Official Start of Virtual Rocket Contest: NASROC

[chanstevens]

Uhm.... perhaps, but you should see some of the configurations? Here's one:

F24-7, A10T-None, C6-None, C6-None, C6-None-1.95, C4-None-2.25, C4-None-2.70, MMaxx-None-3, MMaxx-None-3, MMaxx-None-3, MMaxx-None-3, MMaxx-None-3, MMaxx-None-3/rod angle zero/ignition delays noted/standard overhang

See ya...

1st Event Results are not final... may have a tweak due to a finding. That is exactly why I posted them to get some confirmation that they match your results.

Guilty as charged...My HPR entry has 13 total motors--a 29mm, 6x18 and 6x6. Since this is NASCAR, y'all, I figured I had to tweak everything to the max. My 2-stage was relatively simple, sporting a stack of 24's, and I was too lazy on the future one, basically copying my HPR, but going with a 38, 10x10.5 and 10x6. I had ignition delays varying down to the nearest 20th of a second to maximize performance.

Of course, I was too stupid to think about recovery until too late in the game--I have big streamers mostly, so get creamed in drag race, neither close to pad nor up long enough to take duration.

For the precision events, though, y'all are going to be eating my dust if we can sort out some annoying differences between Nick's results and mine:

LPR--deployment on #1=1.12, altitude on #3=2639.9, altitude #4=50.07
HPR deploy #1=0.17, alt #3 (too heavy)=2619.27, altitude #4=50.07
Future deploy #1=0.01***, alt #3=2639.96, alt #4=50.08 (slacker)

When you're down to choosing between the higher impulse original MMX's versus the lower impulse/higher thrust spike MMXII's, and then adjusting ignition delays a tenth at a time, you know you're anal retentive. Poor Nick--I doubt he bargained for the pain of running my sim's...:banghead:

All that sweat over details, and not a peep from the Bob :monkey: Cox.

***I'd swear there's a bug that rounds up/down weird, as I could tweak 3-4 consecutive increments at 0.01 (early) followed by 0.01 (late) and never nail 0.00.

 

[e42]

Impressive. I am toast.

--- Ron

 

[the freshman]

Wow, Chan! When I first took a look at this contest I realized it had the most potential to do pure optimization of any so far...I didn't think anyone would go to that kind of trouble to get it down that precise! I thought about trying it myself, but remembering how much sims can differ from one comp to the next, I decided not to.
Although, I'm feeling really dumb now for another reason--I didn't catch the rule allowing modification of motor configuration of the stock rockets.
Here I was sticking with stock 18mm mounts when...oh well.

I went with my own pathetic graphics for the Sponsor Appeal because I didn't want to spend time asking all the vendors for permission to use their graphics. (Not that the rocket vendors wouldn't have, thought I can't see any of the national corporations giving permission.)

 

[EMRR]

For the precision events, though, y'all are going to be eating my dust if we can sort out some annoying differences between Nick's results and mine:

I have some real problems here folks. I THOUGHT Chan's and mine were matching until...

... I was working with someone elses files and they were not matching. He asked by version and I had 8.0.0f2. So I contacted Tim and got the latest version 8.1.f16.

Now I'm getting totally different results..

 

[EMRR]

Okay, so here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to rerun all the sims with 8.1.0f16 and use the better of the two results where I have both results, else, I default to 8.1.0f16.

There is one problem noted on time to 1000 ft, but I can not duplicate it, so all I can say is that every rocket was run the same way and data was pulled the same way. I may revist this one.

Some have said the time to 1000 feet is right, but the deployment speed is off. Weird.

Some may have used the default RockSIM motor file and not the one from the site. I have the one from EMRR loaded.

If / when we have future rocket contests I think we need to provide a "control file" with set of sims to check comparisons.

Nick

 

[chanstevens]

I suspect this contest, which highlights some very miniscule performance differences, is going to be very prone to which version of RockSim we're all using. A stable motor/materials control file might help, but software version control could make a difference as well. I'd suggest some sort of declaration that the contest will be run on whatever the build version is at the start, and anyone running older versions takes their chances (minor upgrades being free, it makes sense to remain current).

Checking over my notes, I did briefly have one migration problem when designing on a laptop and tweaking on my PC. Found one was 8.1.11 versus 8.1.16. Among the noted changes on Apogee's Rocksim History Page was:

"Fixed an initialization error that was causing overflows in some of the simulation results when running rocksimc. The rocksimc program is needed to run the SMARTSim software." [build 14]

Even more frustrating to me, I took one of the files I submitted, made zero changes, and clicked the "rerun all simulations" option on the menu. Every simulation changed slightly (ignoring the ones that had weather/thermals). Weird.

Chan Stevens:banghead:

 

[Rocketry nut]

I was only able to finish about 80% of one of my rockets. So I never finished. Good job to the people who actually did post their rockets.

BTW I have to ask. How do you guys get decals on your rockets? I have Rocksim 8.0 and can't find out how you do it. That was one thing I wouldn't have been able to do with my rockets in the competition.

