April 2008 Archives

While the human-powered Miners have been freezing their bicycle seats off, S&T's FSAE racing team has ended a long drought and in a field of more than 25 cars returned to the winner's podium, earning the following consistently high marks at the Virginia International Raceway:
1st Place Autodesk Inventor Design Communication Award - $750
For best overall Design Report
2nd Place Overall - $2,000
2nd Place Goodyear Best Performance Award - 2 sets of tires
For 2nd Place in the Endurance Event
2nd Place Hoosier Tire Autocross Award - 6 tires
For 2nd Place in the Autocross Event
2nd Place Honda Dynamic Event Award - $725
For scoring the 2nd highest point total in skid-pad, acceleration, autocross, and endurance/economy
3rd Place Honda Engineering Design Award - $525
For 3rd Place in the Design Event
3rd Place General Motors Fuel Economy Award - $400
For 3rd Place in Fuel Economy, using only 1.1 U.S. Gallons
Prize Totals: $4,400.00, 6 Hoosier Tires, and 2 sets of Goodyear Tires plus another set for successfully completing endurance per our Goodyear Sponsorship. WAY TO GO, MINERS!!!!

Michigan State, the only other team slated to attend all three FSAE events, didn't show up, so if our luck (and hard work) holds up, Brad and the girls and guys will be the only team to compete in Virginia, Michigan and California. I hope they stoked their GPAs before they entered into THIS competition season, because I wonder how they'd explain a sudden GPA drop to their parents. Maybe the next conversation with their parents will go probably something like this.......

'nuff said?

Just before 7:00 a.m. the Miners pulled in at rural Sauk Prairie Airport and were greeted by snow flurries, which was both a shock and a delight to racers from the Universidad SImon Bolivar in Caracas, Venezuela (more on that later). Blankets, hats and gloves were at a premium as 40 mph winds and 36 degree temperatures had people huddled in their cars. Riders kept bundled until they hit the start line, their support crews are a pretty miserable bunch, and several bikes have been thrown our of control because of the gale-force cross winds. Despite all that Whittney Metcalf managed an initial run of 28+mph, and she wasn't pushing all that hard.

Word is that she just a fraction of a point behind the first-place female rider, with more chances to run this morning. Rumor also has it that S&T is also in 2nd place in the male sprints.

S&T had some real challenges to overcome last night as their designs, which sailed through west-coast races last week, now seem to be called into question. They made a few late-night changes to satisfy the judges, and now seem to be back on course hopefully fighting only the elements and the competition.

Oh, yeah, they are talking about even colder weather tomorrow, with rain and possible sleet, but at least little wind. Maybe if some team brings a human-powered Zamboni to the race, it'll help. Might even win

Unofficially FSAE has taken 3rd in the design finals, right behind Virginia Tech! Amazing!

At 5:00 a.m. in Madison, WI, temperatures are cold and it isn't just windy, the air is positively HOWLING outside! It's going to be VERY rough today for the Human Powered Vehicle Team................

It's late, so we'll make this short.........

Judging for safety, design and aesthetics took place tonight at the 25th annual ASME-sponsored Human Powered Vehicle Competition in Madison, WI. While the results are not yet in, it seems that all the other teams have already voted. With their feet.

The minute Missouri S&T's St Patrick came through the door, all eyes locked on the sharpest and fastest-looking bike at the event, and teams swarmed around Andrew and the other designers/builders to see how the Miners did it. The mohawk-sporting dudes from University of Oklahoma were stunned to find out S&T's carbon-fiber fairing was laid up by hand, and not in a huge auto-clave. Kudos, guys!

The official score sheets and placings are still not posted, but the Miners have made it to Design Finals for the first time in years! So far they share the interim podium along with Virginia Tech, Cincinnati, and Wisconsin-Madison. S&T was able to get skid-pad and acceleration runs in this morning and expect to be near the top for each event. Fastest acceleration time was around a 2.9 second run, followed by a 3.1 for second, and the Miners were in 3rd place just 1/10th of a second slower.

More details will be posted as soon as we get them.

While we have been raving about concrete canoe, steel bridge, AAVG and human-powered racers, S&T's much-improved Formula SAE team has been quietly testing and refining the flashy-looking car.

FSAE has probably the most ambitious competition schedule of any Miner design team, because they are racing at Virginia International Raceway (VIR) this weekend, Michigan Proving Grounds in May, and then Riverside, California in June. That's a LOT of time on the road, and $4+ per gallon fuel is not helping.
We are pleased to report that out of 100 points they were able to secure 89 points in the cost event, the best that they've ever done in that event (not counting the way-back years for which the dog ate the records)! That means the car's production cost is one of the lowest at the event. Last year at two events they averaged only 67 points, so this is a huge improvement and a very good omen because podium teams are usually up in the 82-95 point range. Tomorrow the dynamic events (acceleration, skid pad, and autocross) begin so stay tuned for cool photos!

