We had two successful demos yesterday. Several team members demonstrated Vortex at GT Solar from 12 to 1. We shared the opportunity with team 1922. Although there was not a large crowd, several employees had the opportunity to drive the robot, and balls were kicked frequently. By the end, Vortex had developed a number of issues, and we took Vortex home for repairs. We also got a very cool tour of the plant and and learned a lot about how material for solar cells is produced.

Later that afternoon other members of the team demonstrated our identical practice robot at the Christian Home Educators of New Hampshire Convention in the Center of New Hampshire exhibition hall from 4:30 to 6:30. Again there was much driving, shooting, and operation by guests, including some very young future FIRSTers. We had a LOT more room there! At one point we remounted the camera above the lid, then drove the robot by camera completely around the exhibition hall, at times collecting a band of small followers like the Pied Piper.

This coming weekend we will be competing at Mayhem in Merrimack, one of our favorite off-season events.

Last Saturday we competed at Beantown Blitz, an offseason tournament sponsored by Northeastern University and team 125, The NUTrons. It was a great event and we had a lot of fun. We decided to let everyone on the team learn a new role, so while our Championship drive team and pit crew scouted, some of the younger members of the team formed two drive teams which alternated during the qualifying matches. After qualifiers we were ranked 12 and were picked by the 2nd seeded team, 2648. Our alliance then selected team 1073, who had not played well in the morning but planned to put their primary drivers in for eliminations. Having won GSR with 1073 it was fun to once again be on an elimination alliance with them. Our more experienced drivers took to the field and we were quite successful. During our first quarterfinal match, the screws holding one of our back wheels together sheared, but we were able to make a quick repair using a wheel taken off of our practice robot. The entire elimination tournament was played without an upset, and we faced the number 1 alliance in the finals. Unfortunately 1073's robot did not function during most of the finals and we lost in 2 matches to 78, 175, and 2423. Congratulations to these exceptional teams. During the awards ceremony we won the "Heckuva Handler" award for our control and accurate kicking of the ball.
We have now brought all of our stuff back and set it up in the garage of one of our coaches since we will be unable to meet at our usual place (another coach's basement) for 2 weeks.

As soon as we returned from Atlanta, the team began planning for a full off-season. The first off-season tournament we attended this year was BattleCry 11 @ WPI on May 7th and 8th. Aiming to give other students experience on the drive team, we fielded two robots, the second of which competed as "1915." After qualification matches ended on Friday, 1519 was seeded 5th and 1915 was seeded 2nd. Technical difficulties in both of 1915's Saturday matches bumped them down to 10th before alliance picking; however, 1519 continued to improve boosting them into 3rd at the end of qualifications. The 2nd seeded team, 1058 The PVC Pirates of Londonderry N.H . who was one of our alliance partners from GSR, picked 1519 and was randomly assigned 3044 Team 0xBE4 from Ballston Spa N.Y. as a second pick. 1915 moved into the 8th seed during selections and picked team 263 Sachem Aftershock from Lake Ronkonkoma N.Y. and was randomly assigned team 3126 FlashPoint from Hollis NH. Both alliances met success in the eighth finals, but faced heavy opposition in the quarter finals. 1519, 1058, and 3044 faced teams 20, 157, and 228 and lost their first match 7 to 8, won their second 8 to 7 before bowing out in their third and final match 14 to 12. 1915's alliance faced off against the strong number 1 seed alliance of teams 78, 40, and 1729. Our alliance fought hard and brought everything we had, winning our first match 13 to 9 before a tied match of 6 to 6. The final match we won again 9 to 7 but after much review by the referees our alliance was assigned penalties bringing the score down to a 7 to 0 loss. We again fought the number 1 seed but mechanical issues that had plagued 1915 in the morning returned and we lost 7 to 6. However, our team and robots performed beyond every expectation and we even were awarded the Awesome Offense Award by our fellow competitors! We also continued to benefit from an electronic scouting system, this time under a new scout lead. Onward to The Beantown Blitz!

Immediately after the team returned from the North Carolina Regional we began planning for the Championships in Atlanta. We found more robust solutions to the problems we encountered at the end of NCR, and wrote up a detailed plan for the 3 hours that 5 people were allowed to work on the robot Wednesday night. We also worked on pre-scouting once we found out that we would compete in the Archimedes division. Among the teams in our division we found that there were 30 regional and district wins. Recognizing how tough the competition would be, we made it our goal to qualify to play in the elimination rounds. With our expectations set appropriately, God blessed us richly! Going 9-1 in qualifications, we seeded 5th in our division out of 84 teams! We then captained the 5th seed alliance, selecting the NC Gears (1918) and More Martians (70) to be our partners. We played against the Beach Bots' alliance (330, 25, 1622) in 3 quarterfinal matches, playing a 15-15 tie before finally losing to them. We continued to watch the Archimedes Division Champions on Einstein where they played well but were defeated by the Curie Division champs. Congratulations to 254, 233, and 3357 for their competence in winning Archimedes, and to the World champions 67, 177, and 294 for their impressive performance on Einstein!

