Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeff Pahl
That would be fine if FIRST would have published this schedule well in advance of everyone making travel arrangements, including the Lead Inspectors, some of whom are at the mercy of team travel schedules. Plus it was Thursday morning last year before they managed to even find us all the inspection station equipment. And don't get me started on the inspection forms.....
And with two weeks of regionals already complete, and teams having already withheld 65 lbs of robot that they shipped to ATL, expecting to have all day Thursday to put it back together, it places those teams at a disadvantage compared to the teams that can plan for this.
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And this is our biggest problem. We are a poor team that can only afford to go to our local Regional and can't attend two Regionals. We were barely able to get the money for Nationals, and that was with a success under our belt. The Bayou this year was the first week, so when we won our Regional and got the honor to go to Atlanta, we held back our weight allotment and crated the robot.
We thought we had plenty of time Thursday to get the small changes we wanted done and get the robot back together on Thursday, but now that qualifiers are going in the afternoon it has changed how much we are going to change our robot. It is now a "run what you brung" Nationals, which would have been nice to know before we pulled off some of our systems.
We were lucky in that we are mostly happy with our robot's performance, all we have to do is get the electronics back on it, and tweak a few things, but not everyone is happy after their first regional. If you only attend one regional and were counting on Thursday to make your robot better you are out of luck at the Nationals this year.
I can't imagine how much worse the inspections are going to be when everyone in the World Trade Center lines up at 10:30 to get inspected. With the time it takes to organize and setup your pits and get the basic withholding allotment stuff back on your robot, that puts everyone trying to get inspected at the exact same time. I hope they have a nice queing area setup and the inspection station isn't like its been in the past because I can see the lines interfering with traffic and possibly other people's pits.
Some Wednesday night work and pit setup, still limited to 3 people, I think is almost a necessity unless they want this to be a disaster. Especially when you figure on Snowmageddon, and if the sad state of unfinished robots that I saw at our Regional is any indication of other regionals.