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Unread 22-07-2002, 17:30
Mike Soukup's Avatar
Mike Soukup Mike Soukup is offline
Software guy
FRC #0111 (Wildstang)
Team Role: Engineer
 
Join Date: May 2001
Rookie Year: 1996
Location: Schaumburg, IL
Posts: 797
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A reply to many posts

Wildstang had its share of problems, starting from the first match. Because the IRI balls were inflated more than the FIRST balls we (and a few other teams) had problems with balls jamming on Friday. We removed some spacers and the field crew let some air out of the balls and our jamming problem was solved by Saturday morning. In our match against 308 we had a violent collision with something (probably another bot) that broke the pot that senses our wheel position, so we were unable to turn for most of the match. In our final qual match against Beatty the wire that powers our ball shooter came loose when we initially hit the goal and we couldn't score any balls.

Despite all the problems we caught a few breaks and had some high scores on Saturday and ended up 2nd seed.

My favorite memory from IRI was our first match of the semis: 111 & 71 vs 65 & 308. As expected, 308 & 71 attacked the goals, but 308 missed and their grabbers broke. 71 had all 3 goals and shuffled them into the scoring zone while 65 tried to stop the slow crawl. I'm not sure how it happened, but 308 got caught up in our front goal grabber and couldn't get away, so we lowered our tank and dragged them into our home zone. The drivers from 111 & 71 didn't touch their controls for the last 30 secs of the match while 65 & 308 struggled in vein to move 111 & 71. Final score 60-10.

I won't say much about the DQs because I won't change anyone's mind and no one will change mine. I thought there were too many and I think the last one was a bad call. But I respect Andy's decision and I accept it, even though it is hard.

Thanks SGopwani & JAlpert for your kind words, and thanks to Brett and others I talked to after the final decision.

Instead of faulting the refs at IRI, I think we should fault FIRST for not defining entanglement. I looked through the rules and couldn't find a good explination. The rules prohibit deliberate entanglement and there is a lengthy passage on extensions, but no robot-robot entanglement. If it was a black & white rule and not a judgement call for the refs, there would be no need for discussion. FIRST needs to fix this for next year.

On a lighter note, I am proud to say that I successfully stole Sean's flag, just as I promised. Now only if I kept it until after the finals were over, then we couldn't have been DQ'd

Mike