We all made it safely down to North Carolina without any mishaps, though the pickup truck with all of our tools and pit stuff did refuse to shift out of first gear on the way from the hotel to the arena on Thursday morning. Fortunately we were able to load all of the stuff into the other minivans in a matter of minutes and were able to arrive at the tournament with all of our stuff. Upon our arrival we began to implement the changes that we had made since GSR. We put a new kicker on the robot as well as our new 2-stage vacuum and stronger suction cup, and our shepherding system to bring balls to the vacuum better. These changes increased our weight but we still came in under the limit at 119.8! After all of our new changes were on the robot we took it out for several practice matches which went well. In the stands our scouts were also practicing with a new system; we had bought several very small laptops to replace our old paper system. They were set up for scouts to input data about each robot and were connected by a wired network so that a central laptop could compile all of the data for our head scout to analyze. We had not fully tested or practiced with these prior to NCR, so we tried it out on the practice matches so that we would not lose any data from the qualifications on Friday.

On Friday our robot performed well and we won 5 of our 6 matches. During the Friday award ceremony we were thrilled when our coach received the Regional Woodie Flowers Award. Coach Streeter works tirelessly leading and teaching each member of the team and we are glad that this can be recognized in the greater FIRST community! We also won the Delphi Engineering Excellence Award for our robot's design.

Our success continued Saturday morning as we won our final 3 qualification matches. This placed us in 2nd seed and we chose the AIDTEC Trail Blazers (1772), and team Red Alert (1741) to join our alliance. Together we made it to the finals where we faced the 1st seeded alliance composed of 1086, 1902, and 48. We won our 1st match against them 5 to 3, but in the following 2 matches they outscored us and took home the crown. Congratulations to these excellent teams! During the finals our robot mostly played defense by trying to clear balls out of the opponents home zone. One particular time as we were attempting to kick a ball to the far end of the field, we did not take time to aim, and the ball went flying out of the field ... directly into the face of Dean Kamen. This was entirely unintentional, but made for a very interesting moment!

Later as we packed our robot into our crate we realized that we had sustained significant damage that had made it difficult for us to possess and kick balls. In fact our entire frame had shifted half an inch, misaligning our kicker and possessor. Also the lexan plate that supports our suction cup had cracked, allowing it to move further out of position. In addition our vacuum chamber had come apart, causing us to have less suction on the ball. We also noticed that throughout the day our battery box had been bent to the point that it was significantly weakened. We immediately began to figure out how to fix and strengthen these components for the Championship event.

We had a great time in North Carolina and would like to thank NASA for sponsoring us to attend this rookie event, as well as the coordinators who ran it as well as a veteran regional!

Since GSR we have been working hard on several different fronts. We have been fund-raising for our unexpected trip to the Championships in Atlanta, and it is beginning to pay off. Additionally, members of our team have been making presentations to some of our sponsors supporting this effort. We have also been working on our Chairman's presentation and video, as well as improving our team imagery/presence at events.

On the robot itself we have added a more powerful ball vacuum and ball shepherding. The drive team has spent the last two Saturday's in Hooksett at Team 40's field testing and practicing with the new features on our practice 'bot. Thank you, Team 40, for allowing us to use your field!

On the organizational side, our biggest challenge has been how to get our team to two events that are 700 and 1100 miles from our home base. We decided to drive down since it is the least expensive way. Five families and a few other students will be leaving early Wednesday morning for the North Carolina Regional. For Atlanta we will be renting three 15-passenger vans to make the drive in. We can't wait!

Our team is very excited for NCR and is thrilled to be attending the Championship Event for two consecutive years!

Wow! We are now busy resting up from an intense 3 days of the Granite State Regional. It was an amazing experience for all those on the team. Thursday morning we made several additions to our robot to catch it up to our practice 'bot. Throughout Thursday we practiced with and tuned our ball vacuum and kicker so that we were ready for play on Friday. On Friday we won 4 of our 6 matches and ended the day in 18th place with 46 ranking points. During Friday's award ceremony we were honored to receive the Rockwell Automation Innovation in Control award recognizing our effective system to sense and possess balls, and our utilization of it in autonomous mode!

Saturday morning we had 4 more rounds of which we won 2. This put us in 7th place going into the alliance selection process. We were picked by the 2nd seeded The Force Team (1073) who then selected The PVC Pirates (1058) to complete our alliance. Our alliance worked well together as we were each able to effectively play our zone. Our team played defense for most of the eliminations after we had moved the 3 starting balls out of the zone in autonomous. We won the quarter and semi-finals in two matches each.

In the finals we faced the 1st seeded alliance comprised of 1922, 78, and 134. They proved to be fierce competition especially with 78's incredible elevating mechanism which guaranteed their alliance two points at the end of the match. We won the first match decisively but in the second match they earned a tie in the last seconds of the match by scoring one last ball and by 78 hanging. Our opponents won the third match by once again scoring 2 points for hanging at the end. Coming into the 4th match of the finals each alliance had a win and was working their hardest to bring home the gold. In this final match our drivers were able to tenaciously defend such that 134 and 78 were unable to score for almost the entire match. This gave us the last win 11-2, and named our alliance the Granite State Regional Champions for 2010!
At the award ceremony we were very excited when one of our seniors won the new Deans list award. Nathan S. has been on the team for 5 years and has had a huge impact on all of our team members, and we are pleased that his leadership contributions to our team can be recognized in the greater FIRST community.

We are now making preparations to attend the Championship Event in Atlanta, GA, April 15-17 as well as the North Carolina Regional April 1-3, and we are excited to continue to compete with our robot this year.