FIRST Robotics 2026 - The Road Home from State

I'll have more on this down the road a bit.  It takes a while after a watershed sort of event to get perspective.  Did we Win it All and qualify for Worlds?  No, not even close.  But that's OK.

It was in some ways a surreal experience.  We drove down to the venue (outside of Milwaukee) running ahead of a storm front.  A few hours after we drove through some places along the way they were hit hard by tornadoes.  At the event proper all meaningful night before practice and field calibration was cancelled as we huddled in interior hallways while sirens blared.  I blame our friends from the next door town.  Their team name is STORM, which is some sort of acronym.  Their event give away buttons....

Our team of course has had experience with nasty weather curtailing practice time.  It bit us hard at our Lacrosse event, so we were well prepped and did not suffer too much from this latest schedule glitch.  I am however convinced that at some point someone on our team inadvertently offended an Old Gypsy Woman who put a curse on us.  I must relate a few stories along these lines one day...

We played well early.  Our design was simple and rugged.  This is good, we had no serious mechanical issues.  But there were a dozen or robots with seriously better designs, and as the event went on we encountered them with predictable results.

Still, we were an attractive second pick robot, and went into the playoff rounds feeling strong.  First match was against the alliance that eventually did Win it All.  Yikes, they deserve the trip to Houston.  Had we snuck in we'd have been even more outclassed there....

But what is class?  This is an outstanding group of students.  The core of the team are kids we've seen grow up and thrive over the last four to five years.  We'll miss these soon to graduate stars.  They are a big part of our success.  There's some new kids coming up as well.  Another tip of the cap to the students who, once again, were tasked with a complex video project on a tight time line and with insufficient instructions from the event organizers.  It is very satisfying to be able to hold up the USB drive and say: "Here ya go.  3:18 duration, done five hours ahead of deadline".  I'll get it posted here in the days ahead.

And we won the Quality Award.  Basically this is for the team that builds the most robust machine in the competitive field.  I think we mostly got it for the impressive THE MEG bar that anchored the front of our design.  It took some mighty hits as our driver gained confidence.  And throughout the entire event, heck the entire season, we never lost an intake component.

There are some good stories there, stories for another day...

On the way home we stopped for food.  The team wanted McDonalds.  We'd been to a Chick fil A a couple nights before.  Great food, but their Play Land had a sign saying you had to be under a certain height to Play.  McDonalds has a more lenient policy.

FIRST ROBOTICS 2026 - State Tournament

So the robotics team qualified to go to the State Tournament.  The top teams there - I think its 8 - get to go to Worlds at Houston.

It's been a good season.  Since we moved up to being a "two event team" in 2023 we've usually had one good event and one not so good one.  This season, despite some really weird luck with things like weather, we did well at both our events.  Placed 6th at one, 9th at the other.  

In a year where we were starting a major rebuild this is quite good.  Software in particular over performed.  And for once the kids started with a realistic design and just forged ahead building it and gradually optimizing it.  

How this will translate to the next level of competition is unclear.  We will be facing the top teams from all four of the qualifying District events.  I'd say at least ten of them have decidedly "better" robots.  But its more complicated than that.  

Matches are played between "alliances" of three robots on each side.  Sometimes there are a couple of major scoring robots....and a third member of the alliance that shuttles game pieces, plays a bit of defense, etc.  That third robot can be the difference when the Big Boys go head to head.

Well, that's the theory anyway.  

The robot has looked good in its final tune ups.  We discovered for instance that one of our four drive wheels was basically not working for part of the last event.  Now fixed.

If nothing else we'll go, have a good time.  Play Well With Others.

Details when available.

Merrill Wisconsin - an odd gun in the Park

 Seen in a Veteran's Memorial park, Merrill Wisconsin.

It is of course an artillery piece, but what an odd one.  Huge springs!  Let's look for additional clues.  Here's a view that shows more, although with light that is less good.

