Quote:
Originally Posted by Adam Y.
And the moral of the story is don't make assumptions. You made an assumption now you have to pay for it. Consider this a life lesson.
And yet the competition changes so what made you think that what has been legal for years and years is legal this year.
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Adam,
I'm tired and very pissed off at the GDC right now, so excuse my bluntness when I tell you that you're being a jerk. Cut the self righteous "You assumed and made an $@#$@#$@# out of me and you" garbage.
This ruling by the GDC is completely out of left field. Nobody saw this coming, and teams cannot reasonably in good faith expect the rules to change on such a massive scale AFTER ship date. This rule is such a departure from everything FIRST has ever said and done before that it just defies logic. Furthermore it has to be THE most useless ruling in the history of FIRST. What exactly is this going to do? What is the point? Teams will waste 30 minutes reterminating batteries...there is no competitive advantage to bringing in pre-terminated batteries.
To all those saying "well teams backed the GDC into a corner", I say not so. The GDC backed themselves into the corner when they chose to introduce a manual that was woefully inadequate in how it explained major portions of the rules. When this many experienced mentors cannot even agree on what the rules actually say, something is wrong. The Q&A should have solved that. Instead it made it worse-Q&A rulings that conflict with one another and make no sense, rulings like this, etc. Each new Q&A response further muddles both the letter and intent of the rule and teams are forced to ask further questions about everything under the sun to make sure they are in compliance with the rules.
The only life lesson here that I can see is that it's better to keep quiet and not say anything and compete with potentially illegal parts than do the right thing and ask for clarification on unclear rules.
PS. 254 will have plenty of ring terminals and heat shrink in our pit at regionals... we'd be happy to help teams reterminate their batteries (assuming heatshrink and ring terminals are still COTS by then)