HIDRA, the former WEGA stellarator/tokamak, arrived at Illinois in Nov. 2014 from the Max-Planck-Institut fur Plasmaphysik and has been under assembly for the last 18 months (watch assembly). On Friday April 22, 2016 HIDRA had its first confined plasma at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, event attended by over 100 people including the Dean of Engineering, the Nuclear, Plasma and Radiological Engineering Dept. Head, most of the faculty and numerous alumni visitors. The hard work of Prof. Daniel Andruczyk and many undergraduate and graduate students, as well as help from Illinois Facilities and Services were recognized. The device, in operation since 1975 at various sites with intermittent interruptions, is one of the long-lived fusion experiments and now available for plasma physics and fusion research at Illinois.