BlastCar race format??

Anything related to CO2 powered racing, such as Blastcar, and event coordination.
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dfscott
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BlastCar race format??

Post 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.
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whodathunkit
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Re: BlastCar race format??

Post 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
What type of automobile can be spelled the same forwards & backwards?
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