2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Guess I'll make it three years in a row, although this thread might not be as hot this year with VCU's move to week 2. :(
I'm hoping I can make it down from Philly to attend, but we'll see. Good luck to all the teams, and keep VCU as the best regional.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

I'm personally glad we got moved down from the first week. I get another week to relax, make college decisions, apply for a job, and do stuff...

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Hopefully we'll get some NJ teams down here finally since we no longer compete with their regional...

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Bleh, moving VCU to week 2 takes away so many options for us for our 2nd competition since there are rules in the county that say no back to back competitions :(

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Two years qualifies as finally? NJ only moved to Week 1 in 2006. Remember 1279 coming down from NJ in 2005 and dominating the qualification rounds (then getting dominated in the elimnations)? :rolleyes:

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Doesn't count, I didn't know my friends in NJ FIRST yet so I couldn't brag to them about how VCU > Trenton. :p

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

I cant wait for VCU this year , its gonna be tight

I wanna see alot of the rookies from last year and see how they do , like the turtles , 2186 , and the goochland team

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Team 1598 is registered :]

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Team 116 is registered.

-dave

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Dave,

Saw you on Discovery HD the other day. Great show !!

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Its going to be AWESOME. I can't wait until we know what the goal is. I think our team is going to be in the guinness book of world records soon for our massive collection of turtles. I'm excited.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

401 will be there. We're probably going to have a personnel issue with the whole concert band festival thing though. I've already been excused, and the rest of the projected drive team isn't in band, but most of our team is in band. We're working it out though.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Goochland is still looking for funding for the FRC season. It looks like we should be able to register within the next month. Here's hoping!!

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Waialua is registered for VCU. I'm looking foward to some aloha spirit!

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Unfortunately, week 2 is not that great for NJ teams. It is the week of state wide testing in the high schools - HESPA - which all juniors are required to take and pass in order to graduate. Most schools will not approve a trip for that week.:(

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

We are excited! We'll also bring some shell leis, macadamia nut chocolates, and other Hawaiian goodies! ALLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOHA!:D
We may do NJ during week 1 again, or some other nearby regional during either week 1 or week 3?? Florida will probably be closed during second regional signup.......:(

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

I sat and had a nice conversation with someone from your team in San Jose 2001 and ended up with a pineapple. It made my day, and those of the people I was staying with! :D

Week three is close by in Annapolis, MD at the United States Naval Academy. It is a lovely venue and a easy bus trip, which happens to go through Washington DC, which would make a great day or two stop if you will be staying out on the East Coast for the two regionals.

Wetzel

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Week 2 isn't the best for Virginians either. It is the same weekend as the state Concert Festival. I know i have at least 50% of my students in the band. I really wish they would take other statewide events into account before setting the dates.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Did you consider that they have to organize 40 events over 6 weeks? Trucks need to carry the field from one venue to the next, and these venues are not easy to schedule either.

Now, 50 states and multiple countries worth of events too? Come on.

Scheduling issues like this pale in comparison to what I'm dealing with on all the things I'm doing. :ahh:


Wetzel

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Unfortunately Metal in Motion will not be able to attend this year. Have a great regional, I know I'll be watching via the web.:yikes:

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

No, it's the same weekend as some DISTRICT concert festivals. Not every district has it the same weekend. This is far from the first time this has happened.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

We'll be going to VCU again this year, not like it's all that unusual, we've been going to VCU every year since the team started. Hopefully this year we'll get the arm working before our last two qualifiers...

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

maybe we won't need arms :-)

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

LOL!! I might have met you then as I faintly remember helping pass out pineapples then. Looks like we are going to try and bring pineapples again now. Need to talk to Dole Plantation again...:D

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Dibs!!!! :)


-dave

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

612 is ready for VCU!
well we arent really ready seeing as we dont have a robot but we are ready to be ready

see everyone there

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Team 843 (the canadians) will NOT be going to VCU this year beacuse of the stupid change instead we will be going to Chicago witch i don't like i would rather be at VCU but what can you do

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Curses! - I'll be disappointed at not hearing "O Canada" this year.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

awww man I know Me and the rest of Team 540 will miss you guys

Best of luck at chicago

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Being only 2 blocks away from teh seigel center, I guess our team will be there once again. Can't wait to see everyone.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

