TARC Question

For the 2017 TARC contest my team got a penalty of around 19.5 for the first launch and 20.5 for the second. Is this enough for qualification to nationals?

 

"Once an attempt is declared, the results of that flight must be recorded and submitted to the AIA, even if the flight is unsuccessful. "
I wouldn't say they are great numbers, I had two teams last week, one getting a 3 and and the other getting an 11

 

I'm sure you must know this but just in case:

"The results from qualification flight attempts must be faxed or scanned and e-mailed to and received
at the offices of the AIA by 11:59 PM Eastern time on Monday, April 3, 2017. Based on these qualification scores 100
teams will be selected on the basis of lowest combined scores for their best two flights."

"Teams will be notified no later than 5 PM on Friday April 7, 2017, and will be invited
to participate in the final fly-off to be held on May 13, 2017"

 

hmm I realized but I want to know what the cutoffs for previous years have been. Is it hopeless for me to go to nationals?

 

Ah ok. I don't know what the cutoffs were last year. But my opinion is "So What". You did the work and flew the flights so definitely submit your scores. There's always hope ! The TARC Yahoo group might be another place to ask: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/NARTARC/info

 

Agreed. You have the results so you may as well send them in. You have already done 99+% of the effort. How hard will you kick yourself if you don't send them in and find out later that they were good enough?

 

For the nationals they choose the top 100 scores. I would send those scores in and as the previous post stated you have until midnight tonight. You need 2 qualifying flights and the students should have declared the flights as qualifying flights before the button was pushed. The team that I was NAR observer for had a similar score for one flight and I urged them to send in the results. I think I read somewhere that the lowest score of the sum of 2 qualifying flights is used for making the decision. Keep in mind if the team is accepted the team members need to come up with the money to travel to the nationals. I can't help but wonder if some teams that are accepted may decline, because they don't have the money to travel. I think the contest this year was relatively easy, so definitely submit results, because next year the contest may be tougher.

 

It's not hopeless. Send them in. I had a team go once with a score that was about 20 I believe. It would be stupid not to submit your successful scores.
If you look at the scores from the nationals last year the top ten teams had scores ranging from 13.64 to 39.64.


Steve Shannon

 

Those are actually pretty respectable scores. The challenge is that there are over 800 teams and only 100 spots for nationals, so only 12% of the teams who registered will actually make it. The cutoff for the past few years has been in the mid-30s for the combined top two scores. Based on that, it would seem that you're just outside of the range; however, you're close so I would go ahead and submit.

 

I'm participating as an observer for the first time today. I plan to encourage the group to send in whatever they get. Sure, you might not go to the Nationals, but it also helps the program see what people are doing, who is participating, etc.. It also puts your team on the map as the score to beat for the next group at your school. Enjoy the challenge of the design, build and flight for what it is, a journey. Winning is a perk.

And as they say, you can't win if you don't play. You might end up at #101, then have a group ahead of you decline to participate in the finals or be disqualified somehow. Good luck to you and your team, and I hope you had a good time.

 

Exactly. One year the team I am mentoring struggled to get flights up period. When they did, half up them ended up DQing... So, when the kids got two flights up in qualifying that didn't DQ, we were all ecstatic. I think they were both over 100 points, but they still sent them in.

 

I agree. This is my third year as a mentor and NAR observer. As I recall the previous years were all DQ's. This year I witnessed 4 teams and only 1 team got 2 qualifying flights. I just got a notice as an observer that the Qual flights have been submitted to the national organization. Together the scores in the first post look very good. Definitely submit them.

 

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question the OP asked twice.

jy2370, are you asking if you should send in your results? Or are you asking if your scores are good enough to get you to nationals?If it's the second one, teams that got dialed in early and practiced a lot get scores of 0 or single digits. Scores around 20, I think the odds are a little slim. Keep in mind, some teams may not be able to take the trip and leave an opening for you.

Good luck! If you don't make it, take what you learned and apply it next year.

 

I think you need to take the attitude that they put on mutual funds and other investments: past performance is no indicator of future results. In other words, you can't use previous results to determine what happens this year. Your score could be last place or it could be first place or somewhere in-between. You won't know until later this week, so submit and wait until they release the list.

 

Check out the wikipedia article on Team America Rocketry Challenge for qualifying scores in earlier years. Note that the scoring criteria change from time to time.

 

The TARC results for the top one hundred teams and more can be found at the website listed below. Over 800 teams submitted qualifying flights. The contest was very competitive this year with the cut-off being a total of 31.16 points for the combined sum of 2 qualifying flights.

http://rocketcontest.org/

 

Wow.. 31 points combined? Some tough competition. Good job!