LTAV Competition
Our LTAV Competition was this Friday and our team royally sucked at it with a 84 where the maximum score was 180. It is still a B though. I expected much better and wanted much better score too Well, the thing that went wrong was that 2 out of 4 propellers stopped working in the middle of the course. We had two vertical and horizontal propellers and by the time we ended we had just one of each. One was on the ground and the other was hanging on to the LTAV.
I was surprised how easily I was able to control it during the day of the competition. It was a real pain to control it on Thursday night. We got 2 runs on Friday. The main course was to rise above a table, slalom between three balloons, drop 10 ping pong balls in a basket and go beneath a pole. The total came to 180 and there were bonus points if we did it within 4 minutes.
In the first run, the LTAV crossed the table, slalomed between two of the balloons and it dropped the balls on the ground where the score range was a 5 point each. It was not a satisfactory run. We got a meager 80 points. I thought we would get a lot of time before the 2nd run. However, we were asked to do our 2nd run in 5 minutes of the first run. After we crossed the balloons, the vertical propeller started clicking and stopped working. So, we couldn’t good enough of thrust to place our balls in the basket.
In the 2nd run, we couldn’t cross the table as we lost the vertical propeller. So, we went around it and moved forward to slalom between the balloons. The ping pong ball bag was dragging along the ground all the time. So, this time to we had to release at the same spot. Then, after the balls were released due to reduction in weight the whole balloon started moving up. Since, I only had one vertical propeller, I had to give up. Before I could give up, one of the horizontal propellers also broke down thus preventing us from going forward or back.
It was kind of a disaster for our team but I did learn a lot of valuable lessons on teamwork and cooperation between team members. Everyone doesn’t share the same ideas and this is what we have to understand and reach to a compromise all the time.