[Natchez]

I, quite frankly, am at a loss for words.

Al, that is not like you. Is something else bothering you?

If the parts are not are not being used on the 2005 robot AT ALL, then what is the harm in looking at them or touching them?

The harm is that veteran & wealthy teams gain a HUGE advantage over less experienced and poorer teams. First, the negative of letting you look and touch parts.

• As you pointed out as an underlying key to your success, you use old robots to train drivers, test mechanisms & concepts, determine how to play the game, and test autonomy. All with some other team's robot, not your 2005 team but some team that built it for you. Granted, you may have been part of that team. As for the definition of a 2005 team, I believe that it is the students and mentors that come together on or after January 8th to build a robot to compete in a first competition; not the group that has built robots during the fall and build one for the 2005 competition. It's subtle but important.

• You can use an old part from another robot or off-season work to get your 2005 robot running while you leisurely build the duplicate part just in time to replace it for the competition.

• You get to duplicate a previous teams' mechanisms by duplicating parts that are in your hand. This is significantly easier than the team that has to do it from scratch or from drawings.

Second, the positive of not letting teams look and touch old parts.

• THE PLAYING FIELD HAS BEEN LEVELED SIGNIFICANTLY

• Any mechanisms that a team might use from old robots or off-season work in the upcoming season must be documented (drawings, words, in memory, etc.). Since you can't take drawings with you onto the "island", you must post them to the web (a rule would state all written materials intended for use by a team would need to be accessible by other teams). The result of this would be teams would well document old robots and provide them to the FIRST family. This is the concept that is exciting! Now, old robots would be everyone's robot instead of just the robot of the team that inherited it. This fits in perfectly with Dean's idea of when two people exchange their ideas; they leave with twice as much as they came with.

I can't imagine what would happen if a part acquired before Jan 8th happened to fall on the floor... I can just see every one trying to cover their eyes, run for their rubber gloves, and try to remove it while looking in the other direction. ...Not to mention the incredible task of removing everything pre-2005 from the shop area and finding a place to lock it up... some teams simply can't pack things up like that.

Jaine, your sarcasm throughout is appreciated BUT since all of the first rules are based on honor, simply putting old stuff in the corner and draping a sheet over it would be sufficient.

While broaching the subject of not touching FIRST-friendly vendor parts before a certain date after kickoff, we must do something about teams using the playing pieces from the remote kickoffs immediately after the kickoff is over. It gives the teams that are the recipients of the remote kickoff field pieces another huge advantage. Since we gain this advantage and we must earn a spot at the championships this year, if it is not addressed by FIRST, we are going to implement a self-imposed hands-off period for the game pieces of approximately 3 days.

Thanks for making me like this "island rule" even more. In the spirit of full disclosure, please let me assure you that I'm not fighting this battle because 118 would benefit competitively; I am fighting this battle because leveling the playing field is the right thing to do. And I have heard the argument that trying to level the playing field will not allow the robots to advance as rapidly. My response to that is that we are here to inspire & educate America's future engineers and to make sure that our program does not significantly detract from the students' other activities. Not to build an advanced robot. As we level the playing field, you'll stop hearing administrators say, "How are we going to compete with THEM?" In a nutshell, by not leveling the playing field, we are discouraging weaker and newer teams to even participate in FIRST.

Have a nice evening,
Lucien