Re: 2008 Wisconsin Regional
 

I should be working...but I am having too much fun reading what everyone else has entered. Because I work as a volunteer I miss most of the competition. Thanks to all of you who have posted your fun stories of the Wisconsin Regional (really a plutonium battery, what will Susy come up with next year?). I kept asking volunteers and Cellular Arena staff how everything was going, are the students behaving. Every time the reply was that everyone was cooperative, practicing safety and having fun. People who staff events like this are always a little worried when we say there will be 1500 high school students. At the end they said it was pleasure to work with such a wonderful group. Thank you to all the participants for making this a fun and exciting event that we will look forward to planning again. Just a Mom, who is very proud!

Re: 2008 Wisconsin Regional
 

Laurie should be working, and I should be cleaning my house and getting ready to go out at 2:30 this afternoon.

I keep getting lost reading posts too.

I would like to congratulate Laurie Vertz on receiving Volunteer of the Year. Laurie has helped team 1091 throughout the last year. I am also "just a mom" who has now been involved with team 1091 for 3 years. Any time that I asked a question through email, Laurie was quick to respond, and I am truly thankful for all of her help.

Re: 2008 Wisconsin Regional
 

Our team observed very poor officiating at this regional. There was one instance where our robot was on the line, backed up, and then crossed it. They still called a G22 even though the robot had not completely passed the line yet. We talked to the head referee about this so that it wouldn't happen again (it caused us to tie the match, instead of win it), and he agreed with us. But we saw the same thing happen again in the elimination rounds! Our team was in the pits for most the entire competition, so we didn't see many matches, so I imagine that this occurred many more times even.

Also, they mentioned during one of the driver's meetings that an arm extension passing over the lane divider wall would be a G22, but it was almost never called. Mistakes like these can decide the outcome of the match. I think they should have introduced a tiered penalty structure this year as well. 10 points for a G22 basically takes out one robot's points for their laps. That seems a bit harsh. There should be a 5 point penalty for something like a G22 and reserve the 10 point for something like pinning a robot against the wall.

Another thing that bothered me was the case of the disappearing robots. The lane divider material reflected one side of the field onto the other from certain angles, causing the robots on the other side to disappear. Conversely, you can find that there are images of robots on your side appearing ot be on the other side. I once found myself driving around a robot that wasn't even there! Things like that need to be worked out when determining materials for the playing field.

Also, I felt that the team randomization was kinda iffy. We found that our team had never been on an alliance in qualification with any of the picking teams in elimination. There were too many teams, because such a large regional has that particular side-effect. Albeit, we didn't have the best robot, but I think we deserved to do a lot better because we were always on alliances with other mediocre bots.

Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and as always it's been a lot of fun, and I learned a lot. Doing well at competition is just icing on the cake. In fact, I'm not too bent out of shape about it. About 10 minutes after the last qualification match, I stopped being too concerned with our 57th place finish.

Of course, continuing to be the only team that has won the visualization award at WI certainly doesn't hurt things either.

...and sorry for the wall of text.

Re: 2008 Wisconsin Regional
 

I just wanted to say that there are a couple of threads where people are talking about things like this, you might want to look them up and voice your opinion! I'm sure that FIRST would also like any suggestions they can get.

Many unfortunate calls have made in almost all of the regionals so far. I know that our team lost a couple matches due to bad penalty calls. You just have to get over it, and remember that the refs are humans too. :P

Re: 2008 Wisconsin Regional
 

It would have been nice to see 6 working robots in the final match. I don't think I can disagree there.

However, you also have to keep in mind, when 2169 broke down, we were forced to play with only one ball (due to the positioning of the robot). To make things worse for our alliance, those amazing Appleton drivers managed to knock down the ball we couldn't use at the last second.

Yes, I know they received a couple penalties, one of them possibly being for disabling the ball, but I have confidence that with CORE hurdling as well in that match, they could have easily put up more.

As far as shooters vs arms debate i will say EXACTLY what I said about 30 posts ago...

DEPENDS ON THE ARM. DEPENDS ON THE SHOOTER. DEPENDS ON THE DRIVER.

I don't think you can declare an overall winner in this game. There were several arm robots that did better than Casserole this year. However, it could be argued that 1625 was the best robot there. I think 217 or 233 can hurdle at the same rate as 1114... I also feel like there are robots out there that could match up to 1625.