 

[chanstevens]

I was only able to finish about 80% of one of my rockets. So I never finished. Good job to the people who actually did post their rockets.

BTW I have to ask. How do you guys get decals on your rockets? I have Rocksim 8.0 and can't find out how you do it. That was one thing I wouldn't have been able to do with my rockets in the competition.

Edit the component, select the "texture" tab to the right of color. There you can attach a file containing the graphic and set some basic parameters related to the wrapping around the part and scaling.

There's an in-depth article on this somewhere in the archive of Apogee newsletters, probably dated right around the time they introduced version 7.0.

 

[Rocketry nut]

Edit the component, select the "texture" tab to the right of color. There you can attach a file containing the graphic and set some basic parameters related to the wrapping around the part and scaling.

There's an in-depth article on this somewhere in the archive of Apogee newsletters, probably dated right around the time they introduced version 7.0.

Hey thanks. I'll have to look into it when I have time.

 

[EMRR]

Event 1 & 2 posted:

Time Trial Bonus Winners:

Chan Stevens = 1.0
Todd Mullin = 0.9
Ron Wirth = 0.8
Andy Peart = 0.8
Ian Cinnamon = 0.7
Dave Austerberry = 0.6

Lap Leader Bonus Laps so far:

Chan Stevens = 5
Todd Mullin = 2
Ron Wirth = 0
Andy Peart = 2
Ian Cinnamon = 0
Dave Austerberry = 0

Event #3 and #4 in the AM for SURE!

 

[chanstevens]

I'm curious whether any of you are seeing discrepancies between the speed to 1000 fps in the results versus what you might have sim'ed on your ends prior to submission. I'm not whining/moaning or anything, but in comparing notes with Nick, it looks like the exports he's getting are using MUCH bigger intervals between sample points than I was getting, and the result is that the straight-line derivation of time to 1000 fps is much less accurate over the longer interval than the shorter intervals I was getting.

In my case, because of the altitudes I was hitting and the chute/streamers I was using, running a complete sim might take a minute versus hitting apogee and getting the chute out in 5 seconds, so I typically hit "cancel" during the descent phase to get the results faster. Doing that, my export seemed to push out the same number of samples, but at 0.015 to 0.025 second intervals. If I ran the sim all the way to the end, the export expanded the interval to 0.6 seconds or so. Very big difference.

When you guys try exporting your event 1 sims to look at the time to 1000 fps, what size interval are you seeing between points? Are you seeing times anywhere near what is reflected in the current standings?

This might be exposing a bug in the software, or at least a significant limitation.

--Chan Stevens

 

[EMRR]

Event #3 and #4 Posted:

Lap Leader Bonus Laps so far:

Chan Stevens = 10
Todd Mullin = 4
Andy Peart = 3
Dave Austerberry = 1
Ron Wirth = 0
Ian Cinnamon = 0


I will start the Eye-Appeal voting (but in my mind it is a no brainer!)

Nick

 

[e42]

I'm curious whether any of you are seeing discrepancies between the speed to 1000 fps in the results versus what you might have sim'ed on your ends prior to submission. I'm not whining/moaning or anything, but in comparing notes with Nick, it looks like the exports he's getting are using MUCH bigger intervals between sample points than I was getting, and the result is that the straight-line derivation of time to 1000 fps is much less accurate over the longer interval than the shorter intervals I was getting.

In my case, because of the altitudes I was hitting and the chute/streamers I was using, running a complete sim might take a minute versus hitting apogee and getting the chute out in 5 seconds, so I typically hit "cancel" during the descent phase to get the results faster. Doing that, my export seemed to push out the same number of samples, but at 0.015 to 0.025 second intervals. If I ran the sim all the way to the end, the export expanded the interval to 0.6 seconds or so. Very big difference.

When you guys try exporting your event 1 sims to look at the time to 1000 fps, what size interval are you seeing between points? Are you seeing times anywhere near what is reflected in the current standings?

This might be exposing a bug in the software, or at least a significant limitation.

--Chan Stevens

Chan,

My rockets were no where near as complicated as yours :surprised:. For the Time Trail events, I ran the full simulation. The exported intervals were .12125, .14375, and .0675. The results that Nick produced were very close if not an exact match for this event.

--- Ron

 

[chanstevens]

Chan,

My rockets were no where near as complicated as yours :surprised:. For the Time Trail events, I ran the full simulation. The exported intervals were .12125, .14375, and .0675. The results that Nick produced were very close if not an exact match for this event.

--- Ron

That's what I feared--you got a small interval, so very little margin of error.

 

[chanstevens]

Being the detail-oriented anal retentive type, I couldn't resist a quickie pivot table of the standings so far. Pretty neat differences depending on how you slice it.

Looking at just the 2-stage/LPR rockets, it's a pretty tight race:

Name Total
Chan 31
Andy 30
Todd 22
Ron 20
Dave 13
Ian 11

Looking at just the HPR, it's not as tight, and Todd's got a decent lead:

Name Total
Todd 33
Chan 27
Andy 21
Ron 17
Ian 16
Dave 10


In the open/future class, it's a blowout:

Name Total
Chan 40
Dave 26
Todd 23
Andy 18
Ron 17
Ian 12

Overall, I've got a solid lead but that's going to close quite a bit on the last two events, and the lap lead bonus won't be a significant factor--less than a point between first and last place bonus points award on that.

