[CRUSH-all] great trip to AZ Regional, meetings schedule for coming weeks

[Bill Bennett]

Hi all

We had a great trip to the FIRST Arizona Regional. We spent a long day on Thursday, the practice day, working out problems with Kareem, which were numerous. But by the end of that long day, he was ready to play. We played very well Friday, ending with a 5 win/2 loss/0 tie record. Saturday we also played well, but our opposing alliances played better and we lost both of those matches, ending with a 5/4/0 record. Still, we were rank 20 out of 46, and 24 teams play in the elimination rounds, so we were confident we'd be picked to play by one of the top 8 teams. Unfortunately that didn't happen. Nevertheless, we should all be very happy about Kareem's performance this year, and our team's ability to keep him playing well in every game. 

On to Las Vegas! 

In just over two weeks, on March 29, the team travels again to compete in the Las Vegas Regional. I need to firm up VERY SOON who is going and who is not so, and who is traveling in the van, so we can get the room and transportation figured out. So I will be nagging you this week to commit to your plans. 

A few students have enough remaining CRUSH $ to pay completely for Las Vegas, some have enough for partial payment, and some have used it all up. I'll provide an exact number later, but for planning purposes, it will cost approximately $250 per person if riding in the van, maybe $40 less if driving yourself. If you went to Phoenix, you used up 103 CRUSH hours. $250 at 1.75/hour will require 143 additional CRUSH hours. These are all estimates to help you decide if you're coming or not, and how. 

There is one more team travel opportunity this year, to San Diego for "Battle at the Border", an informal competition in hosted by San Diego teams. It's much more relaxed and much cheaper than the FIRST competitions, so if you're short on CRUSH hours or real dollars, you can consider skipping Las Vegas and still have a trip with the team to San Diego in May. Also, by then, school will be out and grades/homework won't be an issue. 

Back to Las Vegas preparation: we have some work to do. There is a proposal to redesign the collector to be a conveyor belt system. This is a good idea, but we'll need a design that can fit in the weight budget, and can be built on the fly at the competition. We also need to restock and improve the organization of our travel kit. And finally, probably most importantly, we need to get more function in our autonomous modes. We'll fit FWIPER with a 2006 camera system and get that going.

Our meeting schedule to get all this done will be Tuesday and Thursday after school, like the old schedule, for the next two weeks. If we decide we need to, we'll augment this with Saturday or Sunday work. The week of travel, we'll pack on Tuesday and leave Wednesday morning. 

So team, one great even is behind us, another lies just around the corner. Let's pull together and get 'er done!

Bill 
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