[Al Skierkiewicz]

Both Don and Ken have raised some valid issues that mentors need to think about. Unfortunately, not all teams are open to dialogue with other mentors. If you know the mentor(s) on the offending team and feel you can approach them with the problem, they might be truly happy that you let them know before a LRI or ref points it out. The sooner the better. I would quietly call them over to some place outside the pit so you can have a one on one dialogue and see what happens.
In most cases that involve rules violations on the robot, as Ken has discussed above, the LRI is good person to turn to. I personally would like to know if the robot passed and who the inspector was. It could be they missed something in the heat of battle or they weren't checking everything on the inspection sheet for the robots they checked. In either case, it is an inspection issue and the team needs to correct it with our (LRI) help. Lead inspectors are chosen for their talent to point out a problem, discuss ways to correct it, pass info along to the head ref and make the other participants know that there are people who are trying to keep the playing field as level as can be. This year in particular, we were in a position to point out to teams that although the majority of their design was compliant, there were occasions where the team did violate or seem to violate the rules. i.e. ball intrusion designs, bumper perimeter violations as parts wear, aggressive play, assemblies not tied down.

You as mentors should not have to worry about approaching the team and you should not find yourself allied with a team that gets called for an inspection issue when they have been playing all weekend and your match will put in #1 or move you out of the picking. Universally, I don't think there is any adult or student who wants to win because the other alliance gets DQ'd for something.

I am asked to check for items listed by Don all the time. In about 90% of the cases, the team is compliant but something is just on the fringe. i.e. From the stands, a team's kicker looks like it extends outside the bumper but on inspection, there is a mechanical stop that prevents it. Game play issues should be asked of the head ref and that is easy during driver meetings or just following a match. Connection issues are best handled through the FTA who has the tools available to diagnose most issues.

LRIs are really nice people. If you find that someone has pointed out a rules problem on your robot, come and find the LRI and explain it. We will check it over, discuss how and if it needs to be changed and will inform the ref that things are progressing. In many applications, it is a simple matter of removing a breaker to turn an offending motor into ballast. We want your students to have a fun and quality experience and we will do what we can to make that happen.

If people would want to open the discussion, I can certainly try to list some of the really odd things inspectors came across in inspections this year.

ps. It is not uncommon for a team to modify their robot after inspection and not reinspect until finals inspection. A team that adds something that is illegal may have other teams copy that mod thinking it is legal to do so. I believe many "I passed at the last regional" statements may in fact be due to this modification. If a team does not place high enough to be finals inspected they will ship a robot that is non-compliant to their next event.