pic: Virginia's DREAM top view
 

Re: pic: Virginia's DREAM top view
 

Is the position of your radio legal? One of our team members thought the radio must be mounted verticly. Was he wrong?
Joey

Re: pic: Virginia's DREAM top view
 

It can be mounted however you want, but it should be mounted vertically for optimal reception. The antenna on the outside of the radio isn't the only one, there is one on the inside too, so just sticking the external antenna up isn't as effective a mounting the whole thing vertically. We mounted our radio horizontally last year and it was identified by IFI as a radio that might have some "issues" that the software upgrade didn't fix, but we had no issues. I would recommend mounting it vertically though; we mounted our like we did because we didn't have many options--our only options were to mount it horizontally, on our turret, very close to our drive chain, or right next to our main power distribution.

Instead of trusting a team member's information (which can be wrong) or info from post on CD (which can also be wrong, but someone usually corrects incorrect answers), you should read the manual yourself. Reading the relevant sections only takes about an hour to a couple of hours; the amount of time it takes depends on reading speed and what sections are relevant--a build team person probably doesn't need to read the criteria for the website award, for example (although it is probably a good idea to do so anyway). Even if it takes 4hrs, it will be the most useful 4hrs you spend all build season.

Re: pic: Virginia's DREAM top view
 

Thanks for the help. I read the manual, and so did the team member who thought it needs to be mounted verticly. The problem is the manual contains so much info, that it is hard to remember all of it. We were going to look through the manual for it, but I saw the picture of it mounted sideways, so I thought I would ask.
Joey

Re: pic: Virginia's DREAM top view
 

The photo of "Virginia's DREAM" is just the drive train module. We are still building a "ball lifter" which will be mounted on the drive train and the radio transceiver will eventually be mounted on the superstructure. The radio placement you see in the photo is temporary. Currently we are running the robot around the halls so prospective drivers can get some practice.

One advantage of our builinding material, extruded fiberglass, is that it is transparent to radio waves so the fiberglass does not block the signals.

Having the external metal antenna and the internal antenna "vertically polarized" does make a difference, assuming that the operator radio antennas are also vertically polarized.

Re: pic: Virginia's DREAM top view
 

just curious, why is the front angled in?

Re: pic: Virginia's DREAM top view
 

Squeeze through traffic bottlenecks

Re: pic: Virginia's DREAM top view
 

i figured it had something to do with the racing portion of the game