Re: A disturbing trend?
 

I wonder if the last minute inspections at GLR had to do with the great number of snow days late in the build season. We lost 8 build days due to weather constraints in the last 4 weeks of build season. We had weighed at school and were underweight and were a few pounds over when we weighed in Thursday morning so that is all we had to take care of really. We did pass on Thursday though.

Our first year, I think, we were first to pass.

It did seem to take many teams longer to pass than I ever remember.
Not sure why. A couple teams looked like they had lots of work to do
to get ready.

Re: A disturbing trend?
 

There were a few teams that didn't pass inspection until Friday, I know we were the only robot on our alliance in our 2nd match Friday morning.

We did everything except weight and signage on Thursday, we had to get signs reprinted Thursday night though because the lettering was too small, and wanted to weigh with them on just to make sure it was accurate.

Hopefully this issue will be mostly gone at later Regionals.

Re: A disturbing trend?
 

That's a really good idea. I think I'll make a few flag holders for the San Diego Regional with "FIRST robot inspectors are your friends" labels on them!;)

Re: A disturbing trend?
 

I would hope that there were fewer teams not passing inspection by end-of-day Thursday this past weekend. The teams that already competed in a regional should have completed inspection early to get more practice time. Other teams have had three weeks of "fix-it" windows to get replacement and upgrade parts fabricate.

How did teams fare in the inspections this past weekend? Any missed matches??

Re: A disturbing trend?
 

In Detroit we had 4-5 robots that had not completed inspection by Thursday pit close, however all were complete by the start of competition Friday. At Great Lakes the week before, I think we had about 12 to go Thursday night, only one team was not complete at the start of competition.

Re: A disturbing trend?
 

Only 1 missed a match at UTC. I believe there were ~15 that didn't pass inspect on Thursday for mostly minor issues such as leaving their BOM at the shop on Thursday.

Re: A disturbing trend?
 

Most of the holdups at Chesapeake were small things. One robot had significant issues that kept it off the field for a large part of the regional, and a couple more made it by the skin of their teeth.

Re: A disturbing trend?
 

I didn't get to see any inspections really at Florida Regional. What I saw and surprised me has already been mentioned, teams with unfinished robots. At the Fl regional in past years I can usually count on my hand how many teams are finishing their robots on Thursday. This year i watched practice match after practice match that maybe had one or NO robots out there for an alliance.

Correct me if i am wrong (Sorry i didn't read much of the manual this year and I didn't read any of the updates) but since their were new things to inspect this year maybe thats why it took longer. Example: the different weight and height classes

Re: A disturbing trend?
 

I find it funny that teams who have passed inspection at their first regional...have a difficult time passing at their next one...what does this say??

Re: A disturbing trend?
 

We brought 8 (I think) extra flag holders to Peachtree this year. They were all gone within 2 minutes of having an announcement made in the pits Thursday morning, and we could have given out another dozen.

Teams not reading the rules seems to be the biggest problem. Most of the teams that went through inspection early at Peachtree had already been to another regional. There were a lot of teams that didn't have team numbers on all 4 sides, used illegal parts from previous years kits, didn't have flag holders, etc.

We would have inspected earlier, but we forgot to charge the battery for the USB-Chicklet so we had to wait until we had working controls. However, we did go over early and get on the scale, and found out we had to either lose an inch of height or 1.1 lbs of weight (a miscalculation had resulted in our being 49" tall). We spend the time waiting for the battery to charge cutting the bottom inch off of our arm support column. We were very glad we didn't wait until late afternoon to get weighed the first time.

I encourage all teams to weigh and size as early on Thursday as possible. An unpleasant supprise at 9:30 is not nearly as unpleasant as it is at 5:30.

Re: A disturbing trend?
 

This says that everyone is volunteers and doing their best. As long as a regional is consistent, then its ok.

Re: A disturbing trend?
 

This was a major problem at Chesapeake. I know that one team in particular, 1629, was forced to play three of their seven qualification matches without one of their alliance members

Re: A disturbing trend?
 

In NJ we were the last team to get inspected, we were done by 6:30 on thursday but unfortunately could have neither our ramp nor our arm on the robot( we had a moving box) although we did manage to get the arm up for Philly

Re: A disturbing trend?
 

Team 60 (of the winning alliance) started with a bare frame Thursday morning![/quote]

In defense of the Team, we did ship an inspection passable robot to AZ,
but had problems with certain gearboxes that worker the arm and the ramps. with no good repair possible, the Team scraped the original robot and rebuilt it from the ground up, dumping the ramps and an arm movement.
Geo.

Re: A disturbing trend?
 

Yea, we barely made it to our first match. We passed inspecting about 1 minute before our match started. It was close, but we made it. Hopefully we don't have to do that again in Boston...