[DUCKIE]

FIRST should more clearly mandate light visibility at the beginning of the season and then stick to it!

The challenge of the light placement should be looked at as just another "engineering opportunity

-Jim-
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I agree with Jim about them needing to enforce light visibility more. However I believe that it is stated quite clearly in the rules... and along with the numbers debate and some of the newer pnumatic changes... the teams just do not bother to read all of the rules and updates... and if they do, they just don't follow them because for heavens sake... it might make them have to do some engineering and change their design a bit.

I mean how hard is it to have numbers on all four sides that are atleast 4" high? It's not people! But you still get the teams with the 2" numbers on two sides of their bot who grumble about not passing inspection yet. And then there were the few that just did not have numbers on them to start with...

Durring inspector training at one of the regionals Team XXXX generously donated their bot so the head inspector could go over all of the things that we were looking for when we inspected the rest. It was a well build robot... and they only had three problems that we picked-up on. 1-some pointy edges 2-the number thing... but they were cutting out the new ones i believe and 3- you could not see the light from the front due to some stacked PVC... When the coach of Team XXXX came back... he assumed that we were going to pass him because he lent us his robot. We told him the three problems and he refused to change the light location. Eventually they just let TeamXXXX pass because there were a bunch of robots with the light issue.

I saw robot XXXX competing later at another regional when i was going through the NASA-TV archives and they had not changed anything. Which pisses me off to no end, becuase the teams that do follow the rules and make their light visible have to modify their designs to include that... those that do not should not be allowed to compete... because they are not following the rules.

The light is a good safety key... so you can tell when it is on... and i have had no problem with them when i was on the team... aside from them popping off ocasionally. (and sending current through the frame if not mounted correctly) This years light is lighter, and the top does not pop-off because it screws on. The only problem with that is if it cannot pop-off when put under pressure... it shatters... I saw many a broken light cover at the spare-parts table and i think if the plastic was a bit thicker like last years covers they bould not break so much.

In final.... consider the rules when designing your robot... and build around them.... this is an engineering activity you know.