2108 is registered and is excited.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

the turtles are coming, the Turtles are coming! :-)

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

I cant wait , its gonna be much better ...

hopefully 540 wont go against one of the same teams every single match this year , because its a week 2 regional

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

i think FIRST changed the algorithm they used for pairing midway through the season to cut back on that same thing from happening.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Team 1731 will be there. We're disappointed that the team from Canada won't be there, but we're excited about meeting the team from Hawaii. Glad you're coming to visit us on the East Coast! None of this is to say that you local guys are boring or anything... we enjoy seeing you too :]. See you all in a couple weeks!

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

If you go into Canadian withdrawal, there will be two genuine Canadians in the team 587 pit that you can talk to :).

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

We have 8 girls on our team of 20 students and they just went to Walmart to pick up some hula skirts as part of their uniform. Yes, they sell those kinds of things at Walmart in Hawaii and tons of pool noodles for the beaches. We never have issues finding supplies for our bumpers. :D
I told them to practice a Hawaiian song, since in NJ, they put us on the spot and asked us to sing our Hawaii anthem. Only 3 of our team members actually knew it. Pretty embarassing because I forgot it too.
We are very excited and cant wait to meet you all.
Its a lot to pack and plan for since we head to DC afterwards and participate in the Chesapeake regional too. Our students are missing the last 2 weeks of school, then come back to a 2 week spring break vacation. But of course, we have the Hawaii regional then.
Virginia, here we come!

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

So....
VCU is here!

I've been watching some of the webcast today, and here are my thoughts.

-There isn't much hurdling. It appears to me that about half (maybe less) of the teams try to hurdle at all. This is causing the average score to be 20-40. (im guessing) There are some teams who are getting as many as three hurdles per match. Kudos to you guys.
-There are a lot of penalties. 2-4 seems to be an average amount of penalties per match. It sometimes makes the score 0. Its disappointing to see penalties deciding the match results so often.
-the time between the matches is long. It seems to be taking the refs longer to decide on the score. I'm not trying to downplay the refs, just making an observation. There also seems to be more problems with the field.
-why are they playing Hannah Montana?

The only regionals I have seen this year are BAE-NH and a little bit of the midwest. So maybe all these observations are normal, and NH and midwest were abnormal. I guess we'll see in the coming weeks...

My two cents.
DB

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Because it is crazy infectious. :D

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Lets not talk infectious and VCU in the same sentence.... :o

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Didn't get a chance to watch any of the matches today... will be glued to the lappy tomorrow.
Sad to hear the scores are so low and people still having problems with the penalties. I hope this works itself out in the next few weeks.
Looking at the teams I'm glad to see the great state of North Carolina is well represented. :) Good luck to 435,587,900,2108,2483, & 2642.
Would love to see an all NC alliance winning :cool:

One thing I have noticed that slightly disappoints me... not a criticism...
The majority of the teams are from VA or NC.
Would be nice seeing teams from some of the other states. Maybe this just the way it is at a regional.

Have fun kids, wish I could join yous up there!

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

While there's still a ton of penalties, our last match of Friday did break the low score streak. 1731, 1598, and 1541 scored 102 points in a great team effort.
And while a majority of teams are from VA/NC, we do have 359 venturing out from Hawai'i. In previous years 843 was a regular visitor from Canada, and 383 from Brazil. We always seem to attract a few out of town-ers to our awesome event.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Yes Jeff, no more infections.

And the time between matches is usually not a ref problem, but the new teams coming onto the field taking too long to get set up (no power/leaving field then coming back). The matches were scheduled to be five minutes from the start of one match to the start of the next match; most of the afternoon we were able to reset and stay on that five minute interval.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

yeah i will second the whole not needing arms thing..... ours like suck out loud as of the end of friday night... honestly we learned that we could heard and run laps better if we jus kept the stupid things tied down...

