Our team (The Bionic Blackhawks) competes this upcoming weekend, in Gull Lake (Week 3). Going into week 2 of the competition season, we were feeling pretty confident. We had plenty of time to practice, we were prepared for the competition, and we were ready for anything…
And then the weather. What a weekend. On Wednesday, a wind storm passed through the greater part of Southeast Michigan. Power outages in the Detroit area, about 20 miles out. The Blackhawk “nest” is situated in that radius, and it certainly wasn’t fun. We’ve had outages before, so when DTE announced everyone would have power by Sunday, we knew to be ready for the worst.
We work out of the old high school, and the keys are all RFID. To enter, we needed a district employee to let us in through the only door we could, in the boiler room. No, we did not generate enough pressure to takeoff… anyway we fumbled around in the cold dark workshop to grab batteries, the practice bot, and everything we needed in preparation for a weekend of practice. Luckily, the Byting Bulldogs (3539, some pretty awesome people) invited us up to their facility in Romeo for drive practice.
Power still out at the shop, we planned to unbag the robot with our allowed time regardless of our dark, cold, lifeless shop. That happened today. We again had to ask a district employee, since we pack to leave on Wednesday. We used 2 of our 6 hours today, by dim lighting and limited tools run by the generator. Because we couldn’t meet Thursday-Sunday, we had a lot of work to do. The new drive station needs to be finished, the team numbers for the stands, the spare parts, the new rope, the batteries (about 10 drill and 16 robot batteries) that all need to be charged, the 3D printer that lost power mid print, and tons of stuff on our bot.
We managed to complete what we needed to do today, today. Lots of work to do tomorrow, and Wednesday we only have time to pack up. Hopefully we have power tomorrow, but it might not be up until we get home from Gull Lake. I know there are other teams in the Detroit area this effected and I hope it hasn’t done as much damage as it has done to our progress. I can say for certain, the Bionic Blackhawks will be ready to compete at Gull Lake this weekend!
