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Re: build season needs to be longer.
When the Challenge part of FRC was dreamed up, the challenge was purposefully (paraphrased) "a time too short, a weight budget too small, a power budget too stingy, a size budget too tight, a ...."
With that in mind, it makes sense that a build season that is long enough for steady, but not all-consuming, focused effort by a group of rookies to produce a kitbot plus a custom feature or two is exactly what the program intends to give you.
The program explicitly doesn't exist for teams to build, tweak, hone, redesign, etc. their multiple superbots 24x7 from kickoff until Einstein. Some teams might choose to get as close to that situation as they can, but the FRC program doesn't exist to cause or encourage it.
Remember there is often a big difference between what you want, and what you need.
A small team can build a successful robot in 3-7 days, especially if they plan in advance to do it, and they practice/prepare.
FRC has a 44-day build season. Embrace it, and be proud of what you can accomplish during it (without losing perspective)!
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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