Pittsburgh, wrap up and frustrations

Heh, if you were at Pittsburgh you probably heard our story.

Wednesday afternoon, Andy B calls Fedex to check on our crate. It was still in St Louis. Yikes! After several hours of phone calls, he got it overnighted to Pittsburgh for a hefty charge. It was supposed to be there at 10:30 AM Thursday. So at that time Thursday, we called. Well the plane it was supposed to be on had mechanical failure and was grounded. They tried to get it to another plane, but they missed the connection in Memphis. So we didnt get our bot till Friday morning.

Thats not all.

We planned on spending all day Thursday refitting the machine and fixing gearboxes, redoing some wiring and tweak auton mode. We agreed to miss all matches on Friday until that was done and just send a HP to be there. We got working Friday afternoon and we came out and won our first match off the bat. 2nd match we were in, we broke a weld on a shaft in our secondary gearbox. We missed our last match of the day repairing that. Friday we made it to the first match, and broke another one! Ahh we almost decided to give up and decline any pickings. But thanks to the wonderful pit crew, we got back up and running just minutes before alliance selections. Team 448 and 1114 selected us as their third partner and we ran the whole match we participated in without breaking anything. Finally we still have a bit of work to do in Chicago, but nothing major. This regional was probably the most exciting one I have been to.

I would personally like to thank all the teams, officials, and volunteers for supporting us all through the weekend. The wild applause and cheering for us when we were announced as the winners of the J&J Sportsmanship award really made me and the rest of the team feel good about ourselves that we have all of your support.

Special Thanks to team 448 and 1114 for selecting us in their finals alliance. You guys took a big risk by selecting us, but we hope we met your expectations and I would really like to work with you guys again.

Thanks to team 217, The Thunderchickens. Those guys were their offering support the whole weekend. You guys are awesome!

Finally, thanks to team 128 for cheering for us and keeping our morale level high. You guys were our saviors and kept us going

[Tyler Olds]

Originally posted by D.J. Fluck
Heh, if you were at Pittsburgh you probably heard our story.

Wednesday afternoon, Andy B calls Fedex to check on our crate. It was still in St Louis. Yikes! After several hours of phone calls, he got it overnighted to Pittsburgh for a hefty charge. It was supposed to be there at 10:30 AM Thursday. So at that time Thursday, we called. Well the plane it was supposed to be on had mechanical failure and was grounded. They tried to get it to another plane, but they missed the connection in Memphis. So we didnt get our bot till Friday morning.

Thats not all. ............

lol that sucks man, atleast you got your bot, that is a good thing.

Originally posted by Tyler Olds
lol that sucks man, atleast you got your bot, that is a good thing.

And it 90% works too

[Stephen Kowski]

sorry to hear that happened to you all, but glad to hear you all were able to bounce back from it.

[Wayne C.]

your shipping trouble is exactly what I fear will happen on the last week of regionals for teams shipping FEDEX to Texas. Supposedly there is an agreement between FIRST and carrier. I sure hope so.

WC

[Ian W.]

uh oh. 810 has three regionals back to back. we just shipped the bot yesterday, it's supposed to be at FESTO today, if not tomorrow. if it isn't, i will kill someone, as we finally got everything working, and the bot had better show up so we can have some fun .

[marlon_jbt]

If anyone saw our horrible performance...well...

I'm really angry...

We had a good robot, but we NEED NEW DRIVERS BAD!

[Libby Ritchie]

We have heard so many teams complain about the shipping situation. Nothing as horrible as this, though. Team Roboto's Leader was told after the St. Louis Regional that they were going to be disqualified for Chicago because the team lost all of their airbills and used one of ours that we were not going to use! (And this was not a FIRST person going to disqualifiy them, but the shipping people!) By the time it was over, the carrier's had Marci balling! It was horrible!!

WHY CAN'T WE CHOOSE WHO WE SHIP OUR ROBOT WITH? It's nice of Fed Ex to give the gift of free shipping, but for my team, we have free shipping with BAX Global and we were told that FIRST wouldn't even allow them on the property because of their deal with Fed Ex! I hope they consider giving us the option to choose next year.

To team 45....congratulations on getting through such a nightmare with your head up!!! You guys are a class act.

[Jeff Waegelin]

The moral of the story: call your shipper early and often if you're doing back to back events! A valiant effort, though, from the TechnoKats. I would expect no less of such a great team.

[Joe Ross]

Tom the FedEx guy strikes again?

[Amanda Morrison]

I'm sorry about all your trouble with the crates. I hope everyone (from now on) doesn't have to worry about all of that... Sounds like a bad fluke, hopefully the last one.

Your J&J Sportsmanship award was well deserved. Good luck in Chicago, I'll be cheering you on!

[Koko Ed]

That's the great thing about competition amongst businesses.
More people to fire.

[Matt Attallah]

Heh. We where right next to them, and they where cool as a cucumber. I congrats you.

Our robot arrived fine, on time, but we did get into some major trouble. We had an inspector come over and give us the hardest time about everything! Our light was visible from all directions when on the ground (we are only 14" high), but when it was on our crate (which is about 3-4 feet higher) you could see it, but not as easily. We got burned for that, but we said ok and lifted it a little higher. Next was our air pressure. We had our regulator at 60, and all was good, but he said that we HAD to have a gage between the compressor and the accumulator. What is that? There are others, and i'm sure that DJ know what they are, as well as others. This could of been a great regional, but with the lack of coordination and judgment, it really sucked for my-self.

I would love to thank teams 274 and 1218 for being our partners and choosing us. I wish to say to them that we are looking in to what happened, and we have not found anything. (I think there is something rotten in the state of Denmark...)

DJ... You may wish to change your avatar soon...before nats....

Originally posted by Matt Attallah
DJ... You may wish to change your avatar soon...before nats....

Yeah, you are right...the wings should be eliminated by then


Anyway

The funniest thing happened when we were putting our robot back in the crate on Saturday. We had the 4 labels to put on each side of the crate...Well all 4 get put on and the 2 side and back ones say "Send to Reliant Park, Houston, Tx for April 10th-12th." I screamed "NO!!! NOT AGAIN!" Our front label said to ship to the midwest regional, but the other three. Wouldnt that have been horrible to arrive at chicago with our robot in houston?!

[Clark Gilbert]

I don't know about you guys, but I thought Pittsburgh was great! Even though we didnt have our robot on Thursday it gave us time to go around and help others, as well as get our pit set up. Then on Friday we had to miss somewhere around 5 qualification matches (sorry to our partners), but this helped get our robot better. By taking apart the robot, changing some of things around the tracks, adding different gearboxes, and completely rewiring the whole rear end our robot runs pretty well. The few matches we ran (and when the output shafts didnt break) the robot ran great! By far the best I've seen.

Thanks to all the teams that lent us the things we needed during the weekend, and to 128 for cheering for us and giving us all the candy!!!

My faith this weekend in our robot increased a 100 times and I'm ready for Chicago!!