2024-2025 Drone Season Takes Off
Grenada’s cadets have been busy preparing for drone season this fall. The NJROTC Robotics Team hosted an aerial drone competition on October 5th. Chief Foreman says this early event gave their teams a head start on the competition season, and it also allowed new cadets, including 2 eighth grade competitors, a home atmosphere for their first event.
Grenada’s NJROTC Attends Multiple Events and Hosts Drone Competition to Begin Season
Grenada’s cadets have been busy preparing for drone season this fall. The NJROTC Robotics Team hosted an aerial drone competition on October 5th. Chief Foreman says this early event gave their teams a head start on the competition season, and it also allowed new cadets, including 2 eighth grade competitors, a home atmosphere for their first event.
The early start paid off with a win for Grenada over teams from Greenwood, Northeast Lauderdale, and Slidell. Team Bravo consisting of Ciara Towns, Frankeya Kincaid, and Summer Boatman were the tournament champions; they also won the teamwork and communications awards.
Bravo’s victory secured them enough points to earn the number 1 spot on the worldwide leaderboard at the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation. Their communications award recognized their organized, systematic, and professional approach to written and verbal communication as demonstrated through their interview and competition logbook.
Grenada’s Team Delta, Ethan Dorris, Tara Bailey, and Justin Sally, won the skills and airmanship awards. The airmanship award is presented to a team that consistently exhibits good judgment, demonstrates well-developed skills to accomplish mission objectives, and is dedicated to understanding and maintaining drone safety rules and regulations.
Tay Lewis and EKeyvion Noel from Team Alpha won the coding award for the most effective and consistent use of coding techniques and programming design solutions used in the Autonomous Flight Mission. To win this award, they demonstrated a solid understanding of programming concepts and documented multiple iterations of programming solutions.
Team Charlie, Luke Chaney and Landon Mills, made it to the semi-finals, and Grenada also debuted an 8th grade team for the first time consisting of Brandon Bell and Braylon Bell.
The week prior to the competition, on September 28th, Grenada’s NJROTC Drone Teams hosted a drone camp for schools and teams that are new to the game. Greenwood, Millington, and Horn Lake attended. Notably, Greenwood returned for the competition the following week.
20 of our cadets were able to expand STEM programs by providing others with the knowledge and skills to field drone teams. The camp covered a series of topics including: piloting, co-piloting, programming, spotting, engineering notebook, interview, game manual, team registration, grants, drone types, scoring, and penalties.
The unit taught what they know to these new teams by demonstrating general knowledge of drones and the competition format. They showed off a new game, “Gravity,” that can be used in the classroom.
On September 19th and 20th 25 of our cadets traveled to Columbus, MS for the annual Air Force Base Air Show and STEM event. Two years ago our unit attended, and they recognized that Rec Drones and SeaPerch were not represented. This year they were invited back to present on the topic. They had the distinction of being the only JROTC unit presenting at the air show. The students also had the opportunity to learn about other types of STEM programs available for high schools.
The up to date leaderboard for high school aerial drone competition can be found at www.robotevents.com/robot-competitions/adc/standings/skills.