Name Total
Chan 98
Todd 78
Andy 69
Ron 54
Dave 49
Ian 39

It's looking like Andy's got a great LPR "car", Todd's got a great HPR "car", I;ve got a great open "car", but the best "team" of cars is mine, managing not to get smoked where they aren't strong.

 

[PunkRocketScience]

Pesonally, I didn't really go in and figure the exact time to 1000'... I judged my sims based on the highest accelleration and figured that would work as a gauge.

The problem I had was slowing the rocket back down before deploying... Hehe...

I can't wait to see the final versions of all of the rockets, espescially Chan's rocket of the future! I was SURE I had the max. speed event in the bag and I didn't take it! I GOTTA see this design!

 

[PunkRocketScience]

Being the detail-oriented anal retentive type, I couldn't resist a quickie pivot table of the standings so far. Pretty neat differences depending on how you slice it.

Hehe! I did the same thing! You just beat me to posting it! Interesting to see it broken down my rocket though... I hadn't thought of that!

 

[chanstevens]

It's awfully quiet on this thread...too quiet. Wonder when Nick will have the next update.:ridinghorse:

 

[EMRR]

It's awfully quiet on this thread...too quiet. Wonder when Nick will have the next update.:ridinghorse:

Nick was on a 3-day weekend and letting the eye-appeal votes come in. Nick will updates things again tomorrow and run some Last Laps!

Regards,
Nick (oh, that's me!)

 

[EMRR]

Oh, my, oh, my! For those that have watch the animated movie CARS... Chan better have his tongue sticking out!

Laps through event #5:

Lap Leader Bonus Laps so far:

Chan Stevens = 15
Todd Mullin = 7
Andy Peart = 4
Dave Austerberry = 1
Ron Wirth = 0
Ian Cinnamon = 0

Eye-Appeal: Ron Wirth's, then Todd Mullin's, and then with a very close (1 pt) difference Chan Steven's and Any Pearts

 

[EMRR]

The unofficial results are posted. Overall, I believe I got the effect I was looking for but failed to see a couple of conflicts... such as slight differences in the RockSim version results... and with only 1 eye-appeal entry how to apply the points correctly (I applied it to each event).

Also, WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR OTHER 14 contestants!

AND another first... no Bruce Levison!

I hope all enjoyed it.

Regards,
Nick

 

[e42]

I hope all enjoyed it.

Regards,
Nick

I enjoyed it very much. Thank you very much for running it. The veteran virtual rocket builders really know their stuff. I hope to be able to be more competitive in the future.

--- Ron

 

[chanstevens]

The unofficial results are posted. Overall, I believe I got the effect I was looking for but failed to see a couple of conflicts... such as slight differences in the RockSim version results... and with only 1 eye-appeal entry how to apply the points correctly (I applied it to each event).

Also, WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR OTHER 14 contestants!

AND another first... no Bruce Levison!

I hope all enjoyed it.

Regards,
Nick

Hey Todd...eat my dust! (there, are you happy Nick? I didn't catch Cars).

What's the "weighted final" tally? It seems to have leveled things out a good bit, as I thought I had a fairly safe lead that Todd almost wiped out with early bird and eye appeal. Even factoring in that eye appeal counted on all 3 instead of just one rocket, I had an 11 point "raw" lead (3.7 raw avg) versus a 0.8 weighted average lead.

Drag race was amazing! Yeah, Andy blew us out in LPR, but 2nd-4th were only 0.004 apart. Makes me second guess my enormous chute/streamer that kept me up almost 3 times as long as anyone else. Could have shaved precious thousandths there...Similar results in future/drag, with only 0.004 separating 2nd through 5th. HPR and future showcased my drag strategy--aim for dominating 2 of 3, abandon hope on closest to pad, though Todd seems to have done well with combination of speedy/nearby recovery and thrust spike off the rod. Must have caught some lucky wind/thermals...

Something tells me, though, this is one Bruce would have creamed us all on. The combination of event precision and graphics design are both right up his alley.

Got milk, anyone? Oops, wrong race...

--Chan Stevens

 

[PunkRocketScience]

[virtual champagne spray mode] Congrats Chan![/virtual champagne spray mode] Looks like I'm going to have to start smack-talking with you instead of Zeus since he was a no-show....

I can't complain about loosing by 0.1 points to such a skilled competitor! Great graphics job Ron! Congrats on the Eye Appeal win!

 

[EMRR]

Prize selection will be complete today.

PLEASE, please, go and thank the vendors for their support!

Nick

 

[ghost]

Thanks so much for putting on this contest! I was the n00b, but I learned a lot

 

[chanstevens]

Callisto arrived today from PML. Sa-WEET!:elefant: Can't wait 'till after NARAM when I can start building it.