Wednesday night - inspection !

We made it through hardware and software inspection!!
Calin and Aisha were the only students available when the pits first opened, but they took on the task with gusto. Last year, we had quite a bit of trouble making it through hardware inspection, but this year they breezed right on through. The judges were impressed with the thoroughness of the diagrams computing the amount of various materials (Jon Stinson creations), and he laughed when he saw that the students (Wyatt mostly) counted the number of nuts and screws for the bill of materials. The judges were impressed with the overall level of documentation, and they chocked it up to the fact that we were an all-girl team! (remember only Aisha and Calin were there). I didn't have the courage to correct him ... anyway at that point we WERE an all-girl team! 1.5 hours later, while waiting in line for software inspection, Calin bemoaned the prospect of having to drive the bot in a practice match as part of software inspection, since neither Calin nor Aisha chose to be drivers during our matches. Right at that moment, John and James Mullen showed up (after an 8+ hour drive from Florida) and took over the rest of the inspection. Go Mullens! Unfortunately, we broke a cable to the wiffle shooter during the practice match, and I forgot to pack any spares in the stuff we brought with the bot ...sooo, panic time. I called Jon Stinson (who did have the sense to pack spares) having just landed at the airport with Dylan, we found out they were only a short distance away. In the mean time,we rigged up a cable splice to temporarily shoot wiffles for the last part of inspection, and by the grace of God the splice held long enough to get the third and last inspection sticker. We were IN!
A bit later, Grant Pickett joined the group trying to redesign the shooter cable, and we heard from Thomas Waters and his Dad that they made it safely into Atlanta. We now have a much more robust cable to the wiffle shooter, all our inspection stickers, and the guys in town now out number the gals on the team. Actually ... it was fun to have an all-girls team for a short time. I look forward to having all the students on the team together tomorrow morning. The team will go through judging interviews at 9:30 AM.