It was 2007... second match of the tournament in Portland. Our chance to show off our awesome autonomous in front of a row of judges and a packed stadium.
We'd spent the practice day replacing the soft carrier plates in the KoP transmissions that year as they had failed while we were developing the PID code for the mecanum drive. (All you script kiddies using a cRio to do it with a pre-programmed routine in LabView... hah! Try doing it from scratch on the old controller.) The ultrasonic sensors in the front had worked in the shop, and the plan was to drive to the tower, square up, roll in, and release the tube. Sure, we hadn't had a chance to try it in practice on a real field, but it worked at home....
I'm not saying that we'd WANT to do it this way again, but we couldn't if we tried.
http://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2007or_qm2
Jason