Crazy Inspection Stories

[Matt Reiland]

Originally posted by Dave Flowerday

As an inspector, I'd say that 1/4 to 1/3 of the teams I inspected had fairly major rules violations. Every time I pointed these out, the team would argue with me, saying "But we passed at the regionals!" It was clear to me that inspections at certain regionals were very, very lax. Please people, in the future, don't bother with the "We passed at a regional!" speech. Each event is a new competition and your robot has to pass inspection at each.

I think that the sheer number of problems we found at the Championship that should have been caught at the regionals was disturbing, and I think the FIRST staff working at the inspection area took note. I'd expect some changes next year in the inspection process.

AMEN Dave,

I tried my hand out at inspecting at West Michigan and was amazed at how many people were actually angry at me for following an inspection sheet that was handed out to everyone before the robots shipped. I saw everything from Victor 883's to Custom Valves to wrong breakers, some were really big violations that I felt may have given the team an advantage. Others I let go by even though we followed them on our robot - modification of the air cylinders, FRC Techs clarified that removing the pin from the cylinder body was a modification and not allowed, however nearly everyone removed it anyway. The same story from nearly everyone, "But why are you hassling me we have already competed in two regionals" or "The breakers were tripping so we used bigger ones", or "Even though it isn't allowed on the check off sheet it still works the way it is". How about teams that didn't want to change the wiring because they said they didn't have a computer or the current program to change it and make it work with the new wiring? Are you kidding me? I treated everyone the same (Even the teams that built in our same area at the tech center got busted with the wrong valves), my team was not there competing at the event. It shouldn't be that hard to enforce a checkoff sheet that was handed out before shipment of the robot should it?