Teams in the West get an extra 3 hours!

[Sscamatt]

Teams in the west get an extra 3 hours of build time. Who thinks that isn't fair?

*EDIT, im not complaining, i was joking around, some of you took this seriously

[Ryan M.]

Good point! With that time I could have rebuilt our robot drive train at least .25 times.

[Joe Ross]

Teams on the west coast had to be up at 7am for kickoff. Teams on the west coast have to wait days extra for parts shipment from FIRST. Less teams on the west coast have regionals within driving distance.

[Jeff Waegelin]

Originally Posted by Sscamatt

Teams in the west get an extra 3 hours of build time. Who thinks that isn't fair?

They're called time zones. Yes, they do get 3 extra hours in absolute terms, but you also have to keep in mind that their day doesn't start until 3 hours later, also. So, if a team started working at 3PM yesterday on the East Coast, and worked straight through 'til 5PM today, they would get 25 hours. If a team on the West coast did the same thing, also starting at the end of the school day at 3PM Pacific time, they would still only have 25 hours to work. Yes, over the course of the six week build period, they do get 3 extra hours, but those hours are basically lost due to time differences, anyways.

From another standpoint, what would happen if all teams were required to ship at exactly the same time? Teams on the West Coast would have to ship their robot at 2PM. If they wanted to put in an hour or two working after school today, so they could pack up their robot, they wouldn't be able to, because the deadline would have passed. Thus, the teams on Eastern time would have an advantage. So all in all, it makes sense, if you look at it in relative terms.

[Bob A]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

Teams on the west coast had to be up at 7am for kickoff. Teams on the west coast have to wait days extra for parts shipment from FIRST. Less teams on the west coast have regionals within driving distance.

Correction - Teams on the west coast had to be at the SITE by 7:00! Throw in a hour or two of drive time, and...

Also, say that on the shipping day we wanted to get in one extra hour of work on our robot before classes started, so, we get to school at 7:00 am. But if we all shipped at the same time, we'd need to be there at 4:00 in the morning! And that just couldn't work, because we would still there from the night before!

[Steve W]

Maybe the answer is to time delay the broadcast of the game depending on your time zone. Then everything would be fair, the west coasters could sleep in and all would be good. On the other hand nothing in life is fair and all the teams that got 3 WHOLE hours extra will also be competeing with teams that got the same. Personally I would not mind even a shorter time frame but then again our robot wouldn't have gotten finished.

[Austin]

Originally Posted by Jeff Waegelin

They're called time zones. Yes, they do get 3 extra hours in absolute terms, but you also have to keep in mind that their day doesn't start until 3 hours later, also. So, if a team started working at 3PM yesterday on the East Coast, and worked straight through 'til 5PM today, they would get 25 hours. If a team on the West coast did the same thing, also starting at the end of the school day at 3PM Pacific time, they would still only have 25 hours to work. Yes, over the course of the six week build period, they do get 3 extra hours, but those hours are basically lost due to time differences, anyways.

From another standpoint, what would happen if all teams were required to ship at exactly the same time? Teams on the West Coast would have to ship their robot at 2PM. If they wanted to put in an hour or two working after school today, so they could pack up their robot, they wouldn't be able to, because the deadline would have passed. Thus, the teams on Eastern time would have an advantage. So all in all, it makes sense, if you look at it in relative terms.

I completely agree. Even if we worked on our robots 24/7 during the six-week build period, 3hrs out of approx. 1008 is not really a big deal. I think that the solution is that there is no solution...you need to have a problem to have a solution.
-->Kickoff is satellite feed...time delay?
--->Even if there was a time delay, certain teams might be able to watch it earlier through other means, making it unfair for the other western teams.

I say, just leave it how it is, every team will have whatever machine that they come up with after 6 wks, +or- 3hrs will not give any team a large dis/advantage over any other team.
----->Also...Think of it this way: Some teams might meet from 2-7 every single day, whereas some may only meet from 2-5. That means, in two days, the 2-5 team would have had 4hrs less time to work on the robot than the 2-7 team. Know what I mean?

"Problem" solved.

[Cory]

If anyone honestly cares about a measly three hours, feel free to move out here for the build system. Heck, move to Hawaii. Im sure you'll enjoy getting to the site of the feed at 4am. You'll get your 3 hours for sure though

Cory

[bigqueue]

Originally Posted by Sscamatt

Teams in the west get an extra 3 hours of build time. Who thinks that isn't fair?

Yes, but the way I look at it, I was able to go to bed three hours earlier than them too! (just like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer....it feels so good to stop!)

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by Sscamatt

Teams in the west get an extra 3 hours of build time. Who thinks that isn't fair?

Oooohhhh! I think you just hit upon a great solution for us! As soon as the season is over this year, our team is going to embark on an extra-special, super diligent, high profile fund-raising campaign. Our sole purpose will be to raise enough money so that next year during build season we can charter our own airplace with mid-air refueling capabiliites. As the last week of the build period approaches, we will move the robot shop into the airplane and take off. We will fly to the west - forever. By moving from time zone to time zone, we should be able to avoid bumping up against the 5:00pm Tuesday (or will it be Thursday again?) deadline for at least two more months. I figure that we can hold out for as long as the Krispy Kremes and Diet Cokes last.

And before anyone even mentions it, our intention is to just ignore that silly International Date Line. That should not be a problem, as it doesn't even really exist (I know this for a fact - the last time I flew from Los Angeles to Sydney, I looked out the window the whole time, and I never, ever saw the line anywhere - so there!).

-dave

[Aidan F. Browne]

Originally Posted by dlavery

...I looked out the window the whole time, and I never, ever saw the line anywhere - so there!).

Silly Dave! You should have been looking out the window on the other side of the plane!



Aidan

[russell]

I am on a first year team from Anchorage, Alaska which is about as far west as you can get without ending up east. On tuesday we were told by another Anchorage team that the ship date was 5pm Eastern Time (Alaska is four or five hours different). Our team is officially a "club" and school rules state that we cant leave class for club activities, so we were gonna have to ship Wednesday evening. As it was we found out it was 5pm our time we had to ship so we shipped at about 4:30 today about a minute and a half after we put the last untested piece on our robot.

Also Joe Ross is right. We have to fly from Anchorage to Portland, and part delivery time is way slower usually (we ordered new drill motors almost three weeks ago and they just got here).

[Rhs953]

That 3 hours really helped. Ontherwise our robot wouldn't have been done.

[Pierson]

We crated our robot Thursday morning (1:30 AM), kissed it goodbye, and shrinkwrapped our crate. Since FedEx could come at anytime... We needed to be ready. However we had some FedEx problems. But our friend is gone and it is now time to catch up on lots of sleep!

[Bcahn836]

What about the guys in Brazil and Canada did they have more or less time?