[Bkeeneykid]

I volunteered at the Smithville FTC qualifier this weekend in KC. We were scheduled to have 28 qualifications matches and at maximum of 9 eliminations grade. We ended up playing 9 finals matches because of both ties and broken beacons. By the end, we had replaced 11 beacons on our two fields. The FTA there said that they were being caused by static. I'm not convinced that it was entirely caused by static and that all of them were broken. One team had repeatably slammed their robot into the beacons VERY hard, which might have also caused some issues with the beacons. From what I've heard from others, it seems to be caused by the fact that the beacons are designed with metal buttons, and thus the static is going through the beacon main board.