens; chutes don't deploy, motors fail and burn up rockets, rocket get lost or land in trees and can't be recovered. Sometimes you start over because the rocket does perform as planned. I advise 6 teams and they averaged 3 rockets per team (with an experience leader for each team). We like to buy most materials from Balsa Machining Service, good prices and great service. Do buy the heavier motor tubes like T50HE-MT. Estes Motor retainers are inexpensive, light and virtually fool proof. Buy a spool of #250 Kevlar cord (from Emmas Kites) for shock cord and use 10' per rocket. One of the most common failures is too short shock cords tearing out and parts free falling to earth. Get 8"x8" kevlar chute protectors, far more reliable than wadding and reusable.

Tools and supplies: $50-100 Hobby knifes, sandpaper, wood glue, epoxy, tape, rulers. etc

Motors: This is the most difficult to estimate. Reloadable motors from Aerotech will give you the lowest cost per flight, perhap $8-15 per flight depending on size needed and your supplier. Factor in the cost of the (reusable) casing ($25-40). 3 cases per team is ideal as they can refly very quickly when the conditions are good. There is also a learning curve with reloadable motors. Cesaroni also makes reloadable motors that price out at somewhat more per flight. The reload procedure is much simpler and the cases are less expensive. Finally, there are single use (disposable) motors. They cost a bit more but are very simple to use. Plan on at least 10 flight per team in order to really work out the flight characteristics or your rocket . My teams used between 9 and 27 motors each. We have standardized on Aerotech RMS 24/40 motors.

You can spend more on specialized tools like fin jigs or use the tools that are available from payloadbay.com I like to printout the fin guide tool and glue them to foamboard from Dollar Tree and then cut them out to mount fins straight and true.

What if you qualify for the National Finals? You will have travel and lodging costs. OTOH we have not had a qualifying team that didn not manage to make it to the DC area for finals.

Be sure to apply to Aerojet Rocketdyne for a grant to help with your costs. Watch for announcements at rocketcontest.org

Dave, at the last Michiana launch I attended it seemed like the two or three TARC attendees flew close to 20 times. If they aren't paying for their own motors, seems like this could really get expensive.

Okay...So it sounds like we are looking at $500 to at the very HIGH end of $1500. There's a lot of stuff of mine I will let them use so that will help and we have access to a really nice high school machine shop so we can easily make jigs out of scrap materials. I should have mentioned this earlier but the reason I ask is my wife is going to apply for a grant we are very likely to get. Wifey asked if $5000 was enough. I think my reaction was something like this...

:y:

-Dave

Mine would be that too Dave!
Greg

What I would give for a $5K grant!

I think that 10-20 launches is a little low for getting to nationals. 20-30 seems more reasonable for planning purposes to make nationals. On the motor choice, our team is a Cesaroni team, although we might have to change that if production doesn't ramp up in time post-fire. The other local team that does well swears by Aerotech single use. Whatever you do, make sure your motors are all the same date code, and especially do a few tuneup flights on the same date code motors you will use at finals if that isn't what you used to qualify. We've found noticeable differences in impulse between batches.

As mentioned above, if you do make nationals, there are a lot of travel costs. From where we are, the travel costs dwarf the other program costs. Figure $100/night for hotel rooms for 4 nights, maybe 3-4 kids/room depending on your students, plus lunch and dinner plus transportation. It adds up pretty quick, even if you drive rather than fly. If you fly, add in rental car(s) for your teams as well. You can fly with TARC rockets in carryon boxes if you don't want to entrust the rockets to either shipping gorillas or checked baggage apes. If you want to carry your motors, you obviously have to drive. You can also split the difference and send an adult with the rockets and motors in a car and send the kids by air.

One other thing to keep in mind is that if you make it to nationals, the students need to be able to do EVERYTHING without any adult oversight, from building the motor to packing the rocket to reading the altimeter. You'll drop them off at the table where they get their eggs, and then wave goodbye until they are on the way to the pads. Depending on your students, that may play into your motor choice as well.

I hope this helps, even though I don't have very many hard numbers. Good luck on the grant!

DAllen said:

Okay...So it sounds like we are looking at $500 to at the very HIGH end of $1500. There's a lot of stuff of mine I will let them use so that will help and we have access to a really nice high school machine shop so we can easily make jigs out of scrap materials. I should have mentioned this earlier but the reason I ask is my wife is going to apply for a grant we are very likely to get. Wifey asked if $5000 was enough. I think my reaction was something like this...

:y:

-Dave

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When I asked for grants/donations, I put a range, with the low end being cost of qualifying (I put $500 per team, 3 teams at my school) and an estimate of how much flying all 15 kids to VA (plus lodging, transport, meals, etc). I don't remember how much I put for high end, but I think it was somewhere around $8k-$10K.

boatgeek said:

snip..,
On the motor choice, our team is a Cesaroni team, although we might have to change that if production doesn't ramp up in time post-fire...

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For TARC size motors there should be enough motors already in dealers' inventories that availability remains unaffected. The event at CTI was not in the commercial hobby motor area.


[emoji1010] Steve Shannon, L3CC [emoji1010]