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

A couple HDRIs (High Dynamic Range Images) of the NASA/VCU Regional. Made up of 12 or 13 images each, all taken today over the course of several minutes.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Since I've pretty much run all over the Siegel Center with my camera and tripod whenever I haven't been at the pit admin desk (being fooled by my old team regarding a Companion Cube ;) ), I've taken about 300 photos and put them on Photobucket:

Pre-Event (volunteer's meeting): http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v2...VCU%20day%200/

Day 1: http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v2...VCU%20day%201/

Day 2: http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v2...VCU%20day%202/

I do have photos from the team social (volunteers were invited), but none of them were very good due to the low lighting in the tent all the food and games were in.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Live Saturday posting from VCU, where we just started the opening ceremonies!

Looking forward to an exciting day of competition, where everything works so I don't have to. :D

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Does any one have an archived copy of the video they showed just before the Speeches. The "Your FIRST..." video?

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Hey NASA/VCU Folks,

Dave and I are looking for feedback on the 6-player Overdrive Game/Simulation we (Lockheed Martin) contributed to the regional's Technology Row exhibit area.

Should we work on the game infrastructure and try to bring an improved version next year (simulating next year's game)?

Do those of you who used it think it can become an effective tool for training drive teams and/or exploring strategy options?

Regardless, was it fun?

Does it need its own discussion thread?

Anything else?

Good luck to everyone today in the remaining Quals and the Eliminations!
Blake

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Yay exciting matches!
1793 went undefeated during the qualifying rounds and was the number one seed at 8-0. They lost a match in the semis but just advanced to the finals.
The two alliances to the finals are #1 seed 1731-1793-2109 and #2 seed 1086-435-1522.

Dr John Speich, professor of mechanical engineering at VCU got volunteer of the year award. It is well deserved.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

I must say, the semifinals and finals matches were extremely intense, fast-paced, and very exciting to watch. 1086-435-1522 won the event, two games to one.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Nope, it was 1086, they also won the Chairman's Award!!!

Gratz to 1086 for such a great two-fer!

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Team 339 had a blast! We broke our team records for the event and had a great time.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

You're right - it looks like my brain's finally shutting down now that there's no adrenaline left to fuel it. ;)

But yes, congrats to them for winning both the event and the Chairman's award, and congrats to 435 and 1522 (a candidate for my favorite robot ever in terms of design and name) as well!

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

We had a great time, minus being in last place after the qualification matches and going 0-10.

I'd like to personally thank 2021 for picking us as an alliance partner. You guys believed in us and saw through all of the bad luck we encountered. Even though this was my last year as a student member, I hope that 975 keeps a good relationship with your team.

And thanks also to 339 for being a great alliance partner. We put up a good fight and got unlucky in our first match.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

I've uploaded a whopping 185 photos from today, including some of one of the later matches (airborne trackballs somehow manage to show up properly when people walking around much more slowly don't):

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v2...VCU%20day%203/

I also took about 50 minutes of video, I haven't decided what I plan to do with it yet. I was thinking about making a brief montage, as well as a sped-up activity video like the one I did here.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

These pictures (and the ones above) are amazing. Thank you so much for posting them! (and I'm glad you liked the companion cube joke)

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

No problem, it took me a while to remember that it was from Portal (someone from another team told me it wasn't real :P).

Did you ever return 2402's flux capacitor? ;) (kidding, kidding...)

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Dang, I think we accidentally stuck it in our toolbox

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Nope, we got it, did you all get your catalytic converter motor?

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

I didn't see that... Took a lot of pictures, but the color turned out really horrible. Can anyone spare about a cup of magenta electrons, and maybe a pint of cyan? Thanks.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

team 1086 had an amazing time!!! we would deffinetly like to thank teams 1522 and 435. you guy were awsome alliance partners!! congrats to the finalist 1731, 1793, and 2108 you played really well!! And to all of the award winning teams!! (384:D 2106-congrats on your first award!!:D ) we hope to see some of you guy in Atlanta!!

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Team 2108 had an awesome time. We were a bit disappointed with the penalties in the finals making us lose, but whatever. We won last year. We don't need to win every year. We would like to thank 1793 for picking us and 1731 for playing some awesome ball.

