Left out in the cold...

[Rob]

Originally Posted by Gary Dillard

I talked to JVN first thing Saturday morning - they were on our list but pretty far down because of inconsistency. He told me about a bad motor controller and a few other details that had caused some problems. He asked and I told him what they needed to demonstrate for us (2X handling and hanging). I watched both of his matches on Saturday and they had problems both times. Like he said, just alot of bad luck.

I think that many teams get hurt by inconsistency. I was hangning out with pit guys from 229 alot, and they were always having the worst luck with their arm. From having to repair it on Thursday morning to electrical problems on Friday and Saturday, they were not able to show how good their machine really is. I remember talking to Chris and him saying that they finally had all of the mechanical bugs worked out when a speed controller failed, and the pwm came unplugged in the next match. This is a team that I know would have made a huge splash in the elimination rounds has they been invited to join an alliance. I wonder sometimes if 74 is too big a field of machines to select from. It is really hard to get to know details about machines, teams, and strategies when there is that much information to go over.

Despite this, I wouldnt count 229 out for summer competitions. They are going to make an impact wherever they go! John, Joel, Chris and Co., I hope we meet up with you at some summer event, because I would love to actually get tom compete with you guys instead of against you!

Rob

[Matt Attallah]

Wow.

I don't think that I've ever seen team 5 (The RoboCards) ever mentioned like this before in a thread. I wish I could respond to the problems/question - but I have not been to a meeting since the build seasion. I Have kept in touch - but thanks to some bone-headed moves and stupid thoughts, I've had to be seperated from them - and right now it's thanks to me catching up on work. As I just read we now have FORD as our sponsor (AFL is moving) and I am going to have to dig more into this...

Agian - thank you for the thoughts of team 5 (The RoboCards!!)

[George A.]

This year, i don't think that ranking effected the pickings all that much. Because if a team were to lose even one match even if it was just by a ball or so they were automatically dropped to an entirely different tier. Just some proof to this and to attest to what Gary said about ranking, we were ranked dead last in the Trenton Regional, but our scout team went out and sold our good points to the top 8 teams, and we wound up being picked in the second round (Thanks to teams 195 and 173)

Getting back to the topic at hand, I'm very surprised that team 122 didn't get picked. We worked with them at both the Chesapeake regional where we lost in the semis. (We got tipped early in our first semi match and they still scored 130 points!!) And we also worked with them as part of our allaince in Palmetto where we wound up winning the regional. They had an awesome capper/ hanger and I feel that they would've been an awesome addition to any allaince.

[Nate Edwards]

We 957 ended up in 25th in Newton and ended up not getting picked.. but it wasn't that bad. The cool thing was that Dean Kamen came up to our alliance selection representative after we didn't get picked and told her that we should have been picked cause we had a very competitive and constitant robot. I think that kind of complimant was even better then if we got picked.

Nate