TARC 2017

We have formed our team for the 2017 Team America Rocketry Challenge!  We are ready to start testing our design.

What is TARC?

The Team America Rocketry Challenge (TARC) is the world’s largest student rocket contest and a key piece of the aerospace and defense industry’s strategy to build a stronger U.S. workforce in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Sponsored by the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) and the National Association of Rocketry (NAR), TARC was created in the fall of 2002 as a one-time celebration of the Centennial of Flight, but by popular demand became an annual program.

Our Team:

Mentors/Advisors: 

Ms. Hernandez - Mentor

Mr. Long - Technical Advisor/Mentor

Team: 

Jeremy - 9th Grade - Team Captain/Design and Motor Specialist

Allison - 8th Grade - Payload Specialist

Aiden - 10th Grade - Safety and Weather Specialist

Isabelle - 7th Grade - Data Specialist

What is is ACTSO?

ACTSO (Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics) is a national yearlong achievement program designed to recruit, stimulate and encourage high academic and cultural achievement.    Albuquerque ACTSO participates in the TARC as one of the yearlong activities.

What happened in 2016?

Where did we go?  Well we have awesome scores on Saturday, February 27th so we decided to try to qualify on Sunday since the weather was identical to Saturday.  Our scores have been consistent.  And as usual we are trying to avoid the Spring winds.

What happened?  Well, basically anything that could go wrong did.  Catastrophic even.  Why?  We didn't have the same delay on the new motors.  That caused issues.  We were all over the place.  We rushed.

Basically, our scores were pretty bad.  We sent them in hoped for the best.  We didn't end up making the cut but that was not a surprise. 

Positives?  We focused our energy on helping our sister team Team Zeta in their qualification launches.  They were a brand new team so we mentored them through their testing and qualifications.  Guess what? They made the third runner up list to go to Nationals.  Nobody dropped out or didn't attend, so they didn't get to go, but those were amazing results for a 1st year team. 

So we are done for the 2016 TARC.  We are looking forward to next season.  Thank you to all that supported us.

New Motor Means Higher Expectations

Our previous motor wasn't even getting close to the height requirement so we ordered a higher powered motor.  The new motor arrived on Friday, so we scheduled a launch for Saturday morning.

We did the normal prep at home...

Normal set up procedures on-site.  

 Here is video from the three launches.  The new motor more than meets the height requirement so we need to made a few more adjustments, but we are getting there.

Launches 6-8:

 

Rocket recovery (all safe, but REALLY high!)

Is anyone reading this blog?  If so, can you leave a comment and let us know where you are viewing from?  We are writing this to document our journey as well as to give other kids an idea of what it is like to work toward getting to Nationals.

Thanks!

Launch 5 and 5.5 Failure - Again - Sort Of

Since we were off of school Monday we decided to launch, and it was a pretty nice day to launch too.

This time we were setting up two rockets to launch one using this year's motor that doesn't seem to get us to the correct altitude and last year's motor to see if there was a difference.

We only took video of one launch since we were short a few team members.  Another failure but we must admit we do make some epic fails.

Launch 5 using this year's chosen motor:

What we think happened is that the O-ring got stuck in the motor casing.  This likely happened because the casing wasn't cleaned properly after the last launch.  We need to add this to our checklist.

The other launch with last year's motor went off great except it didn't make the altitude.  

Next step?  Order a more powerful motor to get us to altitude and also CLEAN the motor casing better after all launches. 

Need to contact us?  teamsigmarockets@yahoo.com

Donations

https://www.gofundme.com/teamsigmatarc Please note, donations made to our GoFundMe account are not tax-deductible as they are considered a gift.  

Tax-deductible donations:

Please make a check payable to Albuquerque ACTSO with Team Sigma Rocketry in the memo. 

ACTSO
c/o NAACP
PO Box 1922
Albuquerque, NM 87103-1922 

TARC Awareness and Fundraising

One of the things our team does every year is to fund raise and bring awareness about TARC.  The way we do this is by setting up tables at local credit unions and sell raffle tickets.  We ask for donations to raffle for this fundraiser.  This weekend was our first fundraiser, we split the team up to work three different locations.  We are happy to report we did really well and we had several inquiries from some parents of younger girls who aren't yet eligible to compete in TARC, but are interested.  We think having our two girls at the busiest location helped show other girls that rocketry and science is fun.

Here we are making posters 

A few of our locations

We didn't get a photo from our other location...

We really appreciate Sandia National Laboratories Federal Credit Union allowing us to set up and fund raise in their lobby.   

Thank you to everyone that donated or bought raffle tickets to support our team!

Need to contact us?  teamsigmarockets@yahoo.com

Donations

https://www.gofundme.com/teamsigmatarc Please note, donations made to our GoFundMe account are not tax-deductible as they are considered a gift.  

Tax-deductible donations:

Please make a check payable to Albuquerque ACTSO with Team Sigma Rocketry in the memo. 

ACTSO
c/o NAACP
PO Box 1922
Albuquerque, NM 87103-1922 

Launch 3 and 4

The weather was very uncooperative over the break.  We kept getting snow storms on days when everyone was available.  But we finally caught a break on January 2nd.  New year so hopefully some new and better results.

Everyone's roles seem to work and now we are a well functioning team.  Now just to get that rocket in the air going up instead of sideways.

The usual prepping at home:

Setting up at the launch site:

Hopeful 

1st Launch

2nd Launch

Recovery:

 

The results?  Both launches went up. That is good.  They came down OK, the second launch the parachute melted a little and got tangled up on the way down.  We need to be more careful how the fire retardant layer is placed in the rocket.   Both launches were low despite the 2nd having no ballast it was nearly the same.

What's next?  We think there may be an issue with the altimeter so we are going to put both altimeters in the rocket for our next launch to see if they are both measuring the same.  We are also going to try last year's motor to see if that might work better.  We changed motors because our simulation showed the motor from last year and with the new requirements that it may not be able to go high enough in Virginia, so we chose something that would work for both places.  Maybe we need to focus on qualifying here and work the other out if and when we qualify.  We got some good data and now the rocket is going UP instead of sideways so...

Need to contact us?  teamsigmarockets@yahoo.com

Donations

https://www.gofundme.com/teamsigmatarc Please note, donations made to our GoFundMe account are not tax-deductible as they are considered a gift.  

Tax-deductible donations:

Please make a check payable to Albuquerque ACTSO with Team Sigma Rocketry in the memo. 

ACTSO
c/o NAACP
PO Box 1922
Albuquerque, NM 87103-1922