[ChrisH]

Last year I surprised my team by being able to drive our robot pretty well, once I was finally allowed to touch the controls, after the season was over. I blamed it on a misspent youth... building and flying RC sailplanes.

After three dimensions, two was easy. Especially since I didn't have to worry about maintaining altitude to reach the landing zone. I was also able to figure out the source of some manuverability issues just by driving it. That robot had a tendency to "depart controlled flight" if you let it turn too much at speed.

As a result, this year we relaxed our "no engineers on the controls" rule a little bit. Engineers were allowed to drive occasionally, for diagnostic purposes only. I think that was about three times.

I'd love to see an Engineers Only event at the Southern California Classic next fall, but we may have too many teams to accomodate it. We still don't have a date, but it will be either the week before or after the Cal games.

Age and Craft can beat Youth and Quickness