I think by far the scariest moment for me was at the J&J Regional, in the pits after probably the second practice round when our stacking arm wasnt working and our teacher gets the bright idea that we should cut down the robot so it can go under the bar. Now, mind you the robot is about 3 1/2 feet tall and cutting it down to fit under a 14" bar would be major work. So my reaction was basically ":ahh: WHAT!! YOU WANT TO DO WHAT!!!! NO YOUR NOT TOUCHING MY ROBOT!!! I WONT LET YOU!!!" and i continue screaming at the teacher. I almost had a heart attack lol. ( i have emotional attachments to the robot probably due to the fact that most of the time there were only 2 students there and when its just you with the robot, you tend to form a bond :) so yea, hes my baby :) )

Also at J&J, we set the autonomous program and it worked pretty well, except for the fact that the other team basically had the same program as us, and well we hit the bins at the same time, our robot stops short n then proceeds to get pushed back and eventually lands on his back at the bottom of the ramp with the battery about a foot away.

Another sorta funny moment was when in one of the matches, i was driving and i couldnt really tell our orientation, so in my efforts to get to the top of the ramp, i drive full force into the side walls, which causes our robot to fall on his back (again). It was actually really funny cuz it happened so quick and the robot basically drove and then fell lol.

watching a bosch break wide open
 

This year at SBPLI my team realized that the bosch at the end of our arm needed some tweaking(to say the least).

We had a bosch mounted at the end of our lifting arm, and due to driver faliure, design flaw (sproket getting caught in ramp grate), to much tension on the chain attached to the motor. our bosch gearbox tore open throwing gears all over the field.

needless to say after that we realized that we needed to to put a metal shield around it.

but it wasnt fun watching it explode, not once but twice

My scariest moment was when out robot wouldn't turn or spin for two national final competitions. During first match, i got the the top of the ramp 90 degrees to the position i wanted to be in, and realized i couldn't spin to put the wings down. After some serious stress attacks, I finally figured out that crabing and spinning at the same time worked. I'm sure thankful it happened at the end of the compeition.

Re: watching a bosch break wide open
 

You beat me to it again! Well I still have something, the scariest for me as our teams autocoder was when the automode pulled a way too wide turn and I thought it was going straight into the wall. Which it did, but not without taking an opposing HP stack with it. If anyone asks, it was supposed to do that ;-). So that's scariest for me anyway, next to the motor....glitch.

The scariest moment for me and a few of our team members was at nationals. I dont know if anyone is familiar with out robot but we have a telescoping arm that extends and swings to hit the bins on the ramp from our starting position. Well, we just changed motors on our arm and had been having a lot of trouble with it the whole day. So we tweaked a few things and brought the robot over to the practice ramp. So we had all the bins lined up ready to go and the robot was set. Well me and a few other girls were standing there waiting to start the autonomous mode. So we turn it on and found out (quite quickly) that we did not set the right direction for the arm to swing. So instead of the arm swinging and hitting the boxes, it swung at us and nearly took all our heads off. Needless to say, we made sure to check the direction of our mode from then on.

another scary moment was during a match when mikah went to place the bins and they all fell over...cleveland. he managed to get two of the boxes stacked properly...which is what we were aiming for....it was still scary to see all of your boxes go flying down and scattering.

Was this before or after the Championship? You seemed to have an abundance of hair then. Enough for our kids to spike, anyway. :)

In the style of the Firebirds, it wasnt us who was scared, but rather we were doing the scaring. Upon our arrival at the Houston airport the day before Nats we just happen to come across Patrick Swazey (from Dirty Dancin) clad in leather jacket and pants of course, and with staple aviator glasses. A few of us birds stealthily follow Mr. Swazey hoping maybe we can get the guts to ask for a picture with him. He definatly noticed us staring at him, and so he quickly walks outside. Well we move in a little closer, and again he notices, and taked cover behind a huge piller outside. When he finally had to make his move across the airport, he walked, almost ran, right passed us. We didnt manage to even get a snap shot of him, but it did make for an interesting phone call back home to the biggest Swazey fan on Earth. Ok, so we scared him a little bit, we couldnt help ourselves. I have one thing to say though, if Mr. Swazey did not want to be recognized in a public airport, why then did he wear leather pants, jaket, and aviator glasses. Not the best outfit for blending in.

lol, this was right after we won west mi.. sat him down at the top of the ramp, and to racous cheering.. took his ponytail out..

i noticed he did spike his hair too on the webcast.. well at least your not totally bald steve : P

my scariest and funniest moment ,was the first practice match at CR with our auto mode on.. we rolled out, made a perfect "V" turn, and smacked dead center into the front of side railing. Luckily, we had a bunch of lexan and bosch framing there, so nothing was damaged, and i remebmer looking back and laughing because we hit it with so much force, the ramp wall became disloged, and they had to tape or secure it donw..hehe

Yes... Steve is always scarry... ;) What about the time when we found out that the gearbox doesn't work and had to build a new one in a few days, that was scarry too... But it doesn't compare to steve... :P

Ok. So we're standing around in an open area at the Great Lakes Regionals, and practicing with our robot, right? We manage to forget that it was set in autonomous mode. Our robot was being held up so that the tread wasn't coming into contact with anything. But the wings... the wings normally fly out after a few seconds. Luckily a team member had the presence of mind to remember that, yelling "OH. SHOOT. WINGS!" and jerking the robot backward before it can smack anyone in the stomach. LOL.

Another one. Four or five of us were in the pits, and I was gluing the tread together. Our control board (which folds up) just so happened to be on top, plugged in but nonetheless folded up. So it can't do anything, right? WRONG.

So gravity starts working on the controls and the treads start going while I'm gluing.

Good thing I have quick reflexes. :p

ouch lisa- i wasnt there for that one