Today was a tough day. Our night was spent mounting a new vertical laser to better detect the railroad arm that had caused impact our first time in Area C, and when we arrived, the railway arm was gone. A rumor circulated that Mojavaton had complained, citing the rules and the California driving manual, but no verification.

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We also had an unusual complete GPS outage in the chute to area C. No trees or other obstructions in the area. This perplexing outage vexed 4 other teams - and we resolved it by simply moving the vehicle to the parking lot - but it could have been a harbinger.

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To brighten things up, Judy Perrone donned her Sun logo wear.

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On the course, Tommy did not perform well. He was stopping mysteriously, sensing full obstruction, replanning his route. Later, we discovered that Tommy had sustained more damage in the prior impact than we had anticipated, laser sensors were still out of alignment, cables damaged, and we were detecting the ground as an obstacle.

Over the course of the day, DAPRA officials started calling robots over to Area A (the merging traffic area) for a kind of a bake off - with Dr. Tony Tether and Norm Whitaker judging vehicles in rapid succession, and stopping those quickly who were doing very well or very poorly. We also heard "around the pits" that some teams had already been notified they would not advance.

Team Jefferson declined an offer to come to Area A for a performance, because the vehicle was not ready, was under repair, and we felt was at risk of not being successful.

Around 4 o'clock, at Norm's request, I wrote a memo, stating our case for continued participation, and our reasons for declining an early trial today.

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Tonight, we continue to work, hoping that we won't get that "final call" from race officials, declining us our chance to compete in Area A tomorrow morning.

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