4/19/2009 – World Champs!  (videos below)

World Championships were awesome.  In all there were 533 teams/robots from 28 countries competing in FLL, FTC, and FRC.  In FTC, 100 teams competed in two divisions, Edison and Franklin.  We competed in Edison.  We got there Wednesday April 15th and got signed in and inspected with no problems.  Our judging time was first thing Thursday morning.  We did our best presentation yet at judging.  The judges seemed to really like us.  When the robot competition started, we breezed right through the first three matches then we had a match with a dead robot and ours not performing well and lost.  Friday morning was looking bright with two final seeding matches that we should be able to win.  The first was with team 1902 Exploding Bacon.  We were both ranked about tenth at the time.  We both had good autonomous routines and our opponents hadn’t done much in autonomous.  Double disaster again, our robot slid off the side of the ramp ruining our autonomous, but then Exploding Bacon’s autonomous unexpectedly reversed direction and crashed into us.  No autonomous score.  Once in teleop, before we know what happened, our opponents had more pucks in the goal than we did and we lost.  At this point it looked like we ruined both ours and Exploding Bacons chances for getting into the tournament!  Fortunately, the team we won with in Tennessee was ranked third in our division.  After one of our students talked with team 679 RoboRaiders, they picked us as their second pick.  Thanks for having faith in us RoboRaiders!  Well, everything from there went well until our alliance captain RoboRaiders started having autonomous problems.  We won Edison division, but in the finals with the Franklin division winners, RoboRaiders robot ran the wrong way in autonomous and crashed into our robot and neither scored in autonomous.  We lost that match.  In a very courageous move, RoboRaiders told us and their first pick team 2820 Longhorn Robotics from Calgary, Alberta, Canada that we would have to finish the tournament by ourselves.  Well, we stepped up to the task with good autonomous scoring and skillful defense of the lead we obtained in autonomous to take the final two matches of three to win the World FTC Championship.  What an experience.  World Champs! 

3/5/2009 – We’re In!

Yesterday our mentor received an e-mail inviting us to participate in the FIRST World Championship Tournament as a winning alliance first pick team.  Now we've got to make our autonomous better!

2/14/2009 – We Rocked Tennessee

The Tennessee tournament got off to a slow start.  Due to several organizational problems with the host facility, matches and judging got started a couple of hours late.  We left our NXT charger plugged in the wall at home.  Thanks to several teams that allowed us to borrow their charger to keep our NXT up.  We were schedule to be in the first match and first to be judged which due to the delays started at the same time.  We went to judging and they skipped the first match waiting on us.  We ran from judging to the match to get there just in time to set our robot on the game court and start.  Just one problem, we forgot to turn on our main battery!  Needless to say, we lost that match which was the only seeding match we lost.  From there it was soothe sailing and we ended up ranked 5th.  Due to the delays the tournament was shortened from an eight alliance tournament to four alliances.  We accepted as the first pick of the number one seed team 679 RoboRaiders from Sandy Springs, Georgia who then picked team 675 GSMST Alpha for their third alliance partner.  Our alliance had some close calls in the tournament but were able win the tournament.  We also won the Innovate Award for our extensive use of sensors to guide our robot during autonomous mode.  We are now looking forward to an invitation to compete at the FIRST World Championships in Atlanta, Georgia April 15-17, 2009.

2/5/09 - Keeping Our Momentum

We got back to school this week after being out one week.  All our schools have power but a lot less trees.  Some schools in the northern part of the state still don't have power to all schools.  Eight days after the ice storm many people still don’t have power and our mentor Mr. Marts is one of them.  Regardless of the damage from the ice storm, our practices have started again and we are continuing to make progress.  We are working on improving our driving skills and enhancing our autonomous modes.  We are keeping up with the Engineering Notebook and will soon be finalizing the website.  We were ready for Arlington, but the extra time is helping us get even more prepared for competition in Tennessee.  Tennessee...Look Out!

1/27/09 - Ice Storm Conflict 

On Tuesday, January 27th Mountain Home was hit with a terrible ice storm with approximately two inches of ice covering everything.  That night hundreds and hundreds of huge limbs fell and many trees were uprooted.  At one point they estimated over ten trees fell per/minute. This caused power lines to fall leaving over 40,000 without power. Due to the widespread power outages all local schools were out for a full week.  This caused us to miss three days of practice.  The storm also caused us to cancel our trip to compete in Arlington, Texas.  We are now headed to compete in Cookeville, Tennessee on Saturday, February 14th.  On the positive side, deciding to compete in Tennessee has allowed us more time to practice (if we ever get back to shool).

1/8/09 - Starting Over!

We have taken our robot completely apart. We are now building a new robot which we hope will be more efficient for many reasons. One reason is because we will be able to fit under the ramps. We are putting dualies on our robot. They allow our robot to move over our obstacle easier. They also allow us to go up our ramp better. Our robot is now smaller and when we removed our squirrel cage that freed up a lot of room. Now that we are more familiar with the tools and parts to use. There are some cons to taking our robot apart. We only have less than 1 week to finish our robot, then we are leaving 1 week for driving.

11/14/08 Eureka Springs Visit