Well… it was the day of the 2006 Fairport, New York 4th of July parade, the forcast the night before said that we were in for a thunderstorm. Me and the club president made the decision to pull through mainly because it wasn't raining at all, but to be on the safe side the robot was wraped up completely in plastic as well as the boom box from our team's transport cart.
When we arrived at our placement number most of the team was sitting around. So I got out of the suburban and set up the parade banner and when I turned around the team was unwraping the robot as if it was a Christmas present. Moments later it started raining harder so the team put the umbrella you see in the picture on top of the robot for protection. We evantually moved the robot off of the float so we could get ready to drive it. Suddenly it started raining cats and dogs, we had members running to the suburban to set a tarp up over the float. And members shielding the robot with their bodies from the rain.
We then moved the robot onto the float and dried it off with towels from a car wash fundraiser we held earlier this year. Everyone except 2 members ended up getting soaked from all the rain. About 10 minutes into the parade we decided to pull the robot out of the float and drive it the rest of the parade distance. The good news is that the robot worked, and drove the full 5 mile route with only a little damage that was not caused by the rain.
Oh boy… you guys got lucky on that one. I wouldn’t have even taken it wrapped in plastic. But that’s me and I don’t like to let 6 weeks go down the drain. Carpe Diem. Nice robot by the way. Looks like a nice little bot.
Our mentors decided to drill holes in the top of our crate to hang things from it in transit…we forgot that we drilled said holes when we recived the crate back home and let it sit in the rain for a few days…when we opened it up the electronics box was filled w/ water…but it still worked thats the best part…altho the chain was alittle rusted
Surprisingly, our robot handled the rain pretty well.
On the way to Battlecry this year, we were going to put the robot under the coach bus. Unfortunately, this coach bus was about 4" not deep enough underneath to fit the robot. We had to stick it in the back of a mentor’s pickup truck. Double unfortunately, it was raining. We covered the robot with a tarp. Triple unfortunately, all this extra set up made us late. The robot beat the team to WPI, and team 40 helped our mentor unload the robot, because we were in the next match with team 40. They lent us a battery, and we dried the robot off with paper towels and put it on the field sans bumpers or dashboard.
Haha, this reminds me of the July 4th parade we were in last year. We had to first cover the float the day before because it poured like crazy. Then we got to teh parad starting site in teh morning and it began to rain so we had to use our supernatural magic powers to find tarps to cover up the robots so that we could run them later on when it wasn’t raining. Too bad our float was made out of paper…
Great story, I’m not sure I could justify putting a robot out in conditions like that. Luckily the kids probably wouldn’t listen & would still take it out.
Looking into your picture, that doesn’t look like a 578 poof ball sticking out of the end of your bot.
Well during our 4-H Parade in Huntington, we had a huge down pour basically all the way through the parade. The rain started about 1/8 of the way through the parade. We got the robots turned off and covered them with tarps along with out controllers, the cart which has electronics on it, our sound amp and speakers. But however the radio modem on one of our OI’s did not last but everything else works fine after drying out for a week. Oh and our shirts which were blue in the beginning got so wet they by the end they were black…
So most people did not get to see the robots but they still received wet candy…
Talk to just about any team & they will have balls from some other team. I know we have balls from a few different teams. I think we have almost as many as we bought. I look at like the give a penny take a penny tray, it all balances out in the end.
