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Originally Posted by Andy Baker
CLEARLY VISIBLE is mentioned two times in there. When teams put on these curb-feelers, then the feeler needs to be on the perimeter of the drive base, not on the inside. If the ref does not "clearly" see the touch, then they should throw the flag.
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Getting back to our wheelie bar design...
There is NO WAY for us to make a tie-wrap clearly visible to the referees: our wheelie bars cover up the front of our robot.
Here is what makes me really upset about this whole deal: If it was so "clear" that rule <G12> meant that something within the 38x28 footprint needed to touch the loading station, then WHY WASN'T THE RULE WRITTEN THAT WAY?????? Why didn't <G12> say:
<G12> Something within the 38x28 footprint of your robot must be touching the loading zone to grab a Tetra.
Isn't that simple? If it was that simple to write the rule that way, then why wasn't it? To me, it wasn't written that way in order to allow teams to a) fall over at the start of the match, b) allow their drivetrain to expand, or c) use outriggers or wheelie bars. The rule was pretty clear to say that you shouldn't violate the spirit of the rule by dropping a tether so you can gain "loading zone protection". Why was all of this "spirit of the rule" stuff included if they could've just written the rule as I have it above?
Someone asked, "where do you draw the line on how long wheelie bars can be?" Why do you need to draw a line? These things tend to govern themselves: if your footprint is too big, you're not going to be able to drive around the field due to the congestion and you'll lose anyway.