Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Personally I think that a ship date extension should be dependent on the team, there are teams that get away without any weather/flooding etc. problems, for them, the ship date is the ship date. However there are other teams that lose a week every year to weather. If you are that team that lost 10 days of school thus couldn't work at all on your bot (or any number), FIRST should be able to extend your ship date by that amount. Saying they shouldn't simply because in the "business world" you can't get out of deadlines that easy is silly. FIRST isn't trying to emulate the business world, they are trying to inspire young kids, if they were going to emulate the business world, we would see many more awards for things like teams that can make the most duplicate robots, or one for the highest ratio of effectiveness to cost (yes they give awards for effectiveness, but never relate it to the cost to produce). Is that FIRSTs goal? no, yes they have a few business awards, but its not their goal, their goal is to inspire kids, and to allow a level playing field for them all, which in part is why there are rules like the deadline and FIX it window.
Every year we attend the debriefing for Ontario, and well tell everyone we lose a week every year. There are two reactions, the skeptical reaction we get from FIRST and 80% of those there thinking we are either exaggerating and it isn't possible to miss this much, then there is the second reaction of how do you do it of about 10% of those there. We do it, and have learned to do it every year, yes it makes things like autonomous hard to work on, and rarely do we ever have a mechanically fully refined robot, but we still can play the game to our best and we don't get stressed out over not placing overly well, because thats not the point, the point is to inspire, and we are able to do that. To date we have missed 9 days(this includes today), because of weather, we live in a rural area, 90% of our students and 100% of the mentors live outside of the town, and when the roads are closed there just isn't a way in to work. Comparing us to every other Ontario team doesn't do justice to the situation, our team (and three others) live in the worst part of southern Ontario with all the snow and wind coming off Lake Huron. See link for a typical February day in our area (we are north of Goderich, in the customize window you can add "minor cities" to see Kincardine).

I do realize my thoughts on the subject may be a bit biased only because we miss a week a year, we have learned to deal with it, but a week missed is a week missed.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

How about there are less than 7 days between ship and when robots have to arrive at the drayage facility for first week regionals. This side of the story has been ignored in this thread. To meet the existing timeline for regionals getting more than a day simply doesn't work logistically.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

I think it is unfair that FIRST is refusing to extend the ship date, even if it was by 2 or 3 days, it would help a great amount. everyone should be about done with the major construction of the robot, but the time we are losing now, is the time to work out all the small kinks. My school change locations this year and the building is nowhere near our old school. So it is hard to get to our school, even if we wanted to come in. Not only did it effect the building but our fundraising has been cut short and fundraising is the biggest income because we don' have many sponosors.

But the Tigers still are clawing our way to the top.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

There are a few ways around this, a) every existing team knows generally how much time they lose to weather each year if your team is like ours, you don't sign up for the first two regionals (if such a rule were to be placed), b)FIRST gives us another week in between the first regional and ship.

This is not something I see FIRST implementing this year, and I am going to be skeptical and say they never will implement it.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

FIRST did extend the deadline in 2003 after a major blizzard, but this is nothing compared to what hit in 2003. Many places are already back in school, or will be tomorrow.
Personally, I think FIRST should allow some more fix-it-window time, but not extend the deadline.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Fix it windows, if i recall, are the time you can work on parts in between ship and regional. If so, that time isnt of much help to people how dont have a prototype bot or anything to test on.


There are alot of logistics involved with an extension. We wouldnt mind driving our bot to Richmond, as it is less than an hour away. But many teams arent local, and so there isnt an easy way to ship a bot from California to Virginia, in a short time.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Blizzards, Nor'easters, and ice storms for the most part just don't spring out of thin air (no pun intended); usually you have at least a few days notice that these storms are coming. If you know a storm is coming, then don't just sit there and hope it misses you, act and prepare accordingly! (Especially if you know you won't be able to meet at your school/primary build location.)

If you won't be able to meet at your school on a snow day, then the night before take any and everything you can and work at a mentor's house/garage/basement the next day. If none of the mentors on your team have any sort of tools at their house, take the robot home and practice driving or coding. I'm sure your team's programmers would love to have an entire day with the robot all to themselves. ;)

Yesterday schools across New England were closed due to the snow and ice storm. But rather sit back and hope that the ship date will be extended to accommodate for the bad weather, we went ahead with out meetings regardless of the Nor'easter. We drove through the snow and ice, and met anyway all day long, taking advantage of the fact that school was closed.

