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FIRST Robotics Competition Team 238
2018 November/December Newsletter & DESTINATION: DEEP SPACE Kickoff
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The end of 2018 was busy with training and preparation for the upcoming FIRST Robotics Competition season for DESTINATION: DEEP SPACE. We competed in our final FIRST POWER UP competition, began our major travel fundraiser and trained for kickoff strategy sessions and shop machines and tools. We are ready to take off for DESTINATION: DEEP SPACE!
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Shorty's Fundraiser
Last month, Shorty’s Mexican Roadhouse helped us raise travel funds by giving our team 10% of their proceeds for the day. Thank you, Shorty’s, for supporting our team!
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Battle of the Bay
Battle of the Bay is an offseason event hosted by Team 319 Big Bad Bob. This was the 5th year of the event and our 4th time attending.
This year, we had some of our freshmen try out drive team and human player during the qualification matches so they could see how it worked. When it came to elimination rounds, however, we had our experienced drive team take over so they had a chance to compete and give our team the best shot at winning. Everyone's contributions put our team through the competition with eight wins and only four lost matches.
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We made it to the final round of matches, but we had technical difficulties and our robot did not perform as intended. We still landed second place out of the whole competition along with 1519 Mechanical Mayhem and 4546 Shockwave with the red alliance (131 C.H.A.O.S., 4564 Orange Chaos, and 213 Dirty Birds) taking the lead.
During our first match, the bracket on our robot broke. We fixed it by using a smaller bracket. Also during finals, our drive train broke. We played on without fixing it because it wasn’t detrimental to our strategy. Thank you 319 for a great event!
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Booster Club Craft Fair Setup
Every year, in return for the school booster club’s continued support, the team volunteers to help set up the tables for their annual craft fair.
Using a new layout that our CAD team made, we were more organized this year. Splitting into two groups, one for the main gym and other for the mini gym, we laid mats over the floors and marked where the tables went.
As this was the first time we were in charge of setup, we were unaware of how many mats were necessary to completely cover the gym floors. After realizing our mistake, we had to rework the entire setup, but because we were well organized it went quickly.
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Mock Kickoff
Mock kickoff is where we watch a kickoff animation from a previous year and see what objectives the robot had to achieve, how difficult each task was, and what we would design if that was our game. This exercise is helpful for teaching new students, and refreshing veteran students, on the process for assessing a game and planning our strategy.
We learned how to tell the difficulty of each objective and how long it took to do those tasks during autonomous and in the tele-operated period. This information will help us decide what design features to focus on for our robot when we receive our new challenge this weekend.
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Ugly Sweater Run
The Manchester Animal Shelter’s Ugly Sweater Run took place on Saturday, December 15th. A handful of students helped direct people in the parking lot up until the race started at 9:00 a.m. We had a good time seeing the dogs and helping the shelter for this fundraiser.
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Team Social Media
We want our students to become more involved with our social media so at Battle of the Bay, our students ran the team Snapchat and Instagram. They went down into the pits, behind the driver station, and next to the field to take photos and document our experience at the event. We hope to have our students run our social media at future events.
Prize Calendars
Prize calendars are our annual individual fundraiser. Each student on the team is required to sell a minimum of five calendars, but proceeds from extra sales go toward reducing their travel costs.
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CAD Projects
During the month of November, our CAD team learned more about how to use the program. After finishing the CAD layout for the Craft Fair, the team started working on, and taking measurements for, a ramp for the trailer. This will make it easier to load our supplies for events.
Kickoff Prep
In order to prepare for the new season we have been cleaning and organizing our shop, taking inventory of our supplies and tools. We are excited and ready for the kickoff of the new season.
Shop Training
The mentors conducted a training night in our shop for all students to learn how to use the mill, the drill press, the bandsaws and basic hand tools.
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Sponsor Spotlight: BOSCH
Bosch has been a sponsor of 238 since the 2015-2016 season. As a Crusader Level sponsor, Bosch’s support has enabled the team to develop in a variety of areas including tool and machine improvement, investment in our business and marketing strategies, and robot construction. Our local Bosch facility, Bosch Thermotechnology, has hosted the team for various presentations, robot demonstrations, and Bosch events. Bosch employees also help mentor the team. Thank you Bosch!
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FIRST Robotics Competition Kickoff
The kickoff for this season and our new game DESTINATION: DEEP SPACE is on Saturday, January 5th. The team will be attending the kickoff event at SNHU and we can’t wait to see our new challenge and the playing field. Follow along at https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc/game-and-season or https://info.firstinspires.org/frc-season-kickoff
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January 5th:
FIRST Robotics Competition Kickoff
SNHU
January 10th:
Parent Group Meeting
February 19th:
Stop Build Day
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March 16th & 17th:
North Shore District Event
Reading Memorial High School
March 30th & 31st:
UNH District Event
University of NH, Durham
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