Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon Stratis
A couple of years back I had to "hassle" Wildstang (a 25 year old team now!) because of their BOM. They had missed something, and when its cost was added they were over the limit. They had other stuff on the BOM that never actually made it onto the robot, so they were able to get it fixed fairly easily... but it was still something wrong that needed fixing.
15 year old teams aren't immune to making mistakes, sorry to tell you. They also aren't immune to turnover - losing one or two key people can send you from being division finalists at champs one year to ranking in the bottom half at both of your regionals the next, with a robot that barely works. I've seen it happen.
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I understand both sides of this equation here as both an inspector and a dude on a team. I don't think sanddrag is talking about legitimate mistakes or rules violations. He's more referring to sometimes, some inspectors seem to give greater scrutiny to teams who look like they know what they are doing than other teams. Or the inspector seems to have this notion that the inspection should take a certain amount of time, so they look for things to prod at and question when there isn't actually anything wrong. Both of these are rare occurrences for me and if they have ever happened were quickly fixed by asking the LRI for clarification, but I understand where he's coming from here.
It's all part of, as a volunteer, putting the team experience at events as the top priority, and treating teams fairly while assuming good faith. Just something we all have to keep in mind when inspecting (and I'm sure the vast majority of inspectors do!).