The Miners rallied from difficult sprint conditions and awkward timing issues to charge into 2nd place in the final standings.

In a race filled with lots of crashes (is that a familiar theme or what?) S&T was charging at race leader and powerhouse UC-Chico. Ben Kettler was making up 20 seconds on each 2.5 km lap, and freshman Evan Kluesner even made up 40 seconds on race-leader Chico, causing their strategist to get very, very nervous, and the Miners were on track (on, track, get it?) to sweep S&T into first place in the 65km showdown.

S&T's time keepers then had their turn to get nervous as on the final two laps Ben was suddenly well behind his previously blistering pace. Turns out he was riding the last 3 miles on a flat front tire! That stroke of misfortune cost the Miners the critical endurance race and the last chance to take first place. Ben had to choose between a pit-stop tire change or to aggressively soldier on, as either choice would have been equally tough. Regardless, we think he made the right choice.

This is S&T's 2008 Steel Bridge Team, which qualified for nationals this weekend. Details are available several posts back, so you might want to scroll down. OK. Back to human-powered vehicle action after this....

OK, in case you can't tell, the splashing on the left is NOT geese diving for food. It is an unidentified Miner coming to the surface using a kick-stroke. Word is that our bow paddler was swinging the paddle so frantically that he didn't realize he was splashing water INTO the boat. The faster he went, the deeper the boat settled. Wonder what the rear admiral was doing all this time?

And now after he jettisoned his bow-buddy, the rear admiral begins his solo slog to the finish........

This may turn out to be a struggle between pride and hypothermia...........

.........and to the cheers (or laughter) of the other contestants, nears completion of the race. At least he didn't go down with the ship.
While no one can say the guys didn't finish the race, maybe they can take some lessons from the women, who clearly seem to know that you keep the water UNDER the boat..........

Maybe that's why Miner women tend to take more leadership positions on campus, have higher GPAs, and stay drier.

Loyal readers of this blog, all three of you, probably remember the cold, damp, and windy conditions that thwarted SteaMiner's assault on the collegiate land speed record last fall. Mike Janaske of national champion Human Powered Vehicle Team tells us that Day 1 of the ASME/HPVC races experienced many of the same challenges. Could it be the state that is (supposedly) home to Area 51?

Anyway, high winds apparently played havoc with the electronic timing gates so race officials switched to the old reliable (?) back-up system. Anyone older than about three years old KNOWS that when you introduce change, arguments about fairness and interpretation are sure to break out. Run-up distances were changed, apparently in mid-event, and some teams were granted longer distances in which to gain speed before entering the critical time trap. Despite all the controversy and high winds Whittney took 3rd place in female sprint (36mph+) while Ben hung on to take 4th (38mph) in the male dash.
In the midst of all this controversy they somehow managed to run the utility bike (trike?) race but apparently when you crash across a speed bump at high speed (see the rear wheel off the ground) you bend the transmission mounts. That resulted in thrown, and ultimately broken, chains so the team had to withdraw from that event and end their plans to run the machine in the endurance race.

Stay tuned. We'll have more info later today on the all-important sprint races.

Missouri S&T took on water and had to abandon canoe during the first outing today on Lake Fayetteville. It took a heroic effort, but the canoe ("Shamrock") was saved and even pulled across the finish line (to huge applause) by a determined (and cold) S&T swimmer. We got video of this (maybe) and will post it Monday. If we were to make a feature film, we're sure it would be a lot like that movie Rudy. We've also got some photos (hopefully) of some S&T women paddlers who tried to give it another go later but kept getting sideways in the water (at least they didn't sink). It doesn't look good for S&T, in terms of winning the 2008 concrete canoe regional. But we can report that the weather is nice and team members are having a great time anyway and keeping their heads high and mostly above water. Apparently, their presentation to the judges yesterday was a big hit -- because they were informative, funny and entertaining. We'll follow-up on all of this and post whatever video and photos we have by Monday afternoon. For now, it's back to Missouri.

The Steel Bridge team has qualified for nationals! When the final results were finally tallied from Friday's regional competition in Fayetteville, Ark., Missouri S&T ended up in third place overall. The top three regional teams qualify for the national competition in Gainesville, Fla., on Memorial Day weekend. UMKC finished first at the regional and K-State finished second. Arkansas finished behind S&T in fourth.

There were 11 teams competing in Arkansas. Missouri S&T relied on consistency in the individual judging events to make a strong overall showing. S&T finished fourth in construction speed, third in lightness, third in display, fourth in stiffness, third in economy and fourth in efficiency.

