Lessons learned 2005: The negative

[Shu Song]

I biggie that I've noticed was inconsistent inspection standards between regionals and championships. Here's why:

At FLR and GTR, our robot was weighed without backup battery and LED's. The inspection people specifically told us, as far as I know, to NOT include those two items. But at championships, our inspector told us the exact opposite, that everything had to be on the robot while being weighed except for the battery. Although that the added LED and backup battery didn't put us over the limit, it frustrated me to know that there was this much inconsistency.

Secondly, at both FLR and GTR, we were allowed to precharge our pneumatic cylinders with a non-kit, non-FIRST, air tank. No one at those two regionals told us not to do so and we even saw other teams doing the same thing. But when came to championships, we were told that we can only precharge with the pneumatic equipment already on the robot. We were told this after other teams complained about our having done so.

Our inspector told us that this might have came about because there were inexperienced inspectors at those regionals. That might explain the LED and backup battery issue, but how can any inspector miss our team taking a giant air tank to our robot and filling it with air?

I hope that we are not the only team that had problems with the inconsistency, if we are, then I guess the inspectors at regionals DID miss those things. If anyone knows differently, please correct me.