[FRC Blog] Pit Set-Up and Trophies

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

I assume you are connected enough to the RPC in Minnesota if you're not on it. Looks like y'all can just stick with keeping the current system in place since FIRST has left that option available.

It's a much more difficult decision than that... I'm 100% positive that teams in the area will want this, and that some of them would loudly complain if we don't do it. The RPC (which I am a member of) has to figure out what's best for the region as a whole before making a decision. Items like volunteer availability, venue restrictions, cost (volunteers Wednesday evening usually get fed, which costs $), typical pit setup time in our events (i can think of at least one pit that takes over an hour to setup and a lot of space in the isle to do... How do we monitor safety with a skeleton volunteer crew? Other pits look are practically finished when they wheel the pieces in and put them in the right spot), typical team load-in time (if half the teams load-in during the first half hour, it makes sense to let them hang out and set up their pit. If they all load-in real late because they had to wait until school was out to drive several hours to the event, then it doesn't make sense). These are just the considerations that come to mind right now.

I have no idea what the answer is going to be once we've considered all the factors and decide on what's best for our events. But I expect it will be discussed at our next RPC meeting - we had one last week, so it will probably be a few weeks until we all get together to discuss it.