[JesseK]

I'm pretty sure that since FIRST is broken down into regional organizations, each region was responsible for its own FMS and setup. Our regional director was in communications with teams asking for feedback on comms issues and even setup a scrimmage with the actual FMS software a couple weeks before the VA competition. At the DE, MD, and VA competitions our teams attended, there were temporary hiccups. Yet those were simple matters of restarting the FMS laptop and/or swapping field within the division. Having 2 fields for each division made everything very smooth, yet I suspect that such a setup is a regional and not a national decision. At all 3 competitions, we were out of there by 7pm, which isn't bad considering that the previous year (FTC/VEX) it was 9pm.

A 2 hour delay due to FMS comms tells me that someone needs to light a fire and get someone motivated to test things ahead of time. Along the same lines, I wouldn't expect FIRST to ignore the complaints teams had from last year, and I would expect improvements all around.