2006 IRI - Thanks & Congratulations

[taggartbg]

IRI was awesome! i just got back from a 12 hour bus ride back to PA

[Chuck Glick]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

My 3rd personal IRI, and 116's second, I can safely say this was the best of them all.

To 25, 1114, and 33:
You guys were a blast to hang around during the QFs and SFs. You pushed 71, 1625, 910 further than any other alliance, and played what I consider the greatest elimination series I have ever seen. Probably the most impressive feat was the fact that the croud was actually cheering for Beatty!

To 71, 1625, and 910:
Wow......just wow. Your trip to the championship was amazing. We were almost giddy watching those matches with how close, high scoring, fast, and genuinely entertaining they were. You guys really earned all of your wins.

To 1712:
Thanks for the cardboard!

To 296:
Thanks for letting us cut off the end of your pool noodle, it saved us!

To 393:
Thanks for having so many entries in the talent show, it would have been alot less fun without you.

To 1114:
Thanks for making that fire alarm sound pleasing

To 71:
Thanks for giving us a chance to get outside on Friday

To all the folks that helped to put together IRI:
Thank you for an amazing event. I can't wait to come back next year!

To anyone else I forgot:
thanks!

hope it came in quite handy.

[David55]

I am very happy I had the chance to come to IRI this year. It was definitely the best FIRST event I have been to. The teams were great, the event was well organized, everyone was nice and it was just overall fun.

A big thanks to Chris Fultz and Libby Ritchie for making it possible for me to come to IRI.
Also thanks to the members of team 393..It was fun hanging out with you guys and having dinner after the competition.

Hopefully everything will work out and I'll be in the US next summer and will be able to come to IRI again next year.

David

[Dan Zollman]

Thanks to all the sponsoring teams, including team 40 for the vex, Ryan for running the talent show. I actually don't know who ended up offering and/or giving us the breaker, but thanks for that too.

[carla_rose]

[quote=Lil' Lavery]To 25, 1114, and 33:
You guys were a blast to hang around during the QFs and SFs. You pushed 71, 1625, 910 further than any other alliance, and played what I consider the greatest elimination series I have ever seen. Probably the most impressive feat was the fact that the croud was actually cheering for Beatty!
QUOTE]

thanks so much! it was a great series and were glad that so many people enjoyed it!!!


IRI was so awesome! it was my first time attending it and it was probably my fav. comp. besides nationals. i just wish it lased longer..... All the people were so nuce and friendly. plus all the best robots were there. i got to see old friends and make a lot of new one. I had so much fun and will definetly be coming back!!

[David Brinza]

Originally Posted by xzvrw2

This has been an awesome IRI for me.
<snip>
There is no explaining 44 balls in the center goal.
How awesome.
<snip>
Thanks
Stevie

As the "stick guy" trying to keep the balls from jamming in the blue center goal, it almost seemed like a dump truck deposited those balls in the goal in a matter of a few seconds. I managed to knock a ball out of the goal while trying to clear the jam. The scorer, two referees and a few field reset people saw that ball come out as well, so the correct tally wasn't 45 ...

[FoleyEngineer]

Our second trip to IRI and what a blast! Thanks to Jim Z of team 33 for letting us know about it last year and for being so gracious in your help with anything we asked for.

Thanks to our partners in the playoffs - 71 and 1625... what teammates! You guys just poured them in! Great strategizing and amazing offense! We let everyone on our team get a chance at driving or being the human player during the weekend matches so we figured our so-so record would make our chance of getting picked pretty slim. Thanks for looking beyond the stats! Nobody thought our alliance stood a chance against the #1 and #2 seeds plus the Killer Bees. It took three incredible matches but we did it! We're still shaking our heads at the one match when our defensive autonomous mode managed to take them on when all three went to shoot, and we somehow managed to push 1114 into 25 and drive them off to the side out of range, then back up and turn around and drive 33 into the opposite side wall for the duration of the auton period. It was like it had eyes. Yeah, it ran an arc pattern and reversed and went forward multiple times to cover as much area as possible but let's face it... catching all three robots? What luck! Sheesh!

Hats off to our finalist opposition too! The world champs, previous IRI champs and (Boilermaker?) regional winners - wow! Everyone took us to three matches and we had to play our last 4 matches with only 1 of 2 CIM drive motors on one side working (speed controller died) so we were sweating bullets if we could still defend and also keep you off of our teammates. You were so FAST! Everyone was just so darned good!

