Hey guys, thought i'd put a link up to pictures of the Cardinal Carter High School Formula SAE team pictures. last year around this time we posted pictures of our first attempt and now we are working on a car that meets all FSAE rules.

http://www.carterstudentengineers.com/shop_updates.htm

looking good and very organized...continue to keep us updated

They may make some of the college teams look bad...OH SNAP! Really, if you think about the shops available in most high schools, they should have the manufacturing capabilities to kill a college squad. For example:
http://www.huhs.org/departments/technology/

Now, I know what you are saying, but the pics are not all up to date. I went on a visit and they have a 32 bit turret CNC, a laser, cnc plasma, 8 cnc lathes with generous capacities, a wire EDM, a CAMM, 28 welding stations..... the list goes on. It is a rediculous high school as far as equipment goes.

Good luck to those Cardinals
Bill

Thanks Bill we do have a fairly good shop and thanks to some of our sponcers it keeps getting better. and anything we can't do we have connections for, so hopefully we'll be seeing you guys at competition next year with a car, we haven't been allowed in this year.

If we go in next year and get beat by a high school team (no offense HS folk, I think it's awesome that you're building a car and I wish my school had that) I'll be upset

On the contrary, i think HS folks should beat at least most rookie teams.

One main reason is because, high school folks tend to be in a group of old friends where they've been hanging out since 8 or 9. So they have that special bond of knowing each other's strong points and weaknesses.

Another reason, they probably have more money than we do!!! .

And im hoping they dont have to deal with university's beauracracy as high school teachers tend to be more supportive.

And 16-18 year old kids tend to have more drive, motivation and ambition than college kids.

And not learning much of engineering classes could be an advantage, they dont overcomplicated stuff.

Of course, all of the above is meant as a joke

Well we are certainly hoping to show at least a few universities a thing or two, and not being allowed to enter this year is really gonna help us cause now we have time to perfect the designs that we weren't gonna be able to get done.

quote:

Originally posted by RiNaZ:

And 16-18 year old kids tend to have more drive, motivation and ambition than college kids.

haha, speak for yourself here. when i was in high school, i was more concerned with ultima online, warcraft 2, mountain bike racing and the next snowboarding day. i didn't do my homework, fell asleep in class, and generally goofed off always.

now, i spend more time in the shop then i do at my full time job. and somewhere between the two i fit classes and sleep comes last on the priority list. i think it is safe to say, anyone on a FSAE team is more motivated then they would be in high school without a formula team (because we all know it takes insane amount of time to get it done.... nothing but motivation will finish a car)

I don't want to take away from those high school kids it looks like they got there stuff going in the right direction (better than us) but, in high school you don't have to worry about as many personal issues, i.e. feeding yourself, paying bills, passing college classes etc. If we had the time that we had in high school then building a car wouldn't be that big of a deal. I hope I don't offend anyone but most HS kids don't have to worry about a lot of the stuff we do.

Chip

I kinda meant that high school kids have more drive and motivation if they had FSAE in their school compare to college kids in the same situation (just an opinion, i know most of you dont agree).

One reason being is that they tend to be more of a risk taker than older guys. Im sure they worry as much in personal issues, but i think they probably have less responsibilities (in general).

Well thanks for the comments guys but can we get some tech talk going instead of talking about who has more of a drive

The first step in having a successful car, is having a SOLID team. Technical expertise won't save you if you have a disjointed, unaccountable team.

That said, I'd say there's a good chance you'll have cooling issues mounting the radiator there. Not much airflow. We tried it once back in the day.

all i know is, if my high school had had formula, i'd have even fewer friends than i do now. when there's like 6 people that accomplish 80+% of the work, you don't see many other people very often.

that, and none of my friends from high school liked cars like i did.

for the record that black car you see in a couple pictures is our first car that we built last year to see if we could do it, the other pics with a half completed frame are for this year, we just got our rads in today and their going in the side pods

To be honest guys, no disrespect, but I do not think that high school students should be allowed to compete. The point of formula SAE is not to learn how to fabricate- there are already a wealth of excellent racing fabricators, and if that is a career choice that someone wants to make, it is fairly easy to find a route to being a race mechanic or fabricator.

The point of FSAE is for the STUDENTS to do the engineering design work to build the best possible race car. And there is little that anyone can do to convince me that a car designed by high school students will be well engineered. The education is simply not there yet. Im not saying that high schoolers can't build a car that will haul ass and beat a lot of colleges- I just doubt the quality of the engineering behind such a car.

I don't see what all the animosity is about. I think this is awesome. I wish my high school had something like this. I'm suprized people arent fighting over recruiting these kids.

Ku
the point of this project is not to learn how to fabricate, the students on this team have been selected for their technical skills, we already know how to build it. the point of this project is to give us a hands on approach to learning how to engineer a race car, yes we do not have the same education most of you do and we do have some help from our teachers but they do not engineer parts for us they teach us what we need to know to work the parts out ourselves.

Shulberg
It's funny you say that because every time we talk to a university team they always pitch us something to try to get us to go to that university.

quote:

Originally posted by KU_Racing:
The point of formula SAE is not to learn how to fabricate...

I'd argue that getting the car made is at least half of the challenge of Formula SAE. Besides, that's where the best out-of-the-classroom lessons of FSAE are learned.

I'm also wary of taking an elitist stance about being engineering students; we all know that a group of smart high school kids with time to go through engineering books and a good teacher could do a good portion of the engineering that FSAE teams do on their cars.

One thing i see in this competition is that the engineering background helps in understanding the more complexed aspects and more of the math involved in the equations, but a lot of race engineering is not taught in the class room, and teams learn about it through books and seminars by Carroll smith or Milliken etc. so by going this route and learning the more complicated aspects of it as we go by talking to universities or former race engineers we can end up doing a lot of the work.

(I know some of you will think i'm just making stuff up, because i'm in high school what do i know about engineering. My father is an engineer i've worked with him and hes been tring to teach me since i was young. so i do know a little on the subject.)

My gripe isnt with the fact that FSAE
ers are building a car. In fact, had my high school had a similar program, I would have participated. What I am saying is that, no offense to the students from this school, I have serious doubts about the amount of engineering work that the students actually do.

quote:

a good teacher could do a good portion of the engineering that FSAE teams do on their cars

That is exactly my point- the object of the competion is not for the teacher to do the work. The car is supposed to be designed and built by the students, not by their professors.

As far as being an elitist, it is my opinion that Engineering is one of the three hardest fields that someone can work in during their career, and I am proud to be an engineering student.

And you are right, fabrication is a major part of the competition, since you cant compete with a car that doesnt run. But how much of the competition is scored on how well you fabricate?? Exactly 5 points out of the 1000. I would point to the fact that, as many FSAE'ers already know, the questions the judges ask can be extrememly detailed and hard to answer. I dont think that a students response to a question should ever be, "well my professor designed this part, so let me point you in their direction."