[kmcclary]

> Therefore, the final response to any more questions about the gap that is created
> will be "@4" plus or minus 1". Hopefully that will suffice.

That's beautiful, and a good spec. Thank you very much!

Sorry if this was a bother. The spec itself isn't as much of a problem as just having *A* spec. We felt we were trying to design something to handle a moving specification target. We've had to completely revamp our strategy and scrap a machine payload once when the backboard appeared. It made our original design approach totally obsolete. VERY frustrating.

Having a commitment to a standard is actually the most important thing. Spec deviations of 4" are significant in a scale on the order of 1'-3'. That's up to 33%! But ANY number +/- 1 inch at this scale is no sweat. Thank you for deciding on a gap spec.

> The backboard was a last second add, on my part to reinforce the structure
> as I felt the shelves were too weak without it.

REALLY? But that could have been done with braces somewhere BELOW the shelf level, where it wouldn't be involved in the play area. Placing the backboard where you did really DOES affect game strategy.

Fascinating! We thought it was a deliberate redesign of the game in an attempt to eliminate a slew of simple "off the back pushers", because of the rule of "once off the field it is out of play". That could have easily made for a rather boring, low scoring day if everyone's machines concentrated over 90% of their effort on shoving everything out of play, and the entire game came down to only a point or two scored in the goals.

> [...] welcome to the world of FIRST, where everything measured has a very large
> allowable variation (mostly to protect the game developers and field builders)

LOL! I can appreciate that! <grin>

> To be honest with you, we have not, and will not build the entire field until Nov. 16th -
> therefore we are working from bits and pieces that we create to get the basic dimensions from.

Wow... I thought you guys worked all this stuff out MONTHS ago. Boy, that's setting quite a challenge for YOU!

Thanks for putting up with this novice.

- Keith McClary, Huron High Team 830