[marccenter]

Dear CD,

Thanks for all your suggestions.

Tonight we had better performance. We had more success wrapping the magic red latex material from McMaster over the surgical tubing we had wrapped into a spiral. This effectively created a "better" version of the spiral stick and we could tell some difference.
I played with the speed settings lowering the speed a bit.
The last change was adding a ball like wad of material at the end of the stick with some material dangling. When spinning it creates a slapping effect which has some positive influence on gathering the ball.
I think one additional performance enhancer may be adding more dangling material to the rotating sticks (poly cord pop riveted to the stick?).
Some folks suggested moving the assembly forward but we didn't try that yet!.