Re: Drive Practice
 

That's the main thing - don't bother fixing it right, just get it working again as quickly as possible - but make notes so that repeated problems will be really solved when there's time. This is also a chance for the pit crew to internalize their checklists - things like swap the battery, be sure the pneumatic dump valve is closed, chains are in place, non-loctited bolts are tight, and check that that piece of foam rubber that wears out every few matches is still in good shape, or replace it if not. In rough years (e.g. 2016), realistic pit drills are as much benefit to consistent performance as driver practice.

Re: Drive Practice
 

As a member of my team's drive team, drive practice is more crucial than some people think. In 2016, we had little to no drive practice, because every time we tried, someone else would take the robot. My advice is to be as assertive as possible. Don't let people take away your practice, and have set times when you're practicing, to let everybody know.

I understand that you can't build an entire second bot, but a second chassis is almost as good. First of all, it lets programming get the drive code done really early and gives plenty of time to tweak it to the drive team's liking (linear vs exponential input curves). Secondly if you can just get really good at maneuvering your bot, everything else gets easier.


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Re: Drive Practice
 

Some of the other comments on this are great.

On 3476, I'm the mentor who oversees all pit ops:
Pit practice time obviously allows students to have the ability to fix issues quicker since they have experienced that strain before. There is something calming about knowing you can solve an issue because you've seen it before, and that really helps our students tackle tasks at comp. The awesome part is, issues will arise that they've never seen and they know exactly how to tackle those problems in a high stress environment (throwback to Newton finals 2016 for us when we had to change shooter features).

Pit practice is also important because for 3476 and a lot of teams, we are constantly changing our practice bot and need to copy that on our comp bot during the first day of our regional (California districts come sooner we want unbag time!). The pit crew will do this on our practice bot and ensure we can copy that on the comp bot without issues.

Lastly, the pit crew are the only students who talk to judges outside of Chairmans and individual awards, they must be able to properly represent all aspects of the team and we take that into consideration when picking our pit crew and what we communicate are the expectations of the pit.

You could have the best designed robot in the world, but without students and mentors who can solve issues quickly and be able to enhance features in a short time frame, the robot won't be able to perform to it's maximum capability.
(Along with a great drive team, scouting crew, ect)

Re: Drive Practice
 

How long do you generally have pit practice?

Re: Drive Practice
 

Our pit crew is nearly always at our practice field with our drive team since that's where the most ware and tare occurs.

They meet 5-6 times a week. 4 hours on weekdays and 7-9 hours on weekends.