| As the Stomach Churns |
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| With the 2001-2002 year at a close, I want to show you some of the highlights of the past month. |
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The Technology class built "Object Relocation Devices," where students had to
build a machine to move a piece of fruit as far as possible without touching it (for more than 10 feet). Students built
15-foot sling-shots, trebuchets, catapults, and launched oranges the length of a football field. |
The 2002 KSS Battle Bot Championship went well! We had challenged
all the highschools in the district to compete. OKM and Rutland had teams sign up, but only OKM got it together to come
out. We had two Bots from KSS compete.
"Grobald" from OKM violently defeated "The Beast" from KSS, but was unable to stop the undefeatable
"Mortis" of Alex T. With the small numbers of competitors this year, we were able to run a Round-Robin
Best-of-Three competition.
Alex took home the trophy this year! |
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| The Sinister Sentra Project...
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Since my last writeup, I had cut 1.5 coils off the rear Tokico
springs to set the car more level and to lower the rear roll-center and limit the corner-entry oversteer I was
encountering. With the chassis rake now at 1/2" and the rear sway bar end links loosened slightly, the car was much more
predictable in corners, and would get into a four-wheel-drift at speed. Much more confidence inspiring
than the hope/guess/pray/wonder which end of the car would come through the corner first. |
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I did the BCMA event #2 to test the car, and discovered (much too late)
that the 3/4" lower rear fenders would contact the tires without much instigation. This resulted in massive, instantaneous,
unpredictable, violent oversteer. I spun everywhere. I hit every cone, I went through a Chicago box completely
sideways. Course workers were fleeing, children were crying, birds were falling out of the air. It was horrible. |
| Luckily, I was able to "persuade" the fenders to clear, and the rest of the event went fine, but not enough
to garner more than second place. Oh well - I learned what I needed to know. |
| For CACC Championship #3, I re-tightened the rear sway bar again, so limit
any further body roll and tire-to-fender contact. Despite a rather challenging course, Iw as able to take 1st place
and tag 6th overall! I am becoming more confident with the car now - I am not as frightened that it is going to
spin on me. I do, however, need to work more on my steering input, as any mistakes I make are not forgiven by this car. |
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