[Boltman]

Well back from week 1 in San Diego, we made it to the semifinals and managed to beat as the #1 alliance we were alliance #8 ..in two games . I pretty much helped get our alliance together as lead scout mentor and we had a real shot at winning it all. However we failed.

In all we proved we could Scale/Breach and shoot some low goals. Can do high too but did not feel the need to do so.

We had to rebuild our shooter between Quarter Finals and Semi-Finals as our hex shaft snapped in two...luckily Top Hat technicians had the very part we needed and we had time (since we won 2-0) to wait/work for other quarter matches to play , so in that hour we fixed our shooter. Another team lost their drive train in semis.

Then another problem arose... the boulder getting stuck in our shooter..we saw that happen in practice but it worked "well enough" we took a chance that it would be fine we were working to scale. Then it reared its head in semi's. We were done. Not sure if humidity had anything to do with it but the boulders were tighter at the coast than inland

We are fixing (with out 30lb) both the shooter and strengthening it with steel hex shaft with our allowance as we head into central valley next weekend , surprising enough with our alliance partners Midnight Mechanics. we feel good about SD and how we performed and feel very confident with all the matches we played and driving experience , going into Central Valley next week.

Some lessons from today..

1. Bring EVERY spare part, we left a perfectly good hex shaft at home and were too far to grab it during eliminations , we were VERY lucky one was in the building. Also hardening connections is a must.

2. Be ready for DEFENSE (primarily in elims) when the ball was stuck we even played defense as well as many other robots and it was violent so be prepared for defense even if a team has never shown it...I saw at least four teams play defense in eliminations today that were not "defensive" bots and they affected the game dramatically. You should watch some SD to see effective defense played. Many shots knocked off course.

3. Don't over scale.... we winched all the way up and it failed with one second left.. we did not get scale points... we did get then another time and the first time the driver started 2 seconds early. All fixable now that we are consistent at hooking. Not sure what we had to go to the top each time ...looks cool but it failed once that high.

As for the bar question...its not taller but further from the wall so there is more room behind the bar for a hook mechanism. However in practice it was easier than on the playing field we tried to scale almost every match and did not get it down until the last few matches , in fact it was out last qualification we scaled successfully. Then twice in eliminations.

We are content with how we did and look to do even better next week. Ramona Rampage and Midnight Mechanics were awesome and it was us that had the mechanical issue that held us back in semi's . Hopefully that will not happen with the changes we make going into next week.

The teams that won(agency, paradox, coconuts) had three real decent shooters and all of them together could beach. We lost to them. Learned a lot though and excited to get back on it next week. Warlords got engineering and Catz got to go too as captain of losing alliance. That #1 "breaching only" in qualification rookie team won Rookie all-star (SMBLY required) they did awesome.

Anyhow good luck , I'll give a week 2 update next week . Any questions continue to ask me and I'll let you know what its like. In all we had a great time and look very forward to central valley.