2012 Queen City FRC Regional

[Dan 1038]

On behalf of my tiny team, I would like to offer thanks to all the teams who helped us and congratulations to the teams who competed. We had an awesome experience at Queen City; Dave, Jimmy and the rest of the planning committee deserve kudos for the result of their efforts.

1014 - Awesome job winning the Chairman's Award!
45, 781 & 3940 - You guys rocked in the eliminations, congrats
3940 - Rookies? Really? Outsanding job this year, congrats on winning RAS!
Jimmy Nichols - You deserved volunteer of the year, great job with the regional and your team emails!
3492 - You guys are doing great in your second year, great job Denise, Jacob, Dale, Josh and the rest!

Andy Baker - Thank you for helping us with our bumper issues and lending us your shelve unit, which proved to be quite usefull as a work platform. Also congrats on the success of 3940, you did a great job with them!
1038 - Thank you for lending us Josh to act as our human player, he did great in the end game and was awesome help on Thursday as we got our bot put together. Thanks also for letting me raid your tools as needed.
Ryan Reliford - Thanks for all of the Labview help, we finally got it together!
3492 - Thanks for the aluminum stock, which enabled us to keep our arm from beating up our controls!
Everyone else - thank you for offering help and support, what an awesome display of GP!

[JJackson]

I'd like like to thank team 45 and 3940, you guys were great alliance partners and extremely easy to get along with. As for our our human player he was pumped and was wearing the net that he got our final basket in the whole way home.

And by the way team 48, 3193, and 1038 you were some tough competition so thanks for making us work for it

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by JJackson

I'd like like to thank team 45 and 3940, you guys were great alliance partners and extremely easy to get along with. As for our our human player he was pumped and was wearing the net that he got our final basket in the whole way home.

And by the way team 48, 3193, and 1038 you were some tough competition so thanks for making us work for it

It was our pleasure - you guys displayed awesome teamwork and execution out there.

We were so close to sending it to a third match. After your HP made his long shot, 3193 had two balls chambered up with seconds left. We needed both for a last second win. The first one made it, the second rimmed out. Very, very close!

I've complimented them all many times over already, but congratulations to all involved with the planning and execution of this event, along with all the great teams competing. I think QCR (it's cool enough to be called by its own acronym now) will become a big draw for many veteran teams from all over for a very long time. You have a fan in Team 48!

[Renee Becker-Blau]

Congrats to 1014 for winning the Chairman's Award, 1741 for winning EI, and Cybertooth for winning Rookie-All Star.

The matches and finals at the regional were fantastic! I was sorry I wasn't able to be there in person.

FRC1014 let us know more about that ibook you're making it sounds really interesting!

[Deetman]

Originally Posted by Littleswimmer14

Congrats to 1014 for winning the Chairman's Award, 1741 for winning EI, and Cybertooth for winning Rookie-All Star.

The matches and finals at the regional were fantastic! I was sorry I wasn't able to be there in person.

FRC1014 let us know more about that ibook you're making it sounds really interesting!

As a 1014 alum with a write up in the iBook you could say I've got a vested interest in it. I'm sure they will make a post about it when it is completed, but if not I'll make sure info gets put up here on ChiefDelphi.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

Did...Did an inbounder just win a regional?

Without those two points, the win would still have gone the same way, but it sure made for some real excitement! I'd actually give partial credit for the win to the other alliance's foul that match.

Originally Posted by dodar

This is not a put down to the number 8 alliance, this is just an unbiased observation. But Queen City is proof that an average alliance that can coordinate a triple balance is deadly.

Perhaps the three teams making it up were average or slightly better, but the alliance itself was obviously superior. Being able to make the triple balance look simple (but still not easy) is not a sign of an average alliance.

Originally Posted by Kyle Love

The inspections for this event were, by far, the most thorough of inspections that I have ever seen. This is both good and bad. I am glad to see all teams passing inspection. This will be a great attribute for those competing in St. Louis.

None of the volunteer robot inspectors had ever inspected a robot before this event. We had help from two previous Lead Robot Inspectors, and some good experience with being inspected in prior years. With very little in the way of preconceived notions from the inspectors, the process ended up being very consistent.

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

None of the volunteer robot inspectors had ever inspected a robot before this event. We had help from two previous Lead Robot Inspectors, and some good experience with being inspected in prior years. With very little in the way of preconceived notions from the inspectors, the process ended up being very consistent.

I'd have to take both hands out of my pockets to count the number of volunteers who came by our pits to see how we were doing. If the inspectors were in fact rookies, they were certainly well-studied and eager.
The two-day field communication fight we had on our hands was correctly diagnosed as corrupt firmware on the router (thanks to 3193 and Ryan Reliford for their advice and support), and the robot performed admirably the last two matches. Too late for the scouts to take notice, but as it turned out we got to watch some amazing teams battle in some astonishing elimination rounds. At the end of each match, I thought, "Wow. That alliance is TOUGH. They'll surely be champions." Then the next match, with different teams, I thought the same thing.

I thought the XU president and Mr. Kamen had wonderful and on-point messages to share with us. As Mr. Miller hinted at a water game, excitement washed over the crowd, but I suspect he was dripping with sarcasm. Koko Ed led a fantastic queuing crew - firm but friendly; quick with a glare and a smile, sometimes simultaneously. The referees were fair and just; there's no doubt that there were some tough and controversial calls to be made, and I thought they did so with grace.

JonDarr is the real deal. I had heard of his prowess, but he absolutely blew me away. His delivery was inspiring, informational, entertaining, and seamless.

Once again, I thought all the awards went to the right people and teams. Congratulations to all our friends who deservedly earned the honors.

Budget willing, we'll definitely be back next year.

[mathking]

Originally Posted by Deetman

As a 1014 alum with a write up in the iBook you could say I've got a vested interest in it. I'm sure they will make a post about it when it is completed, but if not I'll make sure info gets put up here on ChiefDelphi.

Here is the quick synopsis of what we are doing with the iBook. This is our tenth year, so we wanted to do something to commemorate that. Also, in our feedback the last couple of years it was suggested that we needed a more coherent documentation plan going forward. We do a lot of documentation but it has been pretty ad hoc. So we decided to create an iBook (we are a Mac school and iBook author is free software) of the team. We have chapters for each season, another about the Central Ohio Robotics Initiative and a final chapter with profiles of our alumni. We are in the process of getting as many of those alumni to submit profiles as possible. And we are still writing up our summary of this season. In the future we plan to add a chapter to the book each year, and have departing seniors each year submit their profiles. When the season is done we will be publishing it in the iBookstore. In addition we will have a PDF version (which has everything but the videos) available for download to anyone who wants it.

It has been fun to put it together. It also made me realize how much of our history we were in danger of losing. (For example, we have no pictures of the robot from Stack Attack. My son was born at the end of January that year so I had other things on my mind.) Now we are reconstructing that history and getting our alumni to submit profiles so they can serve as role models to the students. Thank you to Deetman, and to Dan Phelps who was a volunteer at QCR and a mentor for 1024, for being among the first alumni to submit profiles. Hopefully we will also be able to include something else we want: Our first "family tree." We were founded by mentors from 128 and 677 (one of them, Dan Kiracofe was also a volunteer at QCR). Like many FRC teams our alumni have gone on to mentor other teams. We want to document all of that as well.

In any event, I will certainly post on CD when we publish and let folks know where they can take a look at the book.

Jimmy I think you did put on an excellent event. In particular your volunteers and inspectors were top notch.

Travis, thanks very much to 48 for doing the webcast. And for getting it posted to YouTube so quickly.

Another personal note, Ryan Reliford it was good to see you again.