Where there is a will to get the robot done, there is a way. :p

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

What FIRST needs is a system that allows everyone 6 weeks, not 6 weeks of fine weather at FIRST HQ, but 6 weeks where you live... just because for you this is better then the one time FIRST did give a two day extension doesn't mean its better for all, for us this is our worst year yet for weather, but simply because FIRST doesn't get a 1/10 of the snow we get doesn't mean we can get safely to build.
I have had one American FIRST member tell me we should be able to do just as well as a team without snow days, as we Canadians should be used to the snow. Unfortunately thats how I feel FIRST thinks about the issue, unless the US is hit hard by snow who cares?
I am not putting my two sense into this issue because I believe we should get an extension this year, because its not a problem that can be solved this year. It is however something that they need to take note and need to change in coming years, how simple is having a clause on the shipping date saying that it can be extended with proof showing the school/roads were closed in your area signed by your administration?
I don't know anyone that would have a problem with some team that lost 5 days of build getting those tacked on the end to fulfill their own 6 week build. To me it seems like a graciously professional thing FIRST could do in a situation where that happens.

Our school administration wont let us work anywhere but at the school, and although I would love a day with the robot and bringing it home with us, again school rules won't let it be worked on anywhere but at school before competitions. It isn't so simple to just say you can still work on it, there are liability issues with the school, and simply the safety of getting into town. I would never put our team at risk of being stopped, or my life in danger on the roads, to get an extra day of work on it during bad weather.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

You are lucky, many schools won’t allow students to do what you did yesterday.

No amount of will will change that.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

As said before, I would agree that the only time FIRST should extend is when the shipping company can not pick up the crate on the 20th (this year anyway) and then that should only be for the affected areas. We here in West Michigan are not permitted to meet when the school cancels activites. We even had several days where we had school, but after school activites were canceled, go figure. Anyway, we have lost seven or eight days so far during the last three and 1/2 weeks of the build. Everyone works a little harder and we should be able to ship OK. The electrical/mechanical teams hope to wrap up Saturday AM giving the programers and drivers the weekend and monday to tweek and practice. We have been know to ship a box of parts to our first regional and have actually still done quite well. The biggest slow down we had this week was trying to get overnight parts out of Indiana, hopefully FEDex will be good to us today or tommorrow.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

I think a extension of the ship date is a fair decision. The school district I am in does not let us come into the the school on snow days and when they cancel the after school activities, and those of you that said to take things home and work on them are assuming all thats left is assembly, programming, and adjustments. We personally have some machining that needs done before we can proceed in the build, and I dont think anyone on our team has a mill sitting in their basement. In order to assemble you need the parts, in order to program you need a running assembled robot, and in order to make adjustments you have to have something running to know it needs adjusted. Those of you that work out of a sponsors shop that is fortunate for you but we work out of our school and its impossible to get in when school is cancelled, which means we have had 5 weeks to build our robot. Whatever FIRST decides to do, as far as the ship deadline, will be in their opinion fair to all teams, so we are at the mercy of their decision. I just hope they review their decision again before the 20th.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

ok ppl are saying that it shouldn't of been extended because its a deadline and thats the rules but if Fed-X couldn't deliver yesterday and the postal services couldn't deliver mail then how can we work on our bot. The mayor of cleveland told clevelanders to say inside and not to come out because it was a weather emergency. I personally have missed 5 days of school and what should of been six today. There were teachers getting stuck in our parking lots and six foot mounds of snow on the sides of the street. If First goes and extends the date it is good for everyone. We just want to get our time in too.

http://www.myfoxcleveland.com/myfox/...Y&pageId=9.1.1

this is what we have been dealing with

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Well,what you are talking about is true when it comes to the weather, but that doesn’t stop some people from finishing their Robots. We in Cleveland had a bad snowstorm and all the schools, roads, FedEx companies were closed and we are having a hard time completing our robot.:ahh:

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Well we have not been able to work on are robot because there was no school so I think that we should have extended time! I don’t think that it is fair that some teams had 6 weeks and we only had 5 weeks.

Re: To extend or not to extend the ship date!
 

Even NASA will postpone a flight when the weather is bad. Airlines will even change their schedule because of the weather. That’s the real world!