Hadn’t seen a thread about GKC yet this year and thought I would get one started. We are so excited about competing next weekend and just wanted to open it up for discussion!
Some questions to get things started:
How is everybody’s robot coming along?
How has lack of bag n’ tag changed build season for your team?
Which teams are you most excited to see?
Tall or short bot?
Robot weight?
Fun jokes?
Interesting stories from build season?
Who’s gonna win?
Can’t wait (I think?)! Robot looking to be ready for action next week. This is the first time since I joined in 2017 that we have a completed robot after 6 weeks, likely due to the fact that we don’t have to make a practice bot this year. Our robot is short, weighs about 100 pounds and the intake bands are misaligned within a minute of practice so we have got to figure that one out… Can’t wait to see what 1986 pulled off as usual, but am anxious for what 525, 4499, 3928, 1987, 1939, 4522, 5801, 6886, 1806 and 1710 have produced as well. As this is a week 1, I really can’t pick a winner yet, give me till next Saturday at noon for that one.
Should be a blast for what could be my last FRC competition! Good luck and can’t wait to see you all there!
This is our first year to compete in a week 1 event and it has proven to be a challenge. We are finishing a few tweaks to our robot and are practicing driving this weekend. Lack of bag this year wasn’t a huge factor as the week 1 ended up being our goal. We built a short, shooter bot that is under 120 pounds. Fun story. We were facing a problem with the bot and the team came up with so many convoluted, time intensive, difficult to implement fixes. The voice of reason from the back of the crowd piped up “cut the belt”. We all were perplexed, the voice again said “Cut the belt”. So, we cut the belt. Problem solved and the device works like a champ now. Thank you Mark for keeping us on track.
We are really excited to see what everyone built for the tasks this year and we can’t wait to take the floor with all the teams at GKC! So many creative and great teams at the competition we aren’t calling a winner now.
Side note, huge shout out to 1723 for coming to our rescue today. We ran out of pool noodles and needed red bumpers, one phone call later we are in business. Thank you FIRST Bots of Independence 1723 for coming through for us!
Hi, hard to believe it is this week! It did sneak up, don’t feel like there was extra time. Spending this last week getting everything into it’s best shape and hopefully a bit more practice before Friday.
We revealed the robot, but still have a few touches left. We had a good time at week zero (thanks to 1730, 1986, and other volunteers), but found some issues to work out too. We are trying to stop changes in the next day, so we can be ready.
There are 26 teams that played in playoff rounds last year, and 13 teams that finished top 10 at a regional including 3 that finished 1st (1986, 3284, and 5801). So it will be a challenge. I’m looking forward to seeing who rises among the mid-level teams and what the previous year’s top teams bring to this game.
I’ve started trying to gather the various teams competing, and whether there are pictures/videos of their 2020 robot. Along with the finishing place in 2019 (and playoff teams), I have the link here and anyone is welcome to add links to teams videos/pictures: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FT0whxC60IVJteVJicw6S93JeEa84JNu8ro3sDUWxcY/edit?usp=sharing
Were looking forward to it! We’re bringing the most ambitious robot we’ve ever built - finally having some machining capabilities and dedicated programmers opens up a world of possibilities. Safe travels. everyone, and we’ll see you soon!
We went with a more ambitious design this year as well and we’re hoping that it pays off. We’ve got a good senior group this year that was ambitious. Our programmers described this bot as about 5 times more complex than last year’s bot. Not sure if that is a good or bad thing yet, but I think it is going to go well. I’m glad we had extra time to work, but there are definitely aspects of stop build day that I miss and that help avoid burn out. We learned a LOT from the LSR7 scrimmage and were able to make some important tweaks and improvements (Thanks 1730, 1986, and 1987!). We went with a tall bot and have been fighting to get it under weight without making any major sacrifices.
We’re excited to see everyone and how they have addressed the challenges of the game. The dynamic of having so many powerhouse teams at a small regional like this is going to be very interesting for sure.
Less than 48 hours to go!!!
We are looking forward to the event, and seeing some old friends. Our lead designer and team founder graduated last year and is attending MO S&T. Our remaining team is very young. We have 0 seniors on the team and only 1 junior.
Robot is done but not as tuned, or had as much drive practice as we would like. We are running swerve for the first time this year, and the only saving grace is that our driver/programmer had a lot of time working with it during the fall.
We wound up going with a short bot, and are for the first time ever we are not fighting weight issues. Looks to be around 96 pounds.
The running joke on the team is to name the bot JarJar, as plans which seemed like a good idea in planning may not work out as well as hoped, and it is character/bot that shouldn’t be mentioned again. Hopefully things will work as planned this weekend.
Team Rocket always names the 'bot after specific Pokemon.
I’ve told them we need to just name it Magikarp every year until it evolves into something good.
LOL, the joke on 1775 was to give our robot the name GNK Power Droid: a power cell delivery machine. If it does anything more than deliver power cells, then it’s a massive success!
A very big thank you to all the teams that attended the GKC regional this past week. This was our first time ever hosting and FRC event and I think that it went very well, due in large part to all the volunteers that came out to help make this event the success that it was. I can say with absolute certainty that I had not idea how much work went into running a full regional, and to say that the week was exhausting, between it being a week 1, hosting, and competing, would be a ginormous understatement.
