Re: 2011 Lesson Learned: The Negative
 

Actually, McMaster sells bubble forming leak detector as well. In spray form even. On Page 2218. I have no idea what advantage it has over soapy water, but there ya go. And now that today's pneumatics lecture is over, we rejoin your regularly scheduled griping, already in progress.

Re: 2011 Lesson Learned: The Negative
 

Well, I understand completely. Being the naïve student I am, I never even attempted to think of a solution. I just saw, "SO MUCH TUBING HOW DO?"
Honestly, we acquired the leak at competition. The leak was the least of our worries I guess. Seeing as we had can-bus problems for about 8 or so matches. It's my fault I just thought that having the compressors turn on would be a plus. Not griping, it's a suggestion from an unheard student. I have to have some way of showing my opinion don't I? The name of the title is "The Negative" so there would be some griping involved. (maybe I should stop talking)

But from a safety perspective, I most certainly agree.

Re: 2011 Lesson Learned: The Negative
 

Before putting our pneumatics on the bot, the entire system is put in water a bucket of water and pressurized. We then look for the bubbles rising to the top. Then we leave it in there for about 15 mins and come back. If it has lost more than 5 PSI. The leak has to be found and fixed. It is a lot easier to find them in a bucket of water before it goes on the bot then with soapy water later. There have been many years that we have been at competition and had to use soapy water around out jags :ahh:

Re: 2011 Lesson Learned: The Negative
 

I think it was a bad situation to put everyone in at a time when we should be focusing on having a wonderful time. I am thankful we were only in there for 4 matches. I feel really bad for people that traveled across the country to support their teams only to not be able to watch their own matches or play-offs.

I was really sad that my team could not sit together to watch our 4 matches in the stands, but we actually had bigger issues one day in the dome with un-gp in stands. I also know of at least one instance where a parent from my team said something to someone coming to sit.

To eliminate you from picks based on that is their loss in my humble opinion. Sometimes our parents, with the best of intentions, do try to "protect our territory" and the whole seating issue seems to bring out the worst in people. I would hate for someone to penalize my team because a parent who was there solely to support their child was un-gp. Sometimes you have to look at the whole team and not let one individual influence your opinion of a team. Though since it always seems to happen, we do talk to our team A LOT about not being that one person that gives the whole team a bad name.

KB's.. I was SO surprised you were not first pick! You had an awesome bot and I wish we could have played WITH you this year instead of only against you at MSC! Maybe at MARC! :) We've sat beside you at many competitions and have never had issues with you sharing seats!

To everyone: surely with all of this brain power we can find a way to make watching and cheering for our teams easier, more fun and less of a problem. I sure like it when my team can STAND to cheer for our team. But, after the fact, we were told that it bothered people. So, at world's we didn't stand. And, the spirit went way down. There has to be a solution! :) We just have to create it!

Re: 2011 Lesson Learned: The Negative
 

More seating. :)

At at regional, a team stood in front of me almost the entire time. The reason was because another team in a lower tier was standing, dancing, cheering almost the whole time and blocked the view of those first 4 or 5 rows in our tier. There were plenty of empty sections for the team to have selected if they wanted to stand but they wanted to stand there. I moved several times and took a couple of rookie mentors/parents on another team with me along for the moves - to try to stay out of the team's way and to be able to see the fields. It was annoying that the team didn't check to see if they were blocking anyone but it was worked out.

Teams can be very self-focused at competitions. That's what they do. Teams who are generous and aware of their surroundings are not as self-focused and determined to only do what they want to do. That's the nature of the beast. To find that compromise of having fun, celebrating, and being respectful is difficult. Krunch is a great team to watch as a role model for how to celebrate in the stands and do it well.

If more seating is made available next year in the pits area at the Championship event, that will help solve some of the problem.

Jane

Re: 2011 Lesson Learned: The Negative
 

This comment was mostly meant to showcase that at the same team, same time, same event can be responsible for 2 drastically different opinions and results. Without having video of the particulars involved, it is hard to tell what really happened. It could have been the people involved approached the same way, but contacted different persons with different reactions. It could be that the people involved contacted the same people with different approaches that resulted in the different reactions. It could be that team 1023 was a "michigan team" and team XXXX was not. It is hard to say. I do appreciate that the teams mentor brought it to our attention as something to work on in the future.

This example hopefully also serves as a reminder that everyone "on the team" serves as a reflection of the team. In most sports, it is easy to tell the players from the parents/fans, and to write off an over-ambitious parent/fan. In FRC, many of the "players" are mentors and students in the stands sitting side by side with parents/fans who often have the uniform of the players on. Is that adult a parent a mentor or a fan? It could be all three. It could also be a random person given a Team 33 t-shirt the day before...

Because of this, I would ask for some temperance when judging a "team" either good or bad based off of the behaviour of 1-2 individuals. We cover this topic with the students 2-3 times every year.

This will also likely require another point to review with parents during the parent meetings in the future.

Re: 2011 Lesson Learned: The Negative
 

Yeah.. I'm sure the same could be said about us.. we try to pick low seats with our kids on the bottom rows and parents up higher so the team can stand on the floor to cheer which leaves the bottom rows open and the upper rows able to see over us.. but i didn't take into account the vision we were blocking of the teams beside us until after the competition was over and someone said something. So I'm sorry to the teams we blocked at MSC, Detroit or Livonia. We did correct it for Worlds and will not stand next year unless something is figured out where you can stand to cheer for your team but not block others. :)

Re: 2011 Lesson Learned: The Negative
 

My team and I still disabled the wireless completely and turned off the firewall.

firewall+wireless=no communication with the C-RIO.