And some helpful markings around the business end of things:

These read: 7 inch No. 48 Wt. 1689 lbs.  JPF Insp. Watervliet Arsenal 1900.  Elsewhere on the gun it says Model 1892 Bethlehem Steel.  Although that might be the gun carriage, not the gun proper.  Finally, there is a bronze bit that has stamped on it: No. 48 Model of 1895 Watertown Arsenal.  I'm a bit confused now.  So what is this critter?

To start things off, Watertown Arsenal and Watervliet Arsenal are not the same outfit.  The former mostly made gun carriages.  The latter made the guns, and as in this case, the howitzers.  Howitzers are short, stubby, larger caliber weapons designed to fire shorter distances and at very high angles.

So far so good.  But this is a very odd bit of artillery.  Most of what you see in assorted war memorials are either WWII surplus stuff or captured items from I or II.  This is neither.

It appears to be an item of obsolete coastal artillery.  That's a much less common variety of monument, but you can see how they'd get surplused.  I've run into one or two in my travels.  But nothing like this critter.

Even without the dated plaques it has to be 1890's tech.  Earlier artillery pieces would usually have wheels and/or some means to solidly dig into the ground or be welded to the deck of a ship.  Every time you fired it the recoil would move the gun and you'd have to reposition it.  In 1897 that all changed, when the French unveiled their 75mm cannon with hydraulic recoil dampening.  This was the model for all artillery for the next hundred years.

Before that there must have been assorted experiments with springs and similar gadgetry.  I've nosed about here and there in sources and can find nothing specific on this "thing", perhaps the internet will toss me an answer.

Was this some low production run experiment?  Some boondoggle project right around the Spanish American War when somebody in the War Office bought the fantasy that the Spanish fleet might sail into Boston harbor some day?  Who knows.  

Can the Dog actually Read????

I am not particularly impressed with the intellectual prowess of my dog Hank.  But sometimes you have to wonder.  Two images from a recent spring time walk.

OK, not the most flattering image of Hank, but it is what you see from the human end of the leash...

But an example of canine literacy?  I'll spare you the action photo....

Mascots and Me

Because of course there were mascots at the recent robotics tournament.  And I show no signs of growing up...

An Illiterate Dog.

Walks with Hank have frequent interruptions.  Things need to be sniffed.  Things need to be moistened.  The other day we were doing a lap near the high school and came across this Post It note laying on the ground next to, well, to a post.....

It reads "Diuresis" and maybe was from a health class or some such.  Oddly this was one of the few times Hank did not opt to lift a leg.  Even his impressive capacity has limits.  Or maybe he just can't read.

Robotics Again

Off we went to an early April robotics tournament.  It was a nice short drive down to Lacrosse.  Heading south actually, so what's the odds weather would bite us this time?  Pretty good as it happens.

One of those late season storms that barges through and makes a mess happened to arrive at just the wrong time.  As school was cancelled - I'm sure an upcoming four day weekend had nothing to do with this - students were not allowed to travel.  Even though by the early afternoon departure time conditions were just fine.  Bureaucracy at its finest.

So our team had to get up darned early the next day and show up for the event with no practice time, no time to tune up the robot or really to do much else.  And it showed.

Well, sometimes you just get snake bit.  In one match BOTH of our alliance partners tipped over, leaving us in an unenviable 1 v 3 match.  Another time a robot crashed into the protective panel hard enough to knock our control laptop clear off the ledge and disconnect us.  Flukes.  At one point we were down to number 30 out of 34.

But we came back.  Eventually we clawed our way back to 9th place and were in the late event playoff rounds.  Sometimes called Elimination rounds.  And we were.

Oh well.  We did well enough to qualify for the upcoming State Tournament.  We won a Gracious Professionalism Award for an unprecedented third year in a row.  And late in the event we were tapped to put together an event highlights video.  

We ended up having to compress about 8 hours of work into half that time, with the main video editor student yawning and shaking his head.  Hey, he had been up since 4am to get there (see above).

The video turned out well, and a pretty good time was generally had by all.