[Al Skierkiewicz]

Guys,
The calibration procedure gives you full range out of the Victor and sets the resting point for the values you feed it (whether absolute from auto mode or full travel on the joystick). Remember you are calibrating the Victor and not the RC. There are trade offs, calibrating will affect auto for dead reckoning robots as much as a weak battery, worn wheels or transmission or anything else that effects speed. The reality is that joysticks are CHEAP electrical components that drift (change value) like crazy especially when they are new. Calibrating the Victors just insures that with everything else being equal, you will be able to achieve full forward and full reverse out at the extremes of joystick travel. Setting the trim on the joystick is just an easy way to match the joystick's drift at center to where the Victor is currently calibrated regardless of whether the joystick can drive full forward or reverse. If you have ever thought that your robot should be able to go faster as per your design for top speed, then it is likely your Victors were not calibrated to your joysticks.
There is no way for the current Victors to feed data back to the RC but that would be pretty cool. I think that scaling joystick input at the RC to match full range and zero would be a big improvement IF the Victors were able to calibrate to full absolute PWM values.
It is important to calibrate at some point in time to insure that your controllers haven't lost their minds and match the control system you will be using for the majority of the match. I would rather have full range control while driving for 1:45 then to have a correct auto mode running for just :15.