Float-ing On Air

Today was, yet again, spent preparing for the Homecoming Parade. The parade is Saturday at Noon on Broadway in Alexandria, MN. Come check it out!! The team accomplished so much today!! Wow! Click on any picture to see a large version.

As usual, the team met in Bydlon's room to begin. We discussed our ideas for a West Central MN FRC Get Together. We would like to host many of our other regional teams to gain more knowledge and make some bonds with teams close by. Then everyone learned their jobs for the day.

Molly and Bryce went to Menard's to buy plywood for the "stage" on our float. Rover will be on the float with Molly and we want everyone to see Rover so we made a stage out of chip board and palettes. Brandon and Bryce worked on making the whole stage. It looks great! Molly and Bryce also picked up some steel rod to make a harness for our drive station. Molly took it over to Alex Tech and they made the steel rods into mounting brackets. Look Ma, NO HANDS!

Allen was alone today programming but made a TON of progress. Gabe brought in an XBox controller for Allen to start programming with. It will replace the joysticks we have used in the past. Allen also worked on the programming for Murphy (Rover programming is complete in JAVA). He got the drive train working and the fly wheel. Spike relays were causing problems so Bydlon switched the conveyor into a Victor controller. And it worked! Allen even got the fly wheel and conveyor speed to be adjustable. WOW! Great job Allen!

Kacy, Alicia, Taylor, Gabe, Vincent, and Carson worked insanely hard on getting the trailer transformed into a float for the parade. THEY DID SUCH AN AWESOME JOB! It is incredibly tedious work putting all the tissue paper into the chicken wire and streamers on the trailer. But they had a positive attitude and worked hard. Bydlon tried to help with the tissue paper but didn't do a very good job. Oops. The decorations look soooo good! All that's left is the other side of the trailer and we are done. Kacy worked on the back ramp part of the trailer. It looks great too!

Eddie and Jesse worked on making Rover all pretty. They hid the nasty wires that were cluttered all over the top of it. Black wire covers are awesome.

The team worked so hard today and did such a fantastic job. Our float is going to kick everyone else's float out of the water!