This year was my second year in FRC and fourth year in FIRST total. By far, this was the best.
Offseason/Build Season:
-I had so much fun training 5 programming rookies about Java and electronics. We've had so many good times during these training sessions. I loved seeing a certain pair of freshmen grow from a set of immature kids to real leaders(Shouts out to Gabe and Brad!)
-The many hours we spent in the school's quad driving around in the cold was another good time during build. It was especially funny when one of my team's operators decided to talk to his girlfriend on the phone while I was driving.
-The day the electronics board(or at least it's cardboard predecessor) was mounted was a great day. James Bot drove for the first time!
San Diego regional:
-My first time getting the robot inspected. It was especially fun to point out all of the little things my wiring team did to comply with the rules. I apologize to the inspector if I came off as a little talkative about the little details
-The first FRC match I have operated in. A full logo up by us, we played with one of my favorite teams(294) and against another favorite(1717). Although I accidentally deployed early, it was a really fun match! Also, seeing our robot move and almost score was an awesome sight for our first match
-Eliminations:
-In the quarterfinals, we played against team 1538(a favorite of myself and our coach). That was a fun set of matches!
-In the semifinals, Seeing my driver juke defense while I brought the tube to scoring position was awesome!
-In the finals, we were clearly outgunned against teams 254 and 987. We played as hard as we possibly could, and that was apparently too hard for our arm, center wheel treads, and minibot! My favorite little bit was driving our roller claw back and fourth for about a foot near our tower.
Los Angeles Regional:
-Our team spent a day sightseeing on Wednesday. I enjoyed hanging out with my team mates.
-Thursday was a very stressful day for our pit crew. Repairing the arm system was the task at hand. We lost the chain somewhere between the San Diego sports arena and our shop! Thanks McMaster Carr for the speedy service! My arm positioning code did not work quite well with the new arm motors. For one: the pit crew neglected to tell me they did not check the polarity on the motors before wiring it up(Apparently, they assumed I would do it, so my fault, too). Also, they neglected to tell me the RS555s would be slower than the RS550s they replaced. The control over the arm was a bit wonky(the setpoint would change faster than the arm would move). This was fixed
-Practice matches were fun. These were the first matches with one of our new drive coaches, Brad(our driver from 06-09).
-While we did not fare as well as we wanted to during this competition, we lost to a set of great teams(330, 1717, 1515) in the semifinals
Utah Regional:
-It was a lot of fun on the practice field for a regional's worth of matches all day on Thursday.
-It was great to meet and help the teams in the pits
-It was awesome being pit neighbors with team 2122!
-Snow!
-It was awesome winning the regional with teams 2122 and 3239!
Championship Event:
-I had tons of fun working with our qualification alliance partners on strategy! My favorite matches were the ones with 2337, 48, and 469!
-going up against teams 254, 111, and 973 in the semifinals! You guys were tough opponents and deserved the win.
-It was also really cool to walk around to other pits and talk to such teams as 503, 359, 294, 1197, 2122, 3239, and 330.