Yeah, we ended up getting stuck at the top of the ramp, teetering in just the right way so no wheels touched. We warned our alliance that this was one of our weaknesses when we had a strategy meeting and said it very rarely happened, so lo and behold we jinxed ourselves and it happened. The opposing alliance did an excellent job at blocking our partner and not going near us. Good job and congrats to the winning alliance and all the other great alliances.
Ah, its all clear now. Thanks for the explanation. Good luck to 308 in the future.
*Originally posted by Chris Hibner *
**Joel,First off, good luck at Clarkson. I shook hands with you and exchanged words after you guys beat us in the 3rd match of the 2-out-of-3 for the 2002 Championship at EPCOT (at least, I’m pretty sure that was you, but it all moved so fast that I might be wrong). That was an exciting elimination. You seemed very nice so good luck to you.
As someone stated previously, 25 was teetering. We sat ourselves out of that match but I was standing behind the tape behind our drivers station. It appeared that 469 started to move toward 25 to block them when we both realized that they were stuck there. Just to be sure, I yelled to our alliance to be sure not to touch them and to keep 68 from helping them out. 27 did a GREAT job of blocking 68 at the bottom of the ramp. Our entire alliance strategy (and 308’s team strategy since the beginning of the year) was to block teams at the bottom of the ramp.
As for our autonomous: we have a guidance system on board that helps to keep us on track. In the 3rd match of the finals agains the Martians, they spun us coming over the top, but we spun back around and got most of the bins to our side. That helped a lot.
As for the delay thing in auto mode - that is our autonomous mode shifting gears. We have impact detection in autonomous mode. If our guidance system senses an impact, we shift into low gear and then start back on course. It usually takes us about a second to recognize the impact and then another second to shift gears - then we start moving again and we’re generally able to push through anyone else in autonomous mode (it worked for us a few times in the eliminations at the IRI).
As for picking alliance members - it was more good scouting and relationship rather than luck. 469 had problems all day so no one else seemed to want to pick them. We know them very well, so we asked them that once they fixed their machine, they should come near our pit and bang their robot around to demonstrate that it would be okay. They did that to our satisfaction so we picked them. When our 2nd pick came around and they were still available, I was overjoyed. I said out loud, “this is going to be GREAT”. A couple of notable FIRST mentors looked at me and asked, “who are you going to pick”? I said, “469”. They looked at me like, “what in God’s name are you thinking?” The crowed also appeared surprised when we picked them. Oh well, it was our gain.
-Chris **
why couldn’t i be there??? man… good job to everyone.
::sigh::
::sits depressed because i missed iri and have only one week here:: 
*Originally posted by weedie *
Hmm… I wonder how much the drivers affected the outcome? Of the ‘high ranked’ teams from this year, how many actually used their '03 drivers? or were in the process of training?
Wildstang used rookie drivers because our regular drive team graduated and we wanted to get potential drivers for next year some practice & experience driving in a real competition. Since they weren’t as polished as Allen & Dan, our regular drivers, they made some mistakes and they weren’t as good at defending the ramp. Because of the inexperience and a little bad luck we were actually in last place right before our 2nd to last match, but most of us didn’t care, we were just enjoying the competition. All that being said, our new drivers did a wonderful job and made noticable improvements from their first to last match.
Same way for us (G-Force 535), we had a new driver and a human player that had never even seen a match before…and besides the facts that our robot hadnt been touched in weeks before the competetion, we had no autonomous mode (no programmer), and we were missing some parts. Major problems, if you ask me…