A lot has been going on in the shop over the past few days. We are hard at work revamping the RSV for St. Louis. A “War Wagon” to hold all of our stuff in the pit is under construction. Tonight a new bridge arm was tested and was able to lower the bridge with ease. We are also working on our fund raising efforts in order to raise the money to go to St. Louis for Championships.

On Monday March 12 there will be a mandatory student run fundraising meeting. Everyone needs to go to help plan how we are going to raise the money to get to St. Louis.

Our Next meeting is tomorrow Saturday March 10 at 9:00 A.M. We are meeting every day for the next few weeks.

Thank you for reading this email,

Gilead

We won the First Robotics Regional Competition! We are planning to go Saint Louis!

Students:  Please let Jane Martin know a definite YES or NO about going to Saint Louis ASAP (by tomorrow March 8th)  for a headcount.

Contact Jane at    smartin1@maine.rr.com    799-3102

Wednesday, April 25th we are leaving and are returning on April 29th which is the week after April vacation.  There will be school missed and students are responsible for the work they missed.

Parents and students – we need you to come to a  meeting to get information and to understand what is involved.  It is too complicated to explain through an email.  Your help is essential!

We are organizing ways to make money. Contributions are gladly accepted!

Jack Loring for Team 58

What a weekend! It started with a wicked snow storm on Wednesday evening that forced us to leave for competition a day early, followed up with a rocking day of practice matches and first day of qualification matches. At the end of that first day we were seeded 6th in the standings, and it kept getting better!

In Friday’s awards ceremony our robot, Betty, received the Creativity Award Sponsored by Xerox for her unique and effective arm which holds a nearly 100% accurate scoring ability for a practically guaranteed 6 points per score attempt. Her autonomous programming which allowed her to score with incredible accuracy during the 15 second hybrid mode was also praised as being instrumental in winning the award. Betty scored 169 out of a possible 180 during the autonomous throughout the competition; this was easily the best autonomous performance out of the 50 robots competing.

But that’s not all!

Our very own Ralph Newell, who has been with the team from the very beginning, won the highest honor possible for an individual to win: the Woodie Flowers Finalist award! It was excellent seeing the man who has been a mentor to us all, who has held the team together through thick and thin, be recognized for everything he gave to us. Congratulations Ralph!

But did we stop there? Oh no we did not!

After finishing the qualification rounds as the 8th seed we were picked by the 1st seeded FIRST Team 131 – CHAOS as an alliance partner. Joined by FIRST Team 1831 The Screaming Eagles of Gilford, NH we went on to work our way through the elimination matches and emerged victorious as champions!

For those of us who want to relive our victory, check out these videos provided by danaphery of YouTube.com

It is the end of another build season and as we prepare for the upcoming competition I would like to pause a moment and recognize everyone who made this build season possible.

First, the students who’s sweat and effort, with maybe a touch of blood here and there, put our robot together.

Next, our coach who sets the course for the team and makes sure that we all are marching in more or less the same direction.

Let us not forget, the mentors and teachers who patiently guided and assisted the students in their efforts, and gifted us with the knowledge we needed to proceed.

Of course there are the parents, who provided transportation to our meetings and food to eat on those long Saturdays.

Last, but not least, Fairchild Semiconductor and all of our sponsors. The funding you provide to our team makes it possible to register for competition, to buy the materials needed to build the robot, to travel to our regional to compete, and to purchase all those thousand and one other little essentials that keep this team running smooth.

Thank you to everyone who participated in this build season! Our work may be far from over with competition looming ever closer, but we can all take a deep breath and say: “Damn, that is one fine ‘bot we built there!”

I look forward to seeing you all at competition!

See our 2012 robot ‘Betty’ in action on our practice court.

Visit YouTube to see the full video and other videos posted by the RiotCrew.