I hope that all the teams that did attended had a great time. If you came to the event I would please, please fill out the survey that first sends out we would greatly appreciate your feedback on how the event went, and on somethings that we could do better in the future if we are lucky enough to ever host an event like this in the future.
Big thank you to our alliance partners, our Captain 5801 CTC Inspire and our other partner 1785 Blue Springs Robocats. We had a great run in playoffs and we look forward to seeing you guys again at future events.
The finals at GKC were very exciting! Final Match 3 was super exciting to watch. I was most excited to see what wheels everyone ended up using, and it seems like a lot less pneumatic wheels were there than I expected despite how many teams still went over the rendezvous point.
I think Lee’s Summit North and 1987 did a great job hosting the regional, and it seems like a great spot to host! It had a lot of room, nothing was too far from everything else. The locations of where pits, practice field, field was great. I really liked the solution for protecting the main gym floor as opposed to a plastic or carpet.
I can only recall one time watching someone spin the color wheel not in a practice match, so I’m curious to see if that changes over the weeks. I would also like to see more consistency with the ruling of tech fouls. The magic smoke on 1939’s bot in our match with them was exciting and smelled awful at the same time 
It was also great to partner with 2723 and 1108 for Playoffs. They’re always such great teams to partner with and strategize with!
On a less formal note…Did they not have the GKC Regional pins ready this year? I saw they had the icon printed on volunteer badges but I didn’t see anyone with them physically. (I collect pins, especially FIRST pins with love) Can’t wait to see some of the same teams at Heartland in a few weeks!
The GKC pins that they normally have are actually stuck in China right now, I believe due to the virus outbreak and the quarantine efforts going on, but I don’t know if that’s the specific reason or not.
That’s unfortunate to hear, I assumed there was a delay on them somehow since this is the first time I’ve seen a Week 1 regional in KC. As long as they come in some time I’m not too concerned
You just need to go a bit further back 
GKC was Week 1 in 2012, 2010, and 2009.
The pins are stuck in China due to the quarantine. They were ordered with plenty of lead time, but no one predicted there would be such a big quarantine.
We really enjoyed competing at GKC this year. 1987 did a great job hosting along with the planning committee and all the volunteers.
Special thanks to 4522 letting us borrow a limelight after we discovered ours had a connection problem. We learned a lot, especially the need to program a way to shoot manually if your vision fails. Our driver got a lot of unexpected experience in playing defense with our swerve bot, as a result of our poor contingency planning.
Looking forward to seeing many of these same teams Week 4 at Heartland.
This event was really smooth for a new host/venue. My congratulations to everyone involved in making the logistics work, and I hope you all have time to get some naps in and rest up a bit.
Many thanks to 1987 for the programming help – our programmers learned a lot, and our robot is in much better shape thanks to your assistance.
This is the first event that I was able to make time to go to the SWE luncheon, and I had a really good time at that. Thanks to SWE for hosting and planning it.
We can laugh about it now because we were able to fix it before the next match, but it was very stressful in the moment. A power cell had jammed in our indexer in the worst possible spot, and we burned up a motor trying to force it.
All of our teams got through inspection by the end of practice day, and generally a lot earlier in practice day than I’m used to seeing in this area. It was a lot of fun to watch the level of play improve as the event continued. Those were some of the closest elimination matches I’ve ever seen. Well done everyone, and for those who are playing again this season, good luck!
Our team very much enjoyed the venue and liked the layout of the complex. The carpet in the pits was kinda odd but not unwelcome. I believed it cut down on some of the noise. The school’s location to near by stores and restaurants was nice. The parking situation was also very roomy and didn’t have the normal congestion most places do. Honestly we can’t complain (only minor issues)
That all being said we do have some changes that wouldn’t be bad. Where our pit was we had the speaker for the pit admin right behind us. Every time there was an announcement we had to plug our ears and stop talking it was so loud. Just moving the speaker up higher would have solved the problem.
Also the screen for the match in the arena was obscured by the lights gantry. The only way we could see who won was when the animation of the shield came up and we saw the corresponding color flash. Our scouters didn’t like it much however they just had to get closer to the ground and see.
Also the screen for the match in the arena was obscured by the lights gantry. The only way we could see who won was when the animation of the shield came up and we saw the corresponding color flash. Our scouters didn’t like it much however they just had to get closer to the ground and see.
We heard this from a number of teams and looked at it Saturday night. Sunday morning, we made changes to the setup: raised the lighting truss and moved the scoring to the bottom of the screen. This seemed to look better to us from the majority of the stands, but it did make it hard to see the scores in real time for those sitting in the first few rows of seats. Given how tall the Shield Generator is and that we couldn’t raise the screen any higher (due to basketball goals), we tried to make it work for as many people in the stands as we could. We also made notes for the next events (Heartland and Central MO) and next year
Don’t be discouraged. We loved the event. It was just a minor thing. All the matches were on time and there were no major delays. The staff was pleasant and very helpful. The field was in great condition and well maintained. The sound was great and loud.
Oh, I’m not discouraged! Just wanted to let you know that we heard the complaints and did everything in our power to make it better.