2015 Queen City Regional (QCR)

[Jimmy Nichols]

The esteemed Head Ref Tim Burkett quickly responded with the fire extinguisher and unplugged the battery. He now has a fireman's helmet with a rubber ducky on top to wear at the event. We made him the Captain of the Queen City Regional Fire Brigade.

[Jaxom]

Originally Posted by Dave Campbell

Team 3692 had a PDP malfunction. Magic smoke escaped and a fire extinguisher was deployed. They replaced it quickly, and repaired all of the toasted wires. They came back to score a bunch in their next match. Pics are circulating on FB - I'll try to track one down.

It was not magic smoke. There were actual flames - look just to the right of the battery.

btw, this was at a low - smoke period of the incident. But of the pics I have it's got the clearest view of the flames.

[Jaxom]

Originally Posted by Jimmy Nichols

The esteemed Head Ref Tim Burkett quickly responded with the fire extinguisher and unplugged the battery. He now has a fireman's helmet with a rubber ducky on top to wear at the event. We made him the Captain of the Queen City Regional Fire Brigade.

Yeah, and Tim made a terrible mess on the field with that extinguisher, too.

[Michael Hill]

Originally Posted by Jaxom

Yeah, and Tim made a terrible mess on the field with that extinguisher, too.

I can't tell if he's cringing or smiling....

[mathking]

I would like to extend my personal thanks, and that of team 1014, to team 1038 for coming over to our hotel to talk scouting, picking and strategy on Friday night. Our team thought it was a valuable exercise to hear how another team approaches this process. So to Anthony, Ryan and the rest of 1038, thanks very much.

Also our thanks to 1985 for picking us and 4930 for being excellent teammates.

[Jimmy Nichols]

Congratulations to all the teams! It was another great event from my perspective and I hope everyone had a great time. I will be sending out surveys to the team main contacts. So keep an eye out and feel free to forward to other folks.

Thanks!!

[DanCreed3692]

Originally Posted by Dave Campbell

Team 3692 had a PDP malfunction. Magic smoke escaped and a fire extinguisher was deployed. They replaced it quickly, and repaired all of the toasted wires. They came back to score a bunch in their next match. Pics are circulating on FB - I'll try to track one down.

And yet no one picked them for an alliance partner... those can burglers were just too tempting and too few to choose from... Great games by all, and Team 3692 had a great time.... Thanks to all the teams offering to help out after the fire... we are SOOO very proud and amazed the kids repaired everything so quickly.

If interested we are sending the PDB to crosstheroads so they can do a root cause analysis. It appears the fire started from inside the PDB. We had nothing near the connections or anything, hadn't done any work that would cause particulate concerns... so we are pretty confident something internally failed. Will keep you all posted as we learn more.

[DanCreed3692]

Originally Posted by Jaxom

It was not magic smoke. There were actual flames - look just to the right of the battery.

btw, this was at a low - smoke period of the incident. But of the pics I have it's got the clearest view of the flames.

Can you send additional pics to dcreed2@wisc.edu?

Thanks,
Dan

[Alpha Beta]

Cincinnati is a fantastic town with a tremendous tournament. Thank you to all the staff and volunteers that made the Queen City Regional a great event. The venue is one of my favorites. Great sight lines, good webcast, and dedicated volunteers. Having half the pits split away from the field was a bit of a nuisance, but thankfully a few other teams closer to the field helped keep our laptop battery charged as we made abundant use of the practice day. Everyone was extremely welcoming and it was nice to venture a little farther east than our normal haunts.

We had a definite strategy going into alliance selection and were ecstatic with the picks we were able to get in the draft. 233, The Pink Team knows how to live every moment as a celebration. Taking the only other 20 point auto and getting a team that can handle the tipped over can gave us a tremendous amount of flexibility. This team gets better every event and I can't wait to see what champs brings for them. 4575, The Tin Mints were a steal for our alliance with the 24th pick. They put up base stacks faster than we could cap them. The only reason I can fathom they were still available to us is that the other alliances couldn't spare a human station with their last selection. For us they were perfect. We 1986, Team Titanium finally got to put our can stealers through an extended test. 7 consecutive matches, 100% can recovery. Showing off our versatility at the slot was also a nice bonus for our drive team.

To the finalists... Well played. 120 was the model of consistency, putting up 2 stacks more often than not. It is great to see the hall of fame teams continuing to produce quality machines. 144 and 533 were great compliments to the alliance and a pleasure to work with all weekend.

To those who wonder how a qualification match schedule can influence your seeding... We played on the same alliance with only 1 (#6 - 4213) out of the next 10 most highly ranked robots in the tournament. Only one other robot on our entire qualification schedule got selected in the top half of the draft. One of our matches even featured a partner literally on fire. More than one local team commented to us on the tough draw. Huge shout out to the scouts and strategists on the team who found a way to make every partner an important part of the alliance plan. It was fun helping every robot find some success.