Blog 5B: Science Fair Proposal

1.) My topic is racing remote control cars

2.) The driving problem(no pun intended) is that when racing at a professional level, many racers will use traction additives which gives a tire more traction. It is belived to give them an advantage.The additives used will condition the rubber to become stickier and more plyable. I want to see if it really does decrease lap times and make you a better driver.

Quote: "There has been a lot of controversy lately in the industry for both onroad and offroad racers regarding the use of tire additives or traction compound. Many major organizations including most recently the BRCA, and various other national, regional, and even local level events have banned the use of these products for a variety of reasons. Racers on the other hand have their own variety of reasons that these bans are unnecessary.

Promoters and organizations often feel that the use of traction products is an unfair advantage for many, and they wish to keep things on an “even playing field” or “spec tire” level. From a racer stand point, traction compound may or may not gain you tenths of a second. If it is legal to use for everyone, is the use of it by some and not others really going to make good drivers perform great and vice versa?" -Mike Garrison, LiveRC.com

3.) If a traction addiditve is applied to all four tires, then lap times will decrease.

4.) I will conduct this experiment by gathering a number of different compounds and testing them on vehicle. I will compare them and will measure the maximum speed of the car while taking a turn. This will be measured by using a special radio reciever that calculated speed and lap times. In addition to the speed test, I will compare laptimes between conditioned and unconitioned tires.

5.)Chemistry

Blog 9: Working EQ and Possible Answers

(1) What was the working EQ you used during your presentation?
How best to earn multiple sponsorships in R/C racing
(2) Did you decide to revise your working EQ after your presentation? If so, write your revised EQ here. If not simply write "I am not going to revise my EQ at this time".
I am not going to revise my EQ at this time.
(3) What are possible answers to your current working EQ?

• Attend big events
• Win at club races
• Work on perfecting your car's setup
• Apply for sponsorships
• Compete with team drivers
• Make friends with team managers and drivers

Blog 8: Rough Draft of Presentation 1

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZxsxTE9FxKEx54-pRXLhuxGznIdCfVXK_OCYrtdJq5M/edit

Blog 7: Independent Component

1. For my independent study, I plan to continue on with my mentorship at Tony's Hobbies in order to earn my 30 hours that is required.

2. My plan is to continue working with my mentor. I still have a lot more to learn from him and I believe he will be a great resource for me to use.

3. My independent component will allow me to learn about almost every aspect of my topic that I need to know. Since there are no classes that relate to my topic, this is the best option that I have.

Blog 6: Second Interview

Title: Second Interview Questions
Label: Interviews

Content:
5 questions:

• What got you interested in R/C's?
• How many years have you been racing?
• Who are you sponsored by?
• How many races and big events do you attend a year"
• Do you get discounts on parts and kits?
• How competetive is the racing scene?

Blog 4: Project reflection and working EQ

The Pentagon:
(1) positive statement: I have learned so much about my topic and I am also working on my people skills as I am forced to talk to others and help them.

(2) EQ content: One of my articles of research goes over the history of Remote controlled cars, and it was surprising to see that things haven't changed much even with new technology that is available today. The different types of classes you can race have obviously increased but they are virtually the same. The only differences that are major are the typess of surfaces to race on, new rules, and technology.

(3) Mostly everything is going great right now, I'm enjoying what I'm doing and I am eager to learn more.
(4) The only problem I have had was getting a hold of my mentor during the weekend so i could interview him.
(5) Finding Value: Based on your experience so far,

•  One question is whether or not I would like my project to be on being a sponsored driver, or on how to manage a hobby shop. 
•  After this year I hope to be a sponsored driver with support from at least two companies. I also wish to build more friendships with people on the racetrack.
• I would like to talk to even more sponsored drivers and team managers to get more information on the perks of being a team driver, and what it takes to be one.

Blog 3: Interview Preparation

1. I will be interviewing Branden Nign, he is an up and coming pro driver who is currently sponsored by Radiopost. He is a good friend of mine, and he knows what it takes to be on the top.

2. I would like to ask him a variety of questions such as...

• How many times do you practice/race a week?
• How long did it take you to recieve a sponsorhip deal?
• Once you are sponsored, do you have to follow a set of rules such as logo placement, race schedule ect.?
• Can you only run certain setups and option parts on your car?

blog 2 topic choice

1. a. What is your topic and Why?
My topic is about Remote controlled car racing. More specifically, how to become a sponsored rc car driver. I chose this topic because I am an up and coming pro driver, and This topic intrests me very much. Ive been racing competitively for about two years now and It is something that I enjoy doing.
 b. And what do you hope to accomplish this year with this topic (connecting your answer to each of the 4 ESLRs)
I hope to be a more effective user of technology. This will be reached my doing research and finding articles about my topic.I also hope to gain more communication skill because I will be helping a lot of people.I also plan to learn even more about my topic and putting that into effect by helping people and educating them.

2. What do you hope to accomplish this year with this topic(connecting your answer with the four ESLRs)
iPoly citizen: I plan to become a more helpful person during the course of my racing carrer. This relates to me improving as an ipoly citizen because I will be a more approachable and friendly person to talk to.
Effective communicator: I plan to be more outgoin when conversing. This will make me an effective learner because by talking to proplr you can open more doors in your life and have the opprutunity to do something different.
Effective Learner:I plan to gain more knowledge about the subject through extensive reseach, and through first-hand experience in the field.This will make me more effective as a learner because my knowled of the subject will be far greater and that will make me the subject matter expert of what I've learned.

Effective User of Technology: I plan to use the world wide web to gain access to all sorts of information about my topic. This will make me more effective as a user of technology because I will be able to use different sources to find information other than books or text.

Mentorship

August 8-10.

During these days, I was building and race-prepping an indoor clay track for remote controlled vehicles. My duties included cleaning restroom facilities, maintaining the "pit" area for the drivers, breaking down and tilling the previous layout, building and packing down the new layout and finally prepping it for raceday. Throughout these three days, I would arrive when the store was open @ 11:00 and would stay until closing at 9:00 pm. This brought me to a total of 30 hours of mentorship hours.

Contact info: Tony the owner of Tony's Hobbies and Toys (626) 337-3000

Questions raised about the experience:

Does building a recreational racetrack increase sales in the hobby shop?

Will the addition of the racing facility rake in more customers and business?

What are neccesary skills you need to develop in order to become a sponsored rc car driver?

How long will it take to become a 100% sponsored driver?


From this experience, I learned how to properly tear down and build a track layout for remote controlled racing. By learning how to do this, if I ever decide that I would like to open up a hobby shop of my own, I would know how to bring in more customers and set my store apart from other hobby shops in the area. On the other hand if I decided that I wanted to race professionally, I would take what I learned from working with the other people that were sponsored drivers and apply it.

This will help me decide whether I would like to do my senior project on how to manage a hobby shop or how to become a professional/sponsored rc car driver. I'm glad that I have this experience under my belt.