Quote:
Originally Posted by big1boom
Not just a Michigan problem.
We passed inspection fine in Midwest, then had to add more structural backing to our bumpers at Wisconsin.
|
And I'm probably the guy who made you add it... and you were not the only team that had to do so...
We (the Regional Lead Inspectors) try very hard to make the inspections uniform from event to event. I know I hate the "but it passed at xxxxx" discussion as much as anyone. However, sometimes things slip by, especially if your first inspection was done by a new inspector, or if you didn't get inspected until Friday morning, etc. I always see little things on Saturday during the re-weigh that should not have passed. At that point, I try to point them out in case the team is going to another event, but unless it is something that gives a competitive advantage or is a safety issue, it's hard to ask the team to go change it before the elims.
Back to the topic of the thread: my biggest complaint about this year was the fact that the only thing that identified the alliance color was the trailer bumpers. I watched a lot of matches this year, both at regionals and Atlanta, and for all of them I was at field level. It was just about impossible to keep track of the colors unless you were right at the edge of the field. I don't know how the people sitting in the outpost stations did it. I really don't want to go back to the flags for various reasons, including the tendancy for them to go shooting off in various directions. However, I do wish the grey pipe in the center of the trailer had been painted with the alliance color. Also, as others have noted, with the robots and trailers there was a lot of equipment on the field, and it tended to all get bunched together. It was a lot like watching grade school soccer, where you can tell where the ball is because all the kids are in one pack around it. That's how a lot of the matches I watched seemed. Everyone was all in one big clump somewhere on the field.
As a mentor for a rookie team with essentially no funding this year, I loved the field surface. It was nice for once to know that they would be at least able to drive as well as everyone else without having to spend time and money we did not have trying to come up with some super-duper drivetrain. And the simple drivetrain meant that they got the robot done in time for the programmers to actually have some time with the new control system.