[FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by waialua359

JABianchi,
thanks for sharing your post. While it may be a minority viewpoint here on CD, I find some similar valid thoughts and concerns while highlighting some things I wanted to respond to.
Being from Hawaii, this is a disadvantage for obvious reasons. We spend a considerable amount of time traveling, making up schoolwork, and competing, that there would be little to no time to iterate or practice driving at all. Flying a robot to each and every event is a great disadvantage vs. driving your robot to an event. By trying to get the same experience as a district team, we also end up spending a lot more money competing in 3 regional events plus the Championships (and off-season events). Even in Hawaii, we have to spend money to stay in Waikiki because the travel time during work days can be as long as 2 hours one way from Waialua to the event.
As an above average resource team, being from Hawaii limits our ability to take advantage of that, regardless of whether Stop Build Day continued or ended.
My main concern in mentor burnout. I dont need data or any more experience to understand that getting rid of a Stop Build Day will put pressure on our team, both students and mentors, to work a longer period of time at an intense level with what little time we would have left.
If the majority of people want to get rid of Stop Build Day, I can accept it and adjust, or decide to quit FRC. I believe that majority rules. We had to build and adjust our program over the years to try and stay competitive. The possiblity of getting rid of the 6 weeks of build season is no different.

And IMO, using VEX is a poor example of why we should get rid of the 6 week build season! Building a completely different VEX robot between events is NOT the same as bringing a somewhat different iterated FRC robot to your next event. Not even close! We spend a lot of time doing both.

Glenn,

Really great feedback. Hawaii teams definitely are in a unique situation.

One quick thought. If there was no bag, could you design your robot to disassemble into three or four major pieces and take it on the plane with you? This could significantly reduce the amount of time 359 is without their robot. You could re-assemble at your hotel or a host team's shop once you arrive.

I mention this since 125 took their robot in a check-in bag to Arizona in 2016. It was pretty small, even in the bag. Being out of the bag would give you a lot of flexibility to break your robot apart strategically and fit it in a few check-in bags.

Not an ideal solution, but could be workable.

-Mike