[mtaman02]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

5. The practice fields. We were surprised (and the volunteers confessed that they were surprised too) when the fields were shut down during elimination alliance selection and disassembled! A number of robots (I counted an easy dozen) came to the fields to check their robots or make small fixes but were turned away.

***Reguarding the Practice Field***

Yea, FIRST doesn't do this just for the Championship it's also done at the Regionals as well. I assisted with the running of the 2 Practice Fields back in '09 at Championships and while it is unfair to the teams, I had to close the fields when my boss (the head FTA) said to. I think the chief reasons for closing the fields during the Alliance Pairing / start of elimination rounds is to make sure Teams have enough time to get to their pit after the pairings to pack up if need be. We all have participated in one or more events and no oh to well that sometimes the way we pack things the first time might not pack the same way the second time. So all FIRST is really doing is making sure the teams have more then enough time to re-group and properly / securely pack their crates. It's nothing personal its more like assurance. I've had many teams (your lucky you only saw easily a dozen - I had up to 50 last year or more) come up to the field I was on and had to tell teams no.

As far as Practice Field Scheduling. I created a Schedule sheet in Word on a computer so I can keep track of Teams coming on and off. I had a Team of maybe 2-3 volunteers working one field and I had a fellow FTA and her 3 volunteers working the other field. We setup a schedule from the very minute pits open down to the final 20 minutes that pits would start to be closing (the remaining 20 minutes we used were to clean and repair the field) For lunch we just rotated out because we felt the 30 minutes on my field which was being used heavily would've hurt some teams for testing. We did our best to give each team like 4 practice rounds spaced out so that all teams can run the field after that then we told teams to check in every so often if they wanted to fill in. We had alot of teams who just sat in Queue by the field waiting b/c from time to time the Playing fields would either move ahead or behind schedule and we took those teams off and moved them to the next slot or off the page completely till they came and talked to us after their official match. We let each team run for an unheard of 10 minutes - we the volunteers screwed up on that simply b/c we didn't give ourselves any in between setup time and would often slip behind ourselves. Next year when I hope to run both fields again I hope to run half that time b/c even 5 - 6 minutes is more then enough because we have to acct. for Robots linking with the practice field electronics.

The one thing we didn't allow on the fields was more then 6 robots at a time b/c of the serious trouble we could've gotten in plus the huge safety risk involved since the field was only built around 6 and the added regolith made it that much more slippery.

I say overall in '09 the practice fields were run quite well with little to no complaints from the teams (and thats managing nearly 130+ teams on one field).

I was suppose to run both fields again this year as the attendant / FTAA but couldn't make it due to budget and lodging issues + work release time. Next year I should be able to attend providing I can meet all my obligations and so long as you guys are happy with the way I run it then I'll be back again year after year. I've worked as Queuing in all areas and now as FTAA so I have a pretty good handle on running things on or close to schedule with light tech support w/ little help except from fellow volunteers (meaning 1/2 - 1/4 of the guidance from my FTA boss).