[ChuckDickerson]

The problem I see with the Fix-It-Windows as written is that FIRST is attempting to level the playing field by regulating the clock time spent after ship day. However, clock time does not equal man hours and therefore FIRST may be inadvertently stretching the gap between the "have" and "have not" teams even further. Two, four, or even 10 five hour "Fix-It-Windows" are not the same for a 10 student, 2 mentor, team with only a hacksaw and a drill press and team with 50+ students, 10 mentors and a million dollar CNC machine shop. A better Fix-It-Window rule might be to specify a set number of total man hours that a team can use at their discretion after ship day. Maybe a big team is heading to 2 or 3 regionals and wants to use all of their alloted man hours early after ship day. What about a small team that can only use their sponsor's machine shop on weekend? Maybe that team can only afford to go to one regional and are going to one of the latter regionals and need to spread out the alloted man hours over all of the weekends preceding their regional. What difference does it make if a team needs to work on Friday night or Saturdays, etc. We are all on the honor system to abide by the Fix-It-Window rules. What difference does it make when a team use their alloted time due to their members schedules?