Closing out 2015 TARC

Closing out 2015 TARC

We closed out the 2015 TARC on Saturday, May 16th.

Throughout the season we had "hot washes" where both teams come and meet to discuss/present what we were doing, what went wrong, what went right, and how to improve all of it.  This helped out mentors understand what we were doing as well as preparing us for giving presentations.  Hard questions were asked after each hot wash and this helped us learn to answer those questions as well as figure out what to do next or what we should have done.

We all, kids and parents, had to state what our lessons learned from the 2015 TARC were.

We also determined how we were moving forward.

Peter is moving.  Jeremy and Domo are excited to get started on the 2016 TARC.  Allison, Jeremy's younger sister (she is pictured in some of our photos throughout the blog), is eligible to compete in the 2016 TARC and will be joining the team.  We have potentially recruited a few more people and should have a strong team.

We are taking a little time off before we jump in to the 2016 planning, but the new requirements are already getting our minds going on how to meet those.  We will keep this blog going to update our 2016 TARC progress and hopefully all the way to Nationals!

Things that were useful to know

All of the TARC stuff was really an unknown thing to us and we were told a lot by former TARC participants and our mentors.  It all still seemed so foreign and hard to grasp.  Right after we learned we qualified for Nationals in 2015 we found these videos on YouTube and it really helped to visualize what Nationals would be like so we are sharing/linking these videos created by other people to help get a "feel" of what we would be doing.  Hope these are helpful to others as well.

A video by the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH9b51qSWVo

A video by own2dogs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI9vZKYedcI

Both of these videos were pretty inspiring and great to help the team understand what we had to look forward to!

Thank you.  

Saturday, May 9th Fly-Offs!

National Fly-Off Day!

Well the day has arrived and we were ready to go.

I'll post more of the details soon...

Checking in

Walking out to the field

Walking back from our flight

Leader boards

Presentation Competition

How did we do?  We ranked 76th out of 101 teams.  As a new team we were proud to make it to nationals and we were hopeful we would do well.  Win even, but now we are more knowledgeable and are ready for the TARC 2016 challenge.  They change the requirements a bit every year, so we are already to start!

Thank you for following us on our journey.

Friday, May 8th Team Briefing

TARC Finalist Team Briefing

After the Rockets on the Hill event we did some sight seeing and then we had to head over to Manassas, Virginia for the official team check-in, get our packet and then to listen to the flight briefing.

At the briefing

Now it was off to bed since we had a 7:15am check in time the next morning.

Friday, May 8th Rockets on the Hill Event

Rockets on the Hill

All the TARC finalists are invited to the Rockets on the Hill event on Capitol Hill for a breakfast reception and to display their rockets for their state representatives and to meet other teams.  The event was held in the Russell Senate Office Building.  It was exciting to go to "The Hill."

Excited to go to "The Hill"

Russell Senate Office Building

 Getting ready to go in..

 The kids display.  All teams were grouped by state.  Representing New Mexico were us, Team Sigma and Highland High School.  AIMS was not at this event, I think they were still traveling?

After the event and speeches Senators Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich sent their representatives down to meet the kids and bring them up to Senator Udall's office.  It was cool because we got to take a tunnel over to their offices.

The staff checking out our rocket.

Group picture with Highland HS

Our team photo from the official AIA photobooth

Finalist Group Photo

It was all such a great experience and we are very grateful to have made it to finals.

Thursday, May 7th Flight Testing

Flight Testing in Manassas, Virginia

The principal of a local elementary school allowed us to use their back fields to do test launches on Thursday morning.  The weather would be similar to our Saturday launches.

Building the motor

Documenting!

Final checks

Prepping the launch pad

Recovery

We did four launches and lost a motor casing in the process.  We looked for over an hour but couldn't find it.  Luckily we had a few back ups.