[Mike Hendricks]

Just to add another experience in here ..

The comment about IFI being able to check the radio in the pits, is shaky at best. The odds of you being able to get the IFI rep off the field and into the pits to assist you in radio testing, is slim to none.

We had our RC radio reprogrammed at our first regional, and still had problems with it (transmit radio wasn't working, but the receive portion was, IIRC). As a result, we had to run both our regionals on loaner radios. At our first regional, the IFI rep told us that we would probably have to pull the radio off after every match, so another team could use it. While it didn't have to come to that, it was still very upsetting to have that option presented. Going to a regional with 55 teams, and in a season with a plethora of radio problems, you would think they would bring more than 6 spare radios.

We seemed to run ok at our first regional, but we did have several problems at our second one that while IFI told us they were problems with our robot, we weren't buying it. The robot ran flawlessly tethered. On a match Saturday morning (#2), we lost control, although according to IFI we had radio comm. the whole time. The match before (#1), a robot out the radio tower, literally knocking it over to the ground. The match was paused, the tower was picked back up, and the match was resumed. I don't recall if any teams had radio problems after they restarted that match, but the match right after it (which we were in) 3 of the 6 robots had control issues (2 of the teams knew it was radio/comm, I don't know if the 3rd was radio related)

I'm not here to put down IFI, they have done an amazing job over the years providing the control system - it just seems like very poor judgment on their part to go flying into a new season with unproven radios, and then denying problems until the end of the build season (we were having radio issues during build season, but because everyone else was having problems, we didn't bother to call IFI; mainly because we would hear the same thing everyone else was hearing - "Follow the guidelines on our support forums for mounting the radio, your radio is fine, but it's getting interference from your robot")

Either way, you should of been allowed to check your radio during downtime. I agree that there needs to be some kind of controlled setup for checking radios, especially after this year. They are 40 channel radios, and even at the championships, only 24 channels are being used at once.

IMO, practice fields should be allowed to run radio (assuming the channels are controlled by arena controllers) - once again, even at the championships, that's only 24+12 channels. Radios would probably end up being safer anyways, I've seen too many people trip over the tether cable on the practice fields.