[Chris Hibner]

While it wasn't perfect, I like the way it was done at the Championship WAAAAYY better than at Kettering or MSC (i.e. total chaos).

I've learned that the practice fields need a volunteer to be sure teams get off the field when they're making an adjustment or otherwise not fully utilizing the practice space. I was helping a team at the Livonia District and the practice field there was great. There was a volunteer making sure things kept moving along and teams weren't hogging the field or wasting the space.

I would kind of like to see something like the following:

- The fill in line is planned to get 50% of the spots (say, blue is always the fill in line).
- The other 50% of the spots (say red) are sign-up slots.
- The fill in line can play on the red side if a team doesn't show up.
- All fill-ins get at fixed time, such as 5 minutes from when they get on the field. Give them a restaurant pager or something. When it buzzes, you're done (and the field volunteer will know when your pager is buzzing).
- When you finish or need to make an adjustment that takes more than a minute, go back to the end of the line.

My reasoning for the above system is this:

The fill in line was rarely extremely long in terms of number of robots, but it often took a long time since: a) the slots were 15 minutes long, and b) you had to wait for someone with a slot to not show up.

With 5 minute slots and at least 50% of the slots going to the fill-in line, even the worst case wait in line would be about 25 minutes (10 robots in line was the most I saw in St. Louis). Typically there were about 4-5 robots which would mean you should get on the field in 10 minutes. If you need to adjust auton, get off the field and back in line. By the time you make your adjustment and deploy your code, you should be on the field again in 5 minutes or less.

The Livonia field ran similarly to the above, without the max time limit or the sign-up slots. It was really the best practice field experience I've had. I think the sign-up slots are necessary so you can try and get something between matches.