[Japper]

My two cents for what it is worth...
I have been a mentor on a few teams and know how the stop build day affects some of the smaller teams with limited resources and I am curious how many teams out there have difficulties with their robot a day or two before bag it and tag it day. From personal experience, I know that the teams that have I been associated with in this situation sometimes suffered the consequences at their regional because they spent the whole Thursday practice day trying to right their robot and then end up working the bugs out and learning how to operate it during the Qualifying matches on Friday. By the time Saturday comes around and the bugs are worked out, the robots are some of the best out there but by then it is too late as the robot slips into a low ranking that no one notices that they are performing as well as they are...

I have noticed that the teams that are fortunate enough to be able to compete at multiple regionals tend to do much better at their 2nd or third regionals because they had a chance to work their bugs out and the teams that do not have this luxury end up struggling...

Two teams that I have been involved with have Midterm finals during the 6 week build season and we chose not to allow the students to work on the robot during that week as they really need to focus on what is important- their school studies. This tends to make it even harder to make the stop build day but we do abide by it and usually pay the price for being behind the eight ball at the competition but if anything the FRC competitions seem to be a lesson in overcoming adversity more than anything else for some teams...

I understand the importance of deadlines and having worked on a number of years on Engineering projects over the years have found that in the "real world" projects slip due to a number of reasons. In a "US First Perfect World" they are not allowed to slip which makes me wonder if any of Dean's projects ever slip at DEKA.

One additional thought is that if teams were allowed to work on their robot right up until their competitions, (much like a race car team does) the quality of the robots would most likely be better.