[hemihead]

We had ball size problems at KSC and the Nats in 2000 so we have since decided that ball machine designs need to allow for ball irregularities....size AND shape.....

Our machine in one practice round was able to get at least 30 of of the line balls in way under 2 minutes of the practice.

Our team looks forward to the Nats this year....I'll bet that there will be a more even distribution of ball-bots and goal bots when the 10X larger number of teams gets scrambled together.

We had a handful of reeeeally stupid mistakes which made us look less "desirable"....it's always the simple things that kill ya!

1.) Somehow our "known bad" new 2002 Exide battery was returned to the "charged stack" so we died inside 30 seconds.

2.) One round we had a bulging basket of balls and the mechanism didn't tip fast enough......a crimped air line from the valve to the cylinder set slowed the works down....CHECK TO SEE THAT EVERYTHING AFTER EVERY MATCH WORKS!!!!

3.) We got a ball hung under the machine which tipped us over on our back once.....hung up on the lexan shield designed to prevent just that......we moved it to prevent that happening again!

But, we had a great time, got to help out a newbie team a bunch (swelled chest!!) and got to see lots of cool bots!