Competition Flying

Competition flying is a ton of fun and it gives people across the country, and even across the world, the chance to get to know each other.  Through competition flying, I have met people from California, Virginia, Maryland, Colorado, Texas, Arizona, and almost every other state.  Occasionally, I will also meet people from other countries like India or a European country.  Model rocketry competitions take place all over the world, so besides the national competition, NARAM, there is also Internats, the international competition.

In this post, I'm going to quickly go over some basics of competition rocketry.  For complete rules, event listing, and other more detailed information about competition flying, check out the NAR website's Contest Flying page.

Photo by Chris Taylor

Competition rocketry aids in a lot of research about aerodynamics and improving performance.  This is because in competition we generally focus on one of three or four main categories: altitude, duration, distance, or visual appearance.  

Essentially, there are local meets and then NARAM.  NARAM I will cover in a separate post titled "What is NARAM?" because it is more detailed and has a greater importance to the main story I want to share through this blog at this time.  Local meets are usually regional events.  These events are hosted by a club, for example Pittsburgh Space Command (PSC).  Competitors wishing to fly at this event will show up the day of the launch ready to fly the predetermined events for that meet.  Each launch must be announced ahead of time and are usually posted on the NAR website's Find a Contest page. On this page a time, date, location, event director, and event slate will be found.

Most of the time, an event will be focused on the flight's duration, how long the rocket was in the air, or on the rocket's altitude.  There are different events that can be flown within these categories, such as rocket glider, parachute duration, streamer duration, or helicopter for duration events and super roc or predicted altitude for altitude events.  Open spot landing would be an event that would be based on how far the rocket landed from a certain point, and scale modeling judges rockets on how close they look to the original rocket or how pretty the rocket is in general.  For more information on events or for the complete event listing, please reference the NAR website's Contest Events page or the Pink Book.

There are different divisions for competitors to ensure that seven-year-old children don't have to compete against a fifty-year-old professional competitor.  There are four total divisions.  The first division is A division.  A division is for 7-13 years-old, this grouping is typically the younger kids that are just getting started and haven't quite developed all of their skills yet.  The next division is B division which is 14-18 years-old.  This grouping is more advanced skill wise than A division.  Next is C division which is comprised of everyone 19 or older.  Finally is T or Team division.  Team division is a group of two or three people that are 7 or older.  Teams compete together through out the competition year and at NARAM.  

Throughout the year, people fly at meets to gather contest points.  Each event has a different contest weight to help accumulate points, but each meet is restricted to a certain number of contest factor points, see the NAR website's Pink Book for details.  NARAM has more events than any of the meets and has a greater contest factor as well.  The points from the preseason meets and NARAM get totaled together during/after NARAM to determine the national champion from that year for each division.  It is possible to win the national championship without attending NARAM, or without competing in meets but attending NARAM, in some cases, but it is highly unlikely.  The amount of points for each club are also totaled and the club with the most points after NARAM is recognized as well.  The list of current national champions is usually published and distributed at each NARAM.  A list of current national record holders can be found on the NAR website's Records page and the current point standings can be found on the Current Point Standings page.

Next time, I'll get back into my story and describe NARAM.  Until next time, fly high, stay safe, and have fun!