Re: Curie Division Qualification Match 20
 

Yep, I can. Two in fact.

The gate is the reason. The gate has to open; if the panels were permanent, there are any number of reasons the gate wouldn't be openable for some random thing. (Also, see "transport of field".) For example, there's a high chance of hitting the adjacent Lexan panels, which would mean something would need to flex.

The OTHER reason, which I believe predates your involvement by quite some time, is that the fields were first built in this general configuration back in 1999. Not sure if it was these specific fields, and certainly it wasn't all of them, but there was no guarding between the upper barrier and the lower barrier for quite a while. I don't recall seeing anything until 2004 or so, maybe 2003. There was an incident in Arizona '03 where a team autonomously shot around the corner, went up and over the ramp, went down the other side,took a left turn--and went under the guardrail to under the STANDS before auto ended, and before someone got to the E-stop. So the Lexan was added (I want to say that for a year or so a steel cable was used instead) to stop that, and attached by zipties. Gate guards were added as well. As new fields were built, they were built the same way as the older ones (consistency is the key here--get a team that does well on a new field and poorly on an old, or vice versa, and you'll hear the complaining for miles around).

I've heard some rumors of something to address the field thing... have someone from your team at Championship look around very carefully, not near the competition fields; one rumor said that it would be there (but rumors are rumors, so who knows?).