About being overweight and exceeding your size requirements – the need for reinspecti

[Don Wright]

This is unfortunate. However, before we all get worked up in a tizzy, let's take a deep breath and relax...

Rules in FIRST are like laws. They are just design constraints for everyone build their robot to. The honest teams will design and build their robot to meet these requirements just like honest people live by the law. Sure, they might make some mistakes and their shooter might be shooting too fast, or their robot is a little too big or heavy, but they make corrections to follow the rules to make it a fair competition.

I would have to say that most of the FIRST teams fall into this category.

Then there are those that don't follow the rules. Some see how far they can bend them...others flat out break them. Unfortunately, if that is what they want to do, there isn't much we can do. You don't think I can't engineer my expansion with two pin locations...one that is legal, and then one that is extended two or three inches more to give me just a little advantage? Or something I can add and take off quick for added weight...so I get inspected and then throw this extra spike/motor/wire harness on real quick? Or a knob on my control board to control shooter speed so if I get tested, I just turn it down, pass, then crank it back up?

Cheaters are going to cheat. And by implimenting more and more "checks" it is just going to hurt the 90+% (I hope) teams out there that don't cheat, but now have to jump through hoops for three days proving over and over again that they do follow the rules.

Unfortunately, our GP sometimes stops us from maybe doing the only thing we can do to stop this from happening. Calling more teams out if you see them doing something you think is funny (not funny ha ha). But, then again, you don't want to be "that team" that is calling everyone a cheater.

Maybe this team did weigh with the battery. Maybe some of the teams I saw at GLR that shot from the starting position and hit the banners behind the field 3/4 of the way up had a bug in their program and their shooter was malfunctioning. I hope so.

I for one would like to believe that...

[Nuttyman54]

They didn't test our shooter for speed when we were inspected. Albeit, our "shooter" is a bit odd, but it IS a shooter. In fact, I don't know if it was even on the checklist...

[KyleGilbert45]

All this talk about batteries reminds me of this old old old thread.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...attery+ holes

Ahh those were the days.

[Kims Robot]

This thread saddens me...

At FLR this year, we had a bit of trouble with the scales and with our weight, sure it was only 3 lbs, but we had taken 20 off before we shipped... there were very few holes to drill, very little left to take out... We weighed our robot thursday at 7:55pm... it was 1.2lbs overweight. We thought we knew where to take it out, but just for caution's sake, I had the team reweigh right when we got there at 8am... all of a sudden it was 3lb overweight!! Amongst the jokes of our robot eating too many ice cream sundays, we were a bit bewildered, but we were determined.

We pulled off the camera to make weight for our first match(and finally passed inspecition), and then hacked at it until we took 3lb of wire, pieces, holes, bolts etc off... we went back and asked for an official reweigh with the camera on, and made it. After that the inspector thanked me for coming back to reweigh!! Thanked me?!?!?

Thats what saddens me. In FIRST, it used to be that EVERYONE would do that, it wasnt rare, it was honest and expected. There was no guessing, no "I think that equals out." Every team wanted the challenge of meeting all the rules... sure we all grumbled about the scales, or about this or that rule, but in the end, we NEVER tried to skirt any of them especially weight.

FIRST is based on an honor system, its based on GP... we shouldnt have to go to "mandatory weigh ins" for each match, we shouldnt have to "anonymously" turn eachother in... we are all in this together, and there is no reason to try and go around the rules, or beg the inspector to pass you. But maybe thats just my "old age" talking!

::sigh:: Ok I just had to say that...

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by Kims Robot

(...) maybe thats just my "old age" talking!

Heh. I have shoes older than you.

My 2 cents. Sometimes, measuring is a way of keeping honest people honest. The old business term is, "inspect what you expect." A quick weight check in the queue waiting to compete would let teams know if they had a little weight creep. Knowing that this check is coming would help teams focus on weight issues as they tweak and fiddle. I'm not a rules freak here -- if a team weighed a little too much (like 1% over), I would give them a provisional pass on the grounds that they submitted to an official weight check before their next match.

This would require an additional scale, and maybe one additional volunteer, but it would keep the focus on weight during the competition.

Confession: We needed to add a reinforcing bar to the back of Maverick at PNW, and we already knew the bar in question would add 14 ounces to our weight. We pulled a globe motor off and put the bar on, and assumed our weight was still OK. I'm nearly sure we were OK, but we would have taken Maverick to the scales to make sure if we had known there were at least spot checks on weight.

Also, let me join my voice to those that think the specific 13-pound problem way up there could very well have been the battery. I would truly hate to think that someone was just plain old NASCAR cheating.

[Steve W]

I was present at Detroit when this happened. There was no battery on the robot.
I would also like to commend Ron on the way it was handled. He used the only options available at the time to full effect. The problem is that there are no rules about being over weight except that you must meet weight to compete. The team did that before their first elim match. Ron had no other option but to allow them to compete. He did however give a great speech to the team captain and I was sure that they would not compete. Boy I was surprised.

I guess the whole issue is based on GP and what it means to each team and member.There will be many more times that things like this will come up. We need to use this as a reminder that not everyone has bought into this mind set and that we need to lead by example to allow others to learn. We must always follow the rules and make sure that we are accountable to every other FIRST team. We can still change this world one step at a time. Let's start here by looking back at ourselves and see what we can do rather than condemning a team that has slipped a bit.