After the regional DI tournament, all of the teams that participated had the chance to go to DI provincials. Following regionals, teams had one month to improve their scores. Reflecting on our performance, my team made a list of improvements that needed to be worked on. We made a burn down chart for each of the categories that would make the biggest impact on our score. A burn down chart is a way to track progress which has columns of check in dates where we would see how much we burned down (accomplished). The three categories (Team Choice 1 & 2, Story, Payload) were areas where we didn’t score many points and needed drastic changes. Since the time in between Regionals and Provincials went into our spring break we had to meet at each other’s houses to get things done on time. 

Our team’s Team Choice elements were getting below half on our raw scores so we had to do something to boost up the points. For our first Team Choice element, we had made a handmade spray painting that didn’t score that many points because it wasn’t explained fully. We remembered that we had extra fairy lights that we could use as stars with the fairy lights shining through small holes in the backdrop painting. It looked really cool when all of the lights were working and it earned us many more points. The second Team Choice element was originally a looped recording of Space Odyssey played by a trumpet and clarinet. We thought that our background looked really bare so we felt like we needed more props. We decided to build a rover to get around the planet in the story.To build the rover, we first laid out the wood to plan how it was going to look. With a plan set, we started building the frame for where we were going to sit. We added the wheels directly to the frame and then tested the wood to see if it would hold our weight. We raised the seats from the frame using little wooden blocks, wood glue and clamps to hold them in place. We built a covering over the frame that held cardboard with our team name on it. The rover looked really good when we finished and apart from the front wheel loosening it worked well. We then added the Space Odyssey music to the rover to get extra points. We received way more points than last time and I really thought we deserved it for how much work was put into it.

My team’s story for Regionals was very simple and had no rising action. All of the payload drops at happened at one time and nothing was happening while our blimp was flying. We changed our story by having a whole different first half of the story. We had Ryan (narrator) say that the payload drops had been a regular way of getting food while the first 2 payloads dropped. However, to the explorer’s misfortune a storm blew away all of their supplies and broke the radio. The explorers had to go drive and get a battery from their ship crash landing. Another storm had started so they had to take shelter in a cave. One of the explorers chipped a piece of an unfamiliar crystal, releasing a strange gas causing her to collapse. The other explorer headed back to their base and used the crystal to make the radio work. They called in payload drops and then used the supplies to revive their companion. I liked this version better because it had all the necessary parts needed in a full story. There are more jokes and dramatic parts in our Provincial story than our previous one. We had hoped to get 45/60 points but we had only received 33 points which was disappointing for how much work we put into it. 

The payload system always broke and was way too heavy for the balloons to carry. We were hoping for a score of 60/90 but some of our drops did not count and we got 24/90. Brenton had made the payload system lighter and with the same carrying power as the previous heavier one. The method he used was an electromagnetic and a relay system (Brenton explains his payload system in more detail on his blog). The payload didn’t break like the prior one and actually worked for three of the drops. The payload wasn’t given many points for the innovation but I thought it was the most interesting and creative. (Here is the payload system working on a store bought drone as our aircraft broke just before the competition).

I couldn’t make it to Provincials because of a conflicting event but we switched the roles and it worked out well. Leading up to the presentation, we made the blimp have two helicopters attached to one stick which meant double the power to pull the drag of the balloons. I gave all the props, aircraft and team choice elements to Ryan to take to Collingwood for the competition. However, just before the presentation the blimp broke and they had to use one of the props to blow the aircraft to the landing zone. Even though we had to improvise, we still came third and we won the instant challenge. We had not achieved the scores we had hoped but I learnt a lot of new skills during DI and I am excited to do it again next year.