All in all this game was a good one, except so many penalties. They really kill you.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

team 359 hawaiian kids would like to thank all of the teams (mostly from Virginia) for all of the kind welcoming words throughout the tournament.
We had a great time and possibly look forward to coming back.
For the boxes of chocolates, pineapples, pineapple candies, shell leis and buttons, we ran out of most of them halfway through Friday. Sorry if some of you didnt get any. If we come next year, we promise to bring more.

Team 339: See you next to our pit next week at Chesapeake.:D

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

We were happy to have you here, you all were amazing. Hopefully we'll see y'all next year (I won't be in Chesapeake, unfortunately)! :D

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

After some sleep, I finally have all my thoughts together on the last three days.

2021, thank you so much for picking us! It was exciting to be allied with our local neighbors. 975, you guys made a great alliance partner. We put up a good fight and lost to amazing teams.

After seeing the concerns about week 1 regionals, I was a bit worried about penalties at this one. Yes, penalties did determine many matches, but every single penalty was announced with a cause and a team so that drivers could learn from their mistakes. I really appreciated that effort.

The matches were much more exciting than I expected this game to be and I realized that it was possible to play a defense that did not involve robot-to-robot contact (keep-away, protecting a placed trackball, etc.)

All in all, it was an amazing event and a great way to start my last competition season as a FIRST student.

P.S. 339 can't wait to be neighbors with 359 next week!

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Team 612 would like to thank their great alliance partners team 384 and team 1885. Especially thanks to team 384 for picking us up after we had a poor showing on Thursday and friday but selected us for our great performance on Saturday. We had lots of fun even though our playoff run was pretty short.

Congratulations team 1885 on their Engineering Inspiration award. Hopefully we can be successful at the Buckeye regional so we can meet you guys back up at Championship.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Congrats teams 1731, 1793, and 2108, you all did a great job, good luck at the Nationals. All the other rookie teams were fantastic, and I think it's really good that people are getting involved in this ammount (I think there were eight rookie teams there, including us).

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

384 did pretty good...not as well as we hoped to but we were 7-1 before the elimination rounds
384 and 1086 wanted to be in an alliance together but that didnt work out and I was happy with our alliance with 612 and 1885
Penalty points are going to play a major role in this year's game as they did at the NASA/VCU Regional

We congratulate our alliance for helping us out and having a great game (that second game (in quarter finals) we demolished our opposition)
We have won GM Industrial Design Award for 3 years in a row
Congrats to team 1086 for doing a great job in the competition and Chairmans

We hope to see some of the teams from NASA/VCU Regional at the Nationals

Finally, Good Luck to all the teams that still have to play and watch out for the penalty points :D

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

1793 actually did a good job with their alliance picks. I thought it was funny when they picked 1086 and they declined, then they picked 384 and they declined. They knew that if they were both together, they would be a tough alliance to beat. So they prevented them from being together.

Penalties were definitely playing a major role in the game. The game was great except the annoying penalties.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

I can't believe there were no alliance pairings within the top eight this year. That almost never happens.

Team 339 had a great time and finished the qualifying rounds with a higher seed (#12) than we've ever had before. Thanks to 2021 and 975 for helping us put up a great fight in those quarter-finals.

One thing we learned at this regional was how strange problems can manifest themselves in strange ways at strange times. Okay, we knew that already, but this year was particularly strange. :p

We lost the +5V bus on our robot controller after a metal shaving landed on one of the analog input pins and shorted it out. This problem first manifested itself as a loss of the gear tooth sensors (they need a 5V input), resulting in our robot ramming full speed into the opposing alliance's player station in hybrid mode. After all, with no input from the gear tooth sensors, the robot thought it had gone exactly 0% of the way across the field.

So we got a warning from the refs, took the robot back to the pits, and noticed the yellow "low +5V output" light on the RC. We went through a long checklist to clear the problem until we finally found and removed the metal shaving shorting out the pins. Unfortunately, the +5V bus appeared to be permanently shot. With less than 15 minutes before our next match, we flipped our "disable autonomous" switch to the ON position to avoid ramming into the player station again. We were disappointed that we wouldn't be able to run hybrid, but we had no choice at the time.

