Waterbury District 2016

[MarcD79]

Waterbury was a VERY interesting learning curve on what we expect, what actually happened & what could be changed. I had a lot of fun, everybody LOVED my reveal of the new hat...goodbye Mr. Hasenpfeffer for now. The new hat goes great with the Medieval theme. It is a dragon with flailing wings.
It was a daunting, but fun task to construct the field. I saw it at Dean's big to-do but with so many people on the field, it was impossible to really inspect the field. The field is well thought out, except for how the defenses are attached to the bases on the carpet. I guess they didn't anticipate how hard robots would slam into the rock wall defense. They hit them so hard that they bent/dislocated & generally destroyed the holes used to secure to the mounting base. The pins & "S" clips we used just couldn't stand up to the abuse. That was a constant battle starting late Saturday afternoon & remained a battle right to the end of the eliminations, causing delays & replayed matches. By that time everybody was tired & with all the delays we ran into the evening for the closing ceremonies.
The one thing I hate is that for whatever reason the take-down crews tend to be less than what we need. It happens at a lot of events. I had to work today & needed some rest, so I finally left at 9:30pm last night & they hadn't even started packing the crates. I'm sorry I had to leave, but I was tired. Accolades to all who were there; FTA, VC, EC and so forth. you guys are incredible!
These fields are now going on to the remaining events & somehow I don't think FIRST will be able to correct this problem with no down time in between events. Good luck to all. I had to step down from WPI due to family obligations, but will be in Hartford.