Whats your opinon of 173
 

What is your honest opinion of RAGE 173. Being on the team, i dont get to hear any of the comments about our team or robot, so fill me in. What did you like or didnt like, just say anything. In the final round of the nationals, did you think our alliance was done for when 71 was out?

well, from what i saw your driving was awesome

one of the best
 

in my honest and not humble opinion 173 is one of the top teams in the country. the ball handling is top notch and the robot performed it's tasks flawlessly. Well Done!

Opinions on Team 173
 

In my opinion, Team 173's robot was ... dynamite! Our robot is also a ball handler, so we were happy to see another ball handler among the Championship winners.

I was particularly impressed with your driving skill. You guys zoomed around the field. Also your ball mechanism was inspired. We used pneumatics to dump our basket. I was impressed with the fact that you were able to handle your basket using only motors, especially since you put your basket through some elaborate motions.

I came over to check out your robot after the whole event. I liked your gear shift mechanism, particularly the use of latex tube as a tensioning device in your shifters.

We had a gear shift also, but we changed gears on both motors with one servo. Even though I did see your mechanism at the event, I would love to see a picture of your gear shifter as I don't remember the details.

We are rookies and pretty much stayed in low gear. In high gear, we tended to blow fuses if we turned suddenly. Also we had had some gear grinding on a few occasions so we were a bit nervous about shifting. Did you have any such problems? If not, what was the solution?

One other question: Did your driver use one joystick or two for steering?

Anyway, congratuations. You made us ball handlers proud. After all, if there were no ball handlers on the winning alliance, that would have made it look like all the ball handlers made poor choices in their overall design strategy.

173 robot was a site to see. I know that we had our little thing down in CT when we didn't pick, which we should have, you still are one of the best out there and you showed us all you are. Nice job 173.

i have to be honest... after 71 went down, i was drooling and imagining those pretty gold medals.......

you guys put up a helluva fight! congrats!

silver ain't too bad, i guess =-]

George
SPAM
Team 180

Up there with Beatty and Kingman for one of the best robots. EVER.

Anything else I say will cheapen that.

173
 

Congratulations 173! Great job!!

My biggest impression of this year was a little odd to be honest. My first year in FIRST was in the 2000 season, and the 173 robot stuck out in the back of my mind for some reason, maybe it's grace, it's dependability, it's ease of use picking up balls. At the UTC Suffield scrimmage this year, I did a doubletake as Rage walked in. The familiar design played through the back of my head again, and matched with the same impression of 2000. There's an expression I know of... stick with what works :)

It was an awesome bot in 2000, and you guys did even better this year :cool:

If I get not lazy, I'll post some pictures from the 2000 regional I have on video of 173 (since it stuck out in my mind I took lots of video), and maybe compare the 2 :) I loved it then and I love it now ;)

Fast
 

You guys were fast in every aspect of the word. In our match against you, You beat us to the goals so you got one before our wing could. Then you quickly put 22 balls in it to win the match. I wish we could have faced you in the Newton SemiFinals.
Congrats on the National Championship!

Re: Opinions on Team 173
 

Our shifter's pretty simple (I'll try to find a pic for you). Uses two servos to shift the drill motors (one tended to be a little unreliable). The gear grinding is from not shifting into gear fully. What we did to correct this was place limit switches on the shifting hoop to detect when the motors were actually in gear or not. Until the shift was completed, the program ignored any input from the driver and pulsed the motors lightly until it clicked into gear (significantly reduced wear and tear on the robot's drive train). In high gear, we could not turn from a dead stop well (or at all mostly), the motors just stalled out even trying to turn, but we had no problems with fuses. As for steering, we used one joystick with a modified tank drive routine to get more manueverability than the default code.

173... Top Dog
 

In my opinion, 173 outright earned the championship, with or without Beatty. After watching you guys beat us by towing team 65 (Winner of the very competitive Great Lakes Regional) around and still pick up 12 balls to win, I knew you guys would go all the way. Beatty and Kingman were one trick wonders. You guys could do it all.

I was very excited when I saw that 71 wasn't there for the last match, and it was awesome to see that 173 and 66 deserved to be there and that they didn't win just because of 71. They had great machines too and won by themselves.

A curiosity: 71 didn't play the last match because of a broken wheel or because their opponents already knew how to stop them?

im pretty sure they had a broken wheel

Yeah they had a broken wheel. When spam turned the sideways, it ripped part of their wheels up, because it too was made of filecard.

I love 173. This could because you guys did a lot of work (66 too) and we were paired with you guys (thanks X 100000). But you deserved it a lot more than we do this time. And Kingman and SPAM, you guys were some of the scariest opponents ever. I couldn't even watch the last match, no joke. I was huddled under a seat or something, until the last seconds when I was forced to watch it. I still get a really tense stomach just thinking about it. To everyone that was there, you all did an awesome job.
And man, I hate file cards.