Announcing public practice field in Hampton Roads, VA

[ToddF]

Team 2363 wishes to announce that the Virginia Air & Space Center practice field is ready for use! Many thanks to the members of team 1610, 1793, and 2890 that came out to support the build activity at the VASC on September 28th, and to team 122 for painting and supplying the goals and feeder stations currently in place on the field. Photos of the build effort and the current configuration of the field may be viewed here.

The teams of Hampton Roads FIRST and the Virginia Air & Space Center extend a cordial invitation to all FIRST Robotics Competition teams to utilize a new practice facility at the Virginia Air & Space Center, 600 Settlers Landing Rd, Hampton, VA. The field is full regulation length, however, due to the interference of some structural support columns, the field is only 21 ft wide as opposed to the regulation width of 27 ft. This results in two driver stations at each end of the field instead of the traditional three.

Should you wish to utilize the field, which should be available for team use 7 days a week, please contact Matt Wilbur (mattw@team2363.org) or Todd Ferrante (toddf@team2363.org) for scheduling and instructions on how to access the field. We are currently seeking teams to use the field specifically on Saturdays for the remainder of the calendar year so that Hampton Roads FIRST teams can support the VASC’s “Robotics Saturdays,” advertised here. Our team will be there most Saturday afternoons, so come join us so that we can get more than one robot running around on the field at one time! As of this moment, the field is expected to remain installed at the VASC at least through the 2014 build season, and then is planned to be reinstalled any time the museum does not have a traveling exhibit occupying the space.

Finally, we would like to recognize the many sponsors that provided the funding to purchase the materials for the practice field. There is $1500 worth of 2x4s, plywood, paint, hardware, and fasteners in the field, and none of it would have been possible without the fantastic and awesome sponsors of our FRC team.

Todd F.

[Michael Hill]

That looks awesome! May I suggest investing in some carpet to lay down on top of the current stuff? I've seen far too much ripped up carpet from robots and it would be a shame to destroy the existing stuff.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

That looks awesome! May I suggest investing in some carpet to lay down on top of the current stuff? I've seen far too much ripped up carpet from robots and it would be a shame to destroy the existing stuff.

Agreed. If you plan on keeping that up year round, especially if defense is payed, you need some carpet!

[mwilbur]

The VASC is planning to replace the carpet in that area in the spring, so they didn't care about protecting it. We've got dibs on the field carpet from the 2014 Virginia Regional for future use. The carpeting is something that we were originally concerned about, too!

[mrmummert]

Is anyone planning on putting the field elements on that field when kick off comes? Usually some of the
field elements are placed out there between the Apollo display and the theater
on kick off day. I'd be nice to actually have them on the field. We've been going to
the VASC for kick off and like it better than going to Richmond. (and its closer for us).

[rsisk]

Next time I visit family in Newport News I am there! Awesome job guys. And just a bit jealous

[Whippet]

Wow. That practice field is incredible. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to move out of Texas.

[safiq10]

I love it! we were thinking about trying to convince a place in central Texas to haven an open practice field. How did y'all go about getting permission to use this facility.

[Ian Curtis]

Now someone's gotta call Mr. Udvar-Hazy and see if we can get a spot in the National Air and Space Museum Annex. That's a heck of a practice spot!



Not many teams can have runaway robots on a collision course with an Apollo capsule. Adds a whole new level of urgency to Emergency Stop!!

[Nate Laverdure]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

Now someone's gotta call Mr. Udvar-Hazy and see if we can get a spot in the National Air and Space Museum Annex. That's a heck of a practice spot!

Funny, I was talking to somebody at yesterday's Robot Rumble about this exact idea.

[Whippet]

Originally Posted by safiq10

I love it! we were thinking about trying to convince a place in central Texas to haven an open practice field. How did y'all go about getting permission to use this facility.

A practice field in Texas would be amazing! What city do you think it would end up in?

[treffk]

Super awesome. I'll have to find some time to make it out there having just moved to the area!

[safiq10]

Originally Posted by Whippet

A practice field in Texas would be amazing! What city do you think it would end up in?

We were think about doing it in Waco, Tx since its our home town plus its centralized around two big cities so they can drop by if they don't have a practice field.

[Whippet]

Originally Posted by safiq10

We were think about doing it in Waco, Tx since its our home town plus its centralized around two big cities so they can drop by if they don't have a practice field.

Ah, ok. My team is a bit far from Waco, but I wish you the best of luck establishing practice field!

[mwilbur]

Thanks for all of the awesome comments, guys! We're pleased that you're impressed.

I'd like to take a moment to respond to a couple of the questions that have been asked regarding the field and how we managed to garner the facility.

1. We do plan to add field elements for each new game year. Once the VASC "Robotics Saturdays" are over, we will be taking the Ultimate Ascent field elements down in preparation for the 2014 game. We will try to have the people that build the field elements incorporate them into the field for Kick-Off, but what they can do in the time available will be up to them. My basic understanding of that process is that they get a material and cut list ahead of time, but don't get the assembly instructions until the day of Kick-Off. Since the team version of the field elements are intended to be stand-alone, some of them may be difficult to incorporate directly into the field on very short notice.

2. As for approaching places about doing something similar, I don't know that there's anything special that we did beyond just expressing an interest. We have done a number of demos and participated in a number of VASC functions over the years, which probably helped. In this particular case, the VASC often has an open space where they set up traveling exhibits that they get in. They didn't like having the large open area when they didn't have the traveling exhibits, and the traveling exhibits are apparently atrociously expensive, so us needing a space and them having one resulted in a nice symbiotic relationship. Our advice would simply be to bring it up with as many places as you can find. Feel free to show them the pictures of our set-up so that they have a better idea as to what they will be dealing with when it's built. It would be awesome to see similar fields set up around the world!

3. Finally, in the category of fair warning: Be prepared to expend a lot of effort if you are going to build a similar field -- especially if you are going to paint it as we did. The painting wasn't something we would have chosen to do, but it is something that the VASC wanted. We totally underestimated the amount of extra work that this meant when we started, but once we did there was no backing out. We had assistance from a number of the local teams on a Saturday to construct the field, which actually went pretty smoothly, but we had already painted almost all of the pieces and parts over the two weeks prior to assembly. Those that had not been painted at least had a primer coat on them, so we were able to finish up the remaining painting on assembly day. We used the fast-drying high-gloss Behr paint from Home Depot, so it was entirely feasible to paint and assemble on the same day. We spent almost $500 in paint and painting supplies to complete the job in a reasonable amount of time, so the cost was definitely not in the noise level.