Day One

We had a hectic morning of sightseeing, but it was worth it. We went to see the St. Louis Basilica which has amazing mosaics, easily rivaling anything we've seen in Europe.

Then, we were off to the tournament at 12 noon. We had to set up our pit area and try to get everything organized. The team practiced for their judging interview, had a quick snack and then it was off to the interview. It seemed to go well, but they didn't ask many questions.

Next up, was hardware inspection. The official there was a lot of fun and had the team laughing throughout the inspection. He loved our Bill of Materials and would like to see it in the game manual for next year.

After that, it was software and field inspections. We had to make some minor changes to the Samanth program on our brick. Overall, the three inspections went quickly and our robot is approved to play in the matches tomorrow!

Some teams, spend a lot of time at a tournament, testing and making changes to their robot. Usually, our team doesn't want to make a lot last minute changes to the robot. But Devin did want to try some modifications to the scoring cup.

All of a sudden, it was 5:30 and the pit was closing so that everyone could go to the FTC Opening Ceremonies at 6pm. I wasn't sure how they would get everyone in, but there was room for over 1,000 people. A few ended up standing at the back of the room.

That night, we went out for dinner with a bunch of teams from around the Pacific Nortwest. Our reservation was for 65 people, but we reduced it to 50 when we thought one team wouldn't make it. Then they showed up, and some of the college team for Aerial Robotics came too!

We ended up with over 70 people at dinner. Fortunately, the Old Spaghetti Factory was great about the ever changing number of guests.

Here's Katherine having dinner with team members from Swerve, RCXRM and Cyber Knights.

Now, it's 11pm and time for bed. The pits open at 7:15 tomorrow morning!

Continue reading  Thursday, Day Two of the tournament.