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Re: [FTC]: Rookie team!
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Originally Posted by smcmahon
Excited to announce that Gateway High School in Monroeville, PA will be doing FTC this season. We've just registered as of today!
As coach, I have four seasons of FRC experience, with our 5th on the way for 2012. I'm look for some tips, resources, and best practices for a successful rookie campaign.
The kids are excited and ready to learn! I'm ready for a new challenge!
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In FTC/VRC you generally get more than one roll of the figurative dice.
If you budget your time well, you will have many opportunities (before any tournaments, and between them) to iteratively improve your robot. On the surface that is obvious, but (proper) FRC habits might cause you to underestimate just how big the difference is between the FRC and FTC/VRC timelines.
I always recommend initially building something simple that consistently does exactly what it is supposed to do; and then improving it over time using experience as your guide (instead of using hunches).
Try-before-buy, KISS, and practice/practice/practice will take you far in FTC (and VRC).
Blake
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Blake Ross, For emailing me, in the verizon.net domain, I am blake
VRC Team Mentor, FTC volunteer, 5th Gear Developer, Husband, Father, Triangle Fraternity Alumnus (ky 76), U Ky BSEE, Tau Beta Pi, Eta Kappa Nu, Kentucky Colonel
Words/phrases  I avoid: basis, mitigate, leveraging, transitioning, impact (instead of affect/effect), facilitate, programmatic, problematic, issue (instead of problem), latency (instead of delay), dependency (instead of prerequisite), connectivity, usage & utilize (instead of use), downed, functionality, functional, power on, descore, alumni (instead of alumnus/alumna), the enterprise, methodology, nomenclature, form factor (instead of size or shape), competency, modality, provided(with), provision(ing), irregardless/irrespective, signage, colorized, pulsating, ideate
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