July 20th: Sunset Showdown (Day 2)

Today had its ups and downs.

Once again, I had to wake up earlier to be at school so that we could get to the competition on time. Even worse, I only had 3 hours of sleep because I was busy with homework. EVEN EVEN worse, I couldn't "catch any Z's" on the van.

Once we arrived back onto our pit, and our other mentors took a look at our robot, the drive train problem our robot was having had subsided a lot, so we decided to declare the robot to be fixed.

Then, we got some qualification matches in. Pretty good though! Nothing too notable, but we got some good match ups and good cohesion with our alliance partners.

However, our robot started having some problems. For some reason, our robot kept having some intermittent connection issues. It was really hard for us down since there were some confounding issues. First off, our radio just got burned because there were some metal shavings in there. After we replaced it (After searching for a radio 2 times), the issues persisted for some reason. So, the CSA came over and took a look, and we verified all of the connections. The issue also persisted for other teams. We even got to test on the field for our connections dropping, but nothing particular happened. It appears that it may have an issue to do with us using the Cheesy Arena FMS system, and they can't get any help with it from the FIRST HQ since it's unofficial software. 

Our LimeLight mount also got destroyed when we rammed into the opponent stage. At first, it was just stuck inside of it, but then, after being bumped by an opponent robot, our limelight mount definitely got destroyed. However, there were enough surviving pieces for us to piece a decent mount.

After our last match, we managed to enter the mentor matches! Team 7413 was going to participate as an alliance captain, but then their robot had issues that prevented them from participating, so they asked us if we wanted to participate, and we said YES!

Our mentors Ms Flo and Dr Max were involved with the driving aspect of our robot, but Mr K was busy, so he decided to use that as an excuse for not being part of the mentor matches and being the human player. So, a mentor from 7413 stepped up to the position! It was a little funny how little the mentors knew about the robots and the rules. We ended up winning our first match, but we lost our second one.

We're ending the day on a pretty high rank(11!), but we're hoping to perform better. Though rank is prestigious, our robot performance is much more valuable.

Anyways, I signed up for the USS Hornet Sleep over, so after everything ended, the sleep over folks got dinner. We ate it during the mentor matches. It was pretty good, spaghetti, salad, and french toast. We laughed and joked a lot over our dinner. Almost choked!

After the competition had settled and had ceased, the sleep over began. First, we participated in the catapult construction. Then, the boys and I went outside and did a try-not-to-laugh-challenge. I got spit on a couple of times, but it was pretty fun!

After we were done, we got ready for bed. I took a lot longer than others since I did my full night routine, minus the showering part. The bathrooms (restrooms) are really, really peculiar. We were forced to go to bed, the earliest I've ever gone to bed for a long time! It was a little funny hearing some of our friends snore. What really surprised me was Mr K snoring so loudly and with such frequency.

Anyways, goodnight! I must get a good night's rest prior to the conclusion of this event.

Happy Birthday Grandma!

Thanks for reading,
Issac