During the next hybrid mode, one line, four points, and five angry refs reminded us that the switches connected to the robot controller also run on the +5V bus. :o Note to self: for next year, change the autonomous switch to default to DISABLED in a no signal condition.

Apparently the IR commands, such as emergency stop, don't work without +5V either.

We had to replace the robot controller to fix the problem. It's funny how a little metal shaving can almost get you disqualified. There's Murphy's Law in action.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

I watched this regional for almost the whole day Friday, but I was practicing with my own team on Saturday so I missed most of it. I heard something interesting from a teammate that I would like more information about. He said that he had the webcast running Saturday while he was working on something else, so he caught bits and pieces of something that appeared to be a match being stopped to investigate a violation of rule <R16> (the 80" rule). It appeared to him that the match was stopped, a robot was measured, and then the match was re-started from scratch. So did anyone see this instance? What I'm wondering is what really happened in this circumstance? Did this happen as he saw it, or did he misunderstand some of what was going on because he was occupied with other stuff at the time?

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

during our second semifinal match team 401 tipped over but they waited for the end of the match then measured them, but we didn't replay that match. thats the closest thing i can think of...

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Thanks. I'm not sure if that was the same match or not, but that makes a lot more sense than stopping a match.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

That was extremely scary. I was robocoaching on the far side of the field when that happened. Both of the teams who had control boards knocked off made great diving catches though.

It was somewhat akin to being in a car accident...

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Team Talon -- 1598 -- would like to congratulate all the teams for a great weekend at VCU this past weekend.

Thank you to great alliance partners 1137 and 1262 !!!

Thanks for all the hard fought matches in the quarters with 384, 612, and 1885. You were an awsome alliance.

Special congratulations to 1793 -- after a tough year last year, it was great to see you do so well this year ( one of their mentors is a former student of mine -- way to go Corey ) -- good pickin' !! :D

Thanks to all the teams for noticing us and giving all the positive comments even though we did not place well in Qualifying we thought we had a fairly good robot with great drivers. ( The driver is in the 10th grade :) )

:( Those dang penalties -- we made it by 384, 612, and 1885 ( quarters ) because of penalties -- 1793, 1731, and 2108 made it past us ( simi-finals ) because of penalties -- and 1086, 435, and 1522 WON because of penalties

Congratulations to 435 ( go Pack !! ), 1086 ( I like cheese ), and 1522 on a great win !!!!

See everyone in Atlanta !!!!

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

yeah when we got 40 points in penalties and lost by 6 points it really put a damper on things but we came back in the next match of the quarters too bad we couldnt finish things off...but it was quite an exciting regional congratulations to the three robots that made it through the wild and competitive regional

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

personally, i think the 80" rule was not cool at all to be enforced on a robot that flips over and falls. Its not like they had any control of it once it fell other than pressing the stop button.:confused:

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Did teams get 80" penalties even after pressing E-stop?

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

None of the too big robots I saw flopped hit the e-stop.

I have a question for everyone and would like some feedback. Do you prefer that we schedule 8 qual matches for everyone and as a result push you hard to reset and get matches done, or take it easy and more relaxed and only schedule 7?

Wetzel

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

How's it going? Nice to have finally met you there!!!
The only issue we had was not being told ahead of time that we had a match we won that didnt count for us.
We won match #3 and were puzzled why we never got the "W." Our teammates did and we didnt. We actually won 8 matches since we had to play 9 total.
I like playing more matches. However, I think all regionals should have practice times start later and finish later, allowing teams that travel farther to put their robot together in a more relaxed fashion. Local teams bring their tools, thus packing only their robot with a few items. We have always had to take apart quite a bit of our robot in order to fit tools, parts, etc. since we cant afford to bring them all on a plane. :D
Congrats on your award!! You certainly deserve it.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Thanks. :)
Check 9.3.2 of the rules, the surrogate match is stuck in there. A lot of people missed the change of the surrogate from their last to their third match, we had several teams come ask us about that.
I think I like the idea about shifting practice matches later in the day, but need to think about it some more. I'm still not fully recovered yet.

