Quote:
Originally Posted by artdutra04
As FRC continues to grow, the costs of "free" shipping that get eaten by FIRST and/or FexEx will only continue to grow. There will be a point where these costs may be too high to continue to justify, and either it will cost teams money to ship robot crates or we will have to switch to bag-n-tag self shipping.
Your average FRC robot will fit into a pickup truck, SUV, or minivan. Chances are that at least one mentor on your team owns such a vehicle and can volunteer to drive the robot to and from events. Being able to work on the robot for three days (the equivalent of a regional competition) would be a nice asset. Honestly, because of the various issues brought about as a result of eliminating the ship date, I'd rank this as the best possible outcome.
As for the teams that want to attend cross-country Regionals, I have two words: road trip! Well, at least for one mentor. And a navigator. And a back seat driver that criticizes that the GPS is wrong and that they know a "shortcut". And a fourth person, because odd-numbered groups of people never seem right. Multi-day car trips aren't that bad. I've taken more 1000+ road trips than I can count on one hand, and they can be really fun* (as long as you have an EZ Pass).
* And you don't drive through northern New Jersey near NYC; seriously, it stinks (the rest of Jersey is fine).  |
There are teams which don't have access to a mini-van (I don't think the team I currently mentor has one), or are flying to a regional or championships (from another country). Also, I think you'll have trouble fitting those four people into a van with the robot. I think two might be the limit, plus the extra time it may take a team to drive like that could be more than a two mentors or a mentor/student with a van has to give.