We're a very small team and have learned so much from so many helpful teams out there that we can't begin to thank them all. I know my son will grow up to be a better engineer, and a truly gracious professional because of each and every one of you. Why can't all sporting events be like IRI??? Thanks to all!

Foley Freeze - #910 - 2005 Newton 9-0 & Finalists, 2006 Grand Rapids Finalists, 2006 IRI Champs (woo hoo!)

[Rich Kressly]

Originally Posted by worldbringer

Thanks to all the sponsoring teams, including team 40 for the vex, Ryan for running the talent show. I actually don't know who ended up offering and/or giving us the breaker, but thanks for that too.

Thanks to Stu Bloom's crew, the Robo Devils (1018), for the main breaker after 1712's went bad and also another huge thanks to 1646 for the Anderson quick-disconnect. You kept us running and in the game.

Personally, I want to thank Chris, Andy, and Libby for organizing such an incredible event and to the volunteers for flawless execution. Aside from the competition, dodgeball was cool and judging the talent show was a blast. It's also rare to get the chance to spend time with so many of your FIRST heroes in one place:
-Andy, Mark, Chris, Scott, Stu, Paul, Karthik, JVN, Dave, Tony, Dan G., Raul, Brandon, Mike, Amanda, Dan L. ... and I'm sure there are many more I'll remember later.

[Jack Jones]

The thanks we owe IndianaFirst for IRI almost goes without saying. But I'll say it anyway. Thank you all so very much!

Words alone can not express our gratitude to both sets of Martians for all they've done for 1213 this year. They fronted us $4k so that we could buy some time to get in the show. We practiced together. They gave us their camera.h and helped us focus our camera at IRI. It did not exorcise the gremlins, but it gave us the confidence in that we'd done about all that we could do for her in the pits, so we drove her like we had to.

The Killer Bees loaned us a backup-backup battery when ours failed to charge. I finally replaced the PWMs we borrowed from them at GLR. Chief Delphi loaned us batteries to save us from going back and forth to the far side of the pits. They loaned us their HP, after ours had to leave before the eliminations. Beth had 1504 bring along their extra camera because I had a premonition (not really, ours was flaky but it worked) that ours would fail. Turns out we didn't use it; we were winning with our eye half closed :-) but 1504 was there for us.

It's often said at TARDEC that no good deed shall go unpunished. So it is that now you all have gone and done it; you'll have this little old guy hanging round way more than you want.

PS: Before you get the chance to say it - I realize that the above is already the case.

[J Flex 188]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

To 296:
Thanks for letting us cut off the end of your pool noodle, it saved us!

296 came to IRI!? I would have taken them in a pool. Or is that 269? heh.

[Kyle Love]

Originally Posted by J Flex 188

296 came to IRI!? I would have taken them a pool. Or is that 269? heh.

I believe it was 269, I didn't see 296.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Just a quick thanks to all the people who helped out with the talent show to get it up and running. But a huge thanks to everyone who entered, because without you guys there wouldn't have even been a talent show. Thank you Paul, Raul, John, Tony, Rich, and Dave for being judges. The whiteboard commentary is always appreciated. I hope everyone had as much fun as we did doing this. Start planning now, because it's going to be hard to top this year's acts!

[Elyse Holguin]

Huge THANKS and Congrats to "Flo" Steve Florence from 461 for making it possible for my team to make it to IRI, and for winning mentor of the year. Just so everyone knows a bit about how wonderful he is, our team had no shop, no school to work in, no tools, no computers for our code. Mr. Florence let us use everything he has in order to make it to competition.

Thanks to Team 40 for bringing the Vex field and bots and keeping a lot of little kids occupied during competition, the only thing I would have done differently would have been to keep the saran wrap to pack the field up FAR AWAY from Tytus.

And to teams 71, 447, 461, 1018, 1024, 1646, and anyone else I'm forgetting, thanks for letting us borrow a backup battery, a tether, and countless batteries and random tools during competition.

[Taylor]

Thanks to Mr.D and Terri Schulz for their help during the Mentor Drive.
And even though Andy Baker, Jeff Smith, and Chris Fultz were running around like (thunder?)chickens with their heads cut off, they still stopped to say hey - made even us little teams feel at home.

[John Wanninger]

Congrats go out to all the teams that played their hearts out at the 2006 IRI, especially to teams 71, 1625 and 910 for their incredibly hard fought win!

IRI Hosts, thanks to all of you who planned so smartly and worked so hard to make this a truly outstanding event, a model tournament!

Thank you 217 Thunderchickens for loaning us a CMUcam!

Thanks Beth Sweet for being our human player and for giving it your all with us in our mentor round!