[Andy Baker]

For this year's IRI, here's what happened with getting field controllers:

We initially contacted Tony Norman at Innov. First, since that's who took care of us with the rental in 2000. Tony pointed us to FIRST, since FIRST still had all of the stuff from Nationals, including the field controllers.

Tony referred us to Tammy Trimble, who did a great job of taking care of us. Tammy packed up three crates of stuff for us, and they didn't even charge us for the rental. They may have waived the charge to use, since we are the "guinea pigs" for post-FIRST comps for using the Innovation First controllers. In 2000 and 2001, the IRI was right after Nationals, and was the first post-FIRST competition to use the field controllers (not including CDI). Both this year and last year our electrical gurus found a couple of bugs, but they got them worked out.

FIRST decided to only send out one side of the field this year, and it is no big deal. Actually, it makes match set-up easier and simpler. Teams start from the same side each time and exit the same way each time, lessening the confusion.

One thing that we did the I suggest the rest of you do is this... get the stuff back to FIRST asap once you are done with it. Since they are decent enough to loan the stuff out for only the cost to ship the crates, it's the least we can do to send the stuff back to them via next day air. Shipping cost us $300.

Good luck with your comp.

Andy B.