This is directly from an email sent by team leader Levi Smith:

The rules stated that two teams from a regional can compete at nationals if there are 10 teams at the regional competition, and 3 teams can go to nationals if 11 teams compete. Oklahoma State was going to drop out because they couldnt construct within the rules, but we let them borrow our temporary pier for construction, which allowed them to compete, bringing the team total to 11, which allowed the 3rd place team go to the national competition, which luckily turned out to be us. Anyway we still hope to improve and do better than UMKC and k-state, and try to place top 10 at nationals.

FAYETTEVILLE, ARK. -- Well, Missouri S&T's 2008 concrete canoe REALLY looks good (everybody says so), but the green-and-sand-colored vessel called "Shamrock" didn't pass the "swamp test" today with flying colors. In fact, it stayed sunk like The Edmund Fitzgerald. The idea is to dunk the canoe in a big trough and see if it floats back up to the surface -- this is a precautionary test to make sure the canoes don't sink to the bottom of Lake Fayetteville tomorrow when the real racing events start. Missouri S&T will now have to equip Shamrock with extra styrofoam before hitting the lake.

Team members weren't too disappointed, though, because their canoe floats just fine as long as it's not full of water AND because the swamp test only counts for five percent of the overall judging AND because Mizzou's canoe failed to resurface from the bottom of the trough, too, AND because, as one astute Miner pointed out, the canoes are made out of CONCRETE for crying out loud.

With much sadness we can report that the University of Arkansas has retired its Hogtanic canoe, which was such a big hit last year, especially when the monstrosity rolled over on its side and dumped its passengers during a particularly ill-fated outing. This year's Arkansas entry is called 3 Sheets To The Wind, and it actually passed the swamp test.

The Missouri S&T team members say they enjoy the company of the Arkansas team but that the University of Oklahoma is probably the favorite in the competition. Oral presentations in front of judges are going on right now. We'll be back at some point with updates and photos of Saturday's racing action. The Missouri S&T team expects strong performances by its paddlers.

P.S. We probably won't have new photos (of racing action) until we get back to Rolla some time on Monday. But we'll try to give you a feel for the canoe racing stuff some time Saturday P.M. The results are appropriately fluid. Unless you're in first, nobody really knows (or cares too much) where they stand in the overall standings. That's why we love this concrete canoe thing; it's pretty laid back and fun. Having said that, we really appreciate how much engineering work (and old-fashioned trial and error) goes into getting these things to the point where they're actually seaworthy.

No, not for the gambling, or even to meet the reality (?) TV stars of Reno 911!*

S&T's masters of human powered vehicle racing have nearly arrived in Reno, Nevada, site of the SAE West Coast HPV races, where starting tomorrow they will defend the first-ever national title ever claimed by ANY school.

This year could be tough for several reasons. Everyone wants to knock of the champs; some say it is easier to win the championship rather than to hold onto it, and if you you don't believe it, check out the Super Bowl victors of the past decade. Also, everyone's hero, Jerrod Bouchard, has retired from the team (something about graduating and getting a job, we hear), but veteran racer Ben Kettler is up to the task of filling Jerrod's racing shoes (shorts?).
In a new competition wrinkle SAE has added a utility bike contest to challenge teams to build a marketable, cargo-carrying bike for everyday use that can contend with potholes, speed bumps, parking places, and other life-threatening elements the rest of us face in our gas-guzzlers. The Miners have specialized in speed and endurance while dominating the racing for years, so this event calls for changing gears, literally and figuratively. They won't just use the Ute in the utility event, but also in the 1/4 mile sprint, and get this, the 40+ mile endurance race as well. Mike Janaske will be doing the honors on that machine. He's fast so we better tie the groceries down tight.
Last year's superstar rider Whittney (Snoopy) Metcalf will streak through the womens' sprint and anchor the all-important endurance race. Tim Mallet and Evan Kluessner will round out the 4-rider relay with the afore-mentioned Ben K.
As soon as they finish in Reno, they have to hustle back to campus, do laundry, make sure the bikes and riders are OK, then blast off to Madison WI next week for the East Coast competitions. Sounds like a 5,000-mile trip miles in about ten days.

Thursday's steel bridge competition in Fayetteville, Ark., went well. Late Thursday, team spokesperson Levi Smith said team members were happy with their performance, but the final results were not yet available. (It didn't sound like Missouri S&T would place at the very top.) The event was held at the Tyson Track Center on the campus of the University of Arkansas, where all of the new buildings are named after chickens, pigs or Wal-Mart. Following a long day setting up their bridge and tearing it down, the team members were planning on dinner at the Flying Burrito followed by bowling at Ozark Lanes. If they get any free time, we suggest a trip to the used bookstore downtown. (We judge it as possibly the second-best used bookstore in the country, topped, of course, by Powell's in Portland, Ore.)