Wetzel

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

I like 8 matches -- the more the better. We never felt pushed at all. Great work this past weekend. Congratulations on the award.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

This took practically forever, but I composed a montage of various video I took while walking around the event the other day and set the first half of it to music. Fittingly, the name of the song I used is "Maximum Overdrive". :P

The quality's not great, but then again, neither is my camera. Hopefully by next year's regional (I won't be volunteering in any other regionals this year - hopefully I'll do more than one next year) I'll have a better one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy9pGEo7W9E

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Hey big thanks to 384 and 612 for picking us. After the last qualifying match when the ground cable came loose, we thought we were done for. Congrats to 384 for the award at the end, that's awesome. Congrats to blue cheese for winning and chairman's. You guys got the double whammy.:D

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Penalties were very rough this year. My team 1522 got an avg. of 30 points off a match by penalties in the qualification rounds, and then we won by penalties in the finals! Very interesting competition this year.

Thanks to our alliance 435, and 1086 again. Also thanks to 1793, 1731, and 2108 for being good sports even with a penalty deciding match.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

First off let me say congratulations to all the etams there, you all were great.

On behalf of Team 1086 I would like to say thank you again to 435 and 1522 for being great alliance partners, we couldn't have done it without you. Good job Teams 1793, 2108 and 1731 for putting up a well fought battle.

Congratulations to both Jeff and Sam for the Volunteer of the Year Award, your ongoing support and contribution to FIRST is greatly appreciated.

After all that is done and said about this weekend, I think that the amount of penalties called this week were much less than those called at regionals last week. It does suck that a good handfull of matches were decided on penalties.

I would have to say, in respose to you Jeff, that I think that teams would rather have more qualification matches, or at least I know that's what I wanted when I was a driver.

Good luck to those going on to other regionals and the Champs, hopefully I will see some of you down in Atlanta.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Team 435 would like to thank all of the teams that came to the VCU regional for the opportunity to compete with you all. It was a great experience meeting all of the other teams and seeing all the different ideas that you had. we wish you all luck at nationals and next year. we hope to see you all again. we would also like to thank Team 1086 and Team 1522 for a being great partners and thank Teams 1793, 2108, and 1731 for being such great opponents and for their gracious professionalism after the match.

Thank you.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

remember that we can see a lot of these teams again in September at the Robot Rumble.
Let's get enough teams this year to run 3v3 rather than 2v2 :)

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Good luck to dan and the crew from 1598 and all the others on the way to Atlanta. 1793 had a really good time....so close...We understand..it was us last year.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

i believe the Robot Rumble is in October

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

We had a ground loose in our last qual match. We hit the e-stop almost immediately in teleoperated mode. Blue alliance was assessed 2 penalties that match and it looked like one was for us impeding. It was pretty frustrating but at that point it didn't seem worth it to argue for 10 points that wouldn't have made a difference in the outcome.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Well, I would like to thank teams 1598 and 1137 for the great time in elimination rounds. Guys, we were so close to those finals and pulling off the huge upset of beating the number 1 seed. Those darn penalties though, but Team 1262 has never made it as far as we did this year, and being it was my first competition, I really enjoyed it. Good luck to those teams in nationals and hope to see everyone next year. =]

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Oh yeah! we had quite a few teams ask us to even things out, and to seperate "the twins". they would have dominated. too bad that ONE penalty kept us from Atlanta. better luck next year guys.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

yea... you guys probably remember me... im the red head who drove the stags arm... you guys really did a good job when you broke those two up... they would have killed

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

yeah i remember you. you guys did really good too. nice pit area too...

it was a tough choice for our pick this year. my little "list" was cleaned out by the time we had our 2nd pick, so me and the rep from 1731 had to make our best choice with info we had.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

congrats to all the teams that made the turnament and to those who didn't. all in all it was a very exciting regional and thanks to 359 for making the trip out here and good luck to anyone who is going to any other regionals and Worlds

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

Can someone post the awards given out on day 2?

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

GM Industrial Design: 384
Motorola Quality: 359
Team Spirit: 612
J&J GP: 2106
Judge's: 122
Finalists: 1793, 1731, 2108
Champs: 1086, 435, 1522
EI: 1885
RCA: 1086

I don't recall the rest.

Re: 2008 NASA/VCU Regional
 

It's a start.
Thanks Sean.