We tightened up all of the screws and added the winch that we had designed to compensate for the extra torque when the robot is coming back up. It worked beautifully! Now all that was needed was to pass inspection, we would be driving in an hour or so, or so we thought.
We go up to the inspection booth only to find out that our weight was 4 pounds over. Now for one who is not familiar with FRC, 4 pounds may not sound like much but when everything you put on the robot was essential at one time, making the decision what to drill holes in or take off is aggravating. We had already decided to not deploy the minibot simply because we felt it was more important to replace it with the winch. While this may not have been the best game playing strategy, I made that call because it was more important to me that this team had a working big robot.
In the mean time, our team received safety pins, which are the judges way of saying good job. We found some of our old friends like team Spyder, the Holy Cows, and Hilltop's EPIC. They helped us out tremendously, and in turn we were able to help out other teams by lending tools, parts, and knowledge. That is what Dean Kamen and Woodie Flowers refer to when they speak of Coopertition and Gracious Professionalism and some of my students for which this was their first robotics event kept commenting on how nice and awesome everyone was.
I will post updates about the team during the Week in Review and you can follow us on @ChaosVortex. Onto day 2 of 3! I hope the team as an equally awesome day (perhaps a little less stressful)!
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