On Friday night, we compiled our scouting data to determine Average Points Scored Per Match for each team. (Including hybrid, teleop, and end game (not including knocking balls off, or penalties due to erroneous data))

The top teams were: ArmsShootersSpeed
2062 - 35.67
171 - 35.67
93 - 32.67
1625 - 32.40
1730 - 29.00
141 - 28.67
2169 - 27.00
930 - 23.20
2545 - 23.00
1732 - 21.60
1816 - 21.33
2039 - 18.00
166 - 17.00
1736 - 15.67

Re: 2008 Wisconsin Regional
 

To ReneeB/Lady Logistics of UPS:
The fact that you posted such a prompt thank you note (to two teams that had failed to help you as much as they wanted) means Brown is the new Gold.

Re: 2008 Wisconsin Regional
 

What would we do without the Kevin chant?
Joey

Re: 2008 Wisconsin Regional
 

wow. The Wisconsin regional was one of the most amazing experiences ever. Our whole team had a ton of fun and was completely worn out. =]

On the other hand, our robot's performance was not what we expected. Our drive train gave us issues the whole time we were there. It acted nothing like it had during the last few weeks of the build season. Picking up the ball proved to be a huge weakness, a lot of that was caused by the robot's drive not responding to the joystick. Extremely frustrating. :(

This will be our first year we go to Atlanta. We'll definitely make some fixes by then.

But seriously an amazing time.

Re: 2008 Wisconsin Regional
 

I will just do a general congrats to all teams for a great regional! The excitement was explosive and the competition was great.
Special congrats to 93 for winning the engineering inspiration award. Sean: It's about time you guys won this and it is well deserved.

I don't know about you guys, but if there is any more teams next year will we have to go to more fields?!?!

Re: 2008 Wisconsin Regional
 

the part of the shooter that broke was not the part that shot, it was the part most similar to arms of the motor toasted that lifted the ball up.
if that failure had happened outside of elim's it would have been fixed in time for the next match it just so happenes that that one takes awhile to replace...

Re: 2008 Wisconsin Regional
 

just curious, what motor was it that burned up?

Re: 2008 Wisconsin Regional
 

the good'ol banebots 550, can't really blame it though, trying to move something that got stuck down... lol

Re: 2008 Wisconsin Regional
 

Thank you everyone for your kind words and congratulations. 1714 Just got back from the Buckeye Regional. I had no idea how tough it was to attend back to back events. We had a blast there, but we all are exhausted.

I want to thank eveyone who helped us at the Wisconsin regional. We will represent the event well as it's Chairman's Award winner at the 2008 Chapmionship. Good luck and skill to all who will attend the Championship. We hope to see you there.

Someone once told me, I think it was Laurie Vertz, that a team is a success even if all it does is complete a robot that can drive on the playing field. I totally agree. Those who attended the Wisconsin Regional did far better than that though. Congratulations to everyone on their success at the 2008

Cangratulations to Laurie on the Outstanding Volunteer Award.

Congratulations to Team 93 for the Engineering Inspiration award.

Thank you to all of our friends from other teams who were there with us as well as the new friends we make each year. It is always a joy to see you on and off the field and reminisce about our mutual experiences.

-Mike

Re: 2008 Wisconsin Regional
 

Offensive power rankings for wisconsin thanks to bongle

Wisconsin Regional
Code:

1625 49.8168
141 35.6332
1730 32.0028
1736 25.5406
2169 24.3109
2062 24.019
930 21.573
171 20.006
2547 19.1146
1675 18.0718
2481 17.3041
93 17.1033
166 15.6925
2549 15.4527
2606 15.3803
2535 14.9615
2545 14.8528
2526 14.6634
1091 14.3247
2437 13.5781
1816 13.1077
2574 12.4494
1739 11.8769
2530 11.2592
2116 10.8958
2077 10.7748
1652 10.6515
1103 10.364
2202 9.8298
2194 9.37814
1850 9.05741
2039 8.87432
857 8.77189
1988 8.39986
2153 8.3983
2143 7.923
2667 7.88136
1259 7.56955
537 7.14274
1716 6.86105
167 5.99421
904 5.74562
2136 5.62584
2129 5.27883
269 4.51404
74 3.56688
1306 3.53685
2220 3.22949
1714 2.86169
1732 2.31474
2506 2.25164
2538 1.84231
1864 0.955353
754 -0.576295
706 -1.18242
81 -2.20895
1984 -2.30947
1268 -2.98356
2586 -7.35126
2561 -9.22469

Re: 2008 Wisconsin Regional
 

Thats interesting compairing those OPR's with andy's average points per match a few threads up. Big difference on the highest average comapred to highest opr