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BlastCar race format??

Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2013 2:04 pm
by dfscott
I've been tasked by my Troop Committee with putting together a BlastCar race. This is mainly a recruiting event, but they want to give out trophies for the first 3 places in each group (there are 3 different groups), so we need to have some kind of system. After running or participating in several different Pinewood Derbies, I'm trying to come up with a plan to pull this off in 4 weeks.

Here's the limitations I'm working under:

1) No track. I know normally these run on fishing line. But in lieu of the fishing line/string (which didn't work well in last years' demo races) out Troop has elected to go with "swim lanes." Basically, they're stringing together a bunch of swim noodles and letting the cars bump their way down the 50 foot course.
2) One launcher. We can only run 2 cars at a time. There has been talk of adding a second launcher to run 4 cars at a time, but I'm not sure I'm in favor of that, since we also have....
3) No timing device. All finishing will be calculated by "eye." (Now you see why I don't want to run more than two at once).
4) Limited runs -- not because of time, but because we'll have a fixed number of CO2 cartridges. We have 60 cartridges, and are expecting about 20 cars. I think it's going to be difficult to pick winners with an average of only 3 runs/car, so I may have to go out-of-pocket to buy extra cartridges to determine the places of the finalists.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Re: BlastCar race format??

Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2013 5:06 pm
by whodathunkit
Hi dfscott,

Sounds like you're in between a rock & a hard spot!
If you have the room or the space to make a longer track you could see what car travels the farthest,
for the top prize winner instead of trying to eye ball..to find the top 3 fastest cars for each group.
You could have the track maked off in feet by useing different colored tapes on the swiming noodles.

Hope this might help.
Mark