Fayetteville is green and hilly and very southern. It's similar to Rolla, only bigger and the old parts have a lot better architecture. We highly recommend a visit. We'll try to get some final results on the steel bridge competition Friday, which marks the start of another competition, this one involving concrete canoes. The famous "swamp test" is in the morning (we think), followed by racing on Saturday. So far, no sightings of the Arkansas canoe, which was, really famously, called "The Hogtanic" last year. More reports to follow.

With apologies to the great Yogi (Berra, not Bear), Sunday's go-for-broke flight did exactly that under pretty blustery conditions. Our Miners spent a late night repairing the plane and did the job so well that you'd never know the wing was something of a pretzel after Saturday's wreck. They reattached and reinforced the rear bulkhead previously ripped from the fuselage, loaded nearly all of the craft's design payload, double-checked the engines and planned strategy with pilot Kelly O'Connor.

The payload adjustments seemed to have done the trick because the craft built much-needed speed and Kelly began to lift Whalicus skyward (a big improvement over Saturday's flight), but just as a flight official raised his green flag to signal a legal lift-off, things went wrong; REALLY wrong. In just a blink of an eye the impact-weakened tail boom began to separate from the fuselage with the obvious loss of control, and it was all over.

The craft plowed sideways into the ground, throwing grass and (yes!) divots of turf across the runway before skidding to a halt.

We'll just let you suffer through the sequence..........

You'd never know it took about half a second to do all this......

And this..........

And finally, aside from the groans rising from the crowd, all was quiet.

Oft times when disaster strikes, there is something to be learned, a silver lining, as they say.
One thing that the students could brag about was the overall robustness of their design and construction. Much of the plane remained intact, as it simply broke into two pieces making recovery a relatively simple process. If you want to see what it COULD have looked like, read on..............

The admonition you see as you enter a golf course was oddly appropriate this morning as "Whalicus" plowed a furrow into the grass runway upon takeoff. The Miners may have taken their mining heritage a little too seriously today and burrowed through the turf when a rough spot caught a wing tip just as the craft was lifting off.

A rough way to go after coming into the Open Class flying events in first place. The team's second-place awards in both engineering and oral reports gave them the highest overall placement, but all is not lost.

After a long, painful walk back to the pit area the group had repaired much of damage by mid-afternoon, and all that remained was to carefully (?) haul the 11-ft aircraft to the 3rd floor hangar at Motel 6 and replace the wing's surface material.

They figure many of the other aircraft have pretty much maxed out their lifting capacity at levels well below what S&T's bird can handle, so the open class championship is still within their grasp. All they have to do is get airborne with the day's heaviest payload
Oh, yeah, one of the event officials did help the Miners replace the divots.....

Don't feel bad for the Miners. If you want to see what a few other teams have experienced, just continue below.

..

Now that St. Pat's and Spring Break are over, the first major '08 design team has emerged from S&T's own somewhat smaller-scale 'skunkworks'. AAVG's new flyer was christened "Whalicus" just two days ago, and lifted off just great on its first flight at the Cuba, Missouri airport. Good thing they built a complete extra wing because the landing was a little, uh, rough.

Fast forward to the Lockeed/Martin-hosted SAE Aero competition in Ft Worth. The new S&T-labeled bird sailed through tech inspection with but two minor, and easily corrected, glitches.

Now it is down to an early-morning trek to nearby Thunderbird Flying Field and the two-day flyoffs with ever and ever increasing payloads. While the weather looks perfect for flying, the 2008 event throws a new challenge at the team. They'll eschew the paved runway for a grass landing strip (and have designed the landing gear accordingly), so flying should be uneventful, but landing and take-offs should have a bit more drama.

Hang on to your seats, Miners,and stay tuned; it is going to be an interesting ride!

Well, it has been a very busy winter for the design teams, and your (somewhat) anonymous blogger has barely been able to keep up with it all. Nearly a week at the St Louis Auto Show, an overwhelming weekend at the St Louis Science Center, and a wild three days at the FIRST Robotics Regional Competition in St Charles have kept the teams on the road polishing their presentation and recruiting skills. The students have also been the leading force in promoting the school's new S&T moniker. All this while working many late nights to build their projects for the upcoming competition season.
Now when we mention recruiting, S&T has three critical things to offer: an amazing education with the attendant high starting salaries, design teams/experiential learning, and ST PAT'S! Now who can argue with that??

The FSAE team, which calls itself S&T Racing, rolled out their blazing fast stable of race cars and drove wheel-to-wheel through the packed and alumni-filled streets of Rolla in what truly had to be the "Best Ever" parade of the past 100 years.

Solar Miner IV came out retirement and took its place as one of the best things ever to come out of that little town on Route 66.

Two-time national champion Solar Car Team, with many race alums in attendance, unveiled their redesigned Solar Miner VI, a smaller, taller, and less-sleek version its predecessors (silly rule changes!).