Darling Doubloon, Ghost Writer

The Scalawags earn money by having team carwashes and can drives. From the can drives we have earned $900 since April, which is enough for about five kids to go out of town for a weekend of competition. The car washes have been successful, and we really enjoy seeing the public and telling them what we do. Afterward, we usually get otter pops or ice cream, and some times even lemonade from our sponsor, North Santiam Coffee Company! We always appreciate the parents helping. We didn’t schedule a carwash for July, so there will probably be one in August.

Darlin’ Doubloon, Ghostwriter

The last few weeks we have been helping at summer school at the LHS and 7 oak. At seven oak we showed them how we built Percy. At 7 oak we let the kids drive Percy and show them how the t-shirt cannon works with a dish towel. At LHS we focused on building hardware and writing code for VEX robots in Mr. Helland’s robotics class. Scalawags’ team members worked side by side with the kids through all of these things.

Like all FIRST teams everywhere, the Scalawags are just waiting until we can be together again. We really miss our shop, our time together, and our robots. The team also wants to thank our sponsors for their continued support – several have reached out to us in our time of quarantine and had words of wisdom and comfort.

We are trying to keep things moving through virtual meetings and projects we can all work on at home like updating the Business Plan, designing a float for this summer’s Strawberry Festival Parade, and coming up with socially distant fundraising ideas. Stay tuned for lots of cool stuff, just as soon as we can leave the house safely!

The Scalawags are still slaving away on their latest masterpiece. Annie Snoakley has been a demanding mistress, but the team feels like they are finally getting a handle on her. After 2 weeks of liposuction, she is a slim and trim 125#. It’s a good thing, too, because there’s not many more places to drill a hole or lighten a bracket! Shout out to our local vet clinic, Faithful Friends, for making their scale available to us. That’s “weigh” easier for figuring out how much more she needs to lose!

Programming is continuing to debug and test. Team 1359 had really hoped to get some driving practice in before we left for our first event on Friday, but it was not meant to be! Instead, we’ll be running by the seat of our pants, learning as we go. Scrappy pirates like ourselves never shy away from a challenge such as that, and the team is excited about getting her out on the field.

The Scalawags will be competing in Auburn, WA, this weekend. We will post links to the twitch channel on our social media as soon as we know it. Tune in and cheer us on! It’s a little nerve wracking to be going so far away – we’ll be the only Oregon team there – but we are excited to reconnect with teams we don’t see often, and make some new friends while we’re at it! ARRRRRGH!

The team worked late on Valentine’s Day night – after a hearty dinner of nachos – to get the robot put together for Scrimmage the next day. All her parts and pieces came together… and most importantly, she gained a name. We are pleased to introduce Annie Snoakley. She was named for legendary sharp shooter Annie Oakley – continuing our recent tradition of borrowing the names of strong women – and Star Wars Supreme Leader Snoke – because some days you need just a hint of the Dark Side to get things done.

It took us until early afternoon, but we did get the robot on the field for Scrimmage this year! We were not able to test the ball handling system, but we learned that our motors were pretty peppy. So peppy, in fact, that she tipped on her first outing when Jo tried to change directions too quickly.

She mostly passed inspection… except for the pesky 20 pounds she will have to lose in the next few weeks. Looks like it’s celery and aerobics for Annie! We are hoping to get her slimmed down and shooting properly before next Sunday, when we have an opportunity for another informal scrimmage at DW Fritz’s practice field in Wilsonville. The team spent their President’s Day debugging the code, swapping out motors and gearboxes, and reworking our bumpers. All in a day’s work!

As we cruise into the 5th week of Build Season, we are starting to see what looks like a robot! She is taking shape nicely, and the team is working extra hours this week in the hope that we will have a functioning robot by Saturday’s scrimmage at Corvallis High School. Subsystems are being placed, and electronics are going in!

The art team is creating to their heart’s content, and the stuff they are putting together is pretty cool. Ships, asteroids, cities and control panels, they’ve got it all! Buttons are being stock piled, and we have a cool idea for some limited edition buttons… stay tuned on that one.

Finally, a shout out to the Mom Squad, who have continued with concessions during Build Season, while the kids are busy building a robot. You ladies are the best nacho slingers around and we love you!

Time flies when you’re having fun! Here we are at the end of Week 3 and there’s lots of progress to show for it!

We are super excited to start putting subsystems on the frame and see how she looks! Check out our social media for more updates!