Many inexpensive playing fields

[archiver]

Posted by Frank Toussaint, Engineer on team #111, Wildstang, from Wheeling and Rolling Meadows and Motorola .

Posted on 5/7/99 5:07 PM MST


In Reply to: I 've got a con posted by Mike King on 5/6/99 5:13 PM MST:




: Seriously, it would confuse the living bejebbers outta teams on where they should be, never mind the traffic nightmare it would create with FIRST trying to cooridnate all the fields.

: Also, your forgetting something. Each field, (in this yeas comp) needs 4 Rnet's each. There would be a ceiling on how many Rnet's (or similar devices) FIRST could afford, and i'm not sure how many channels are in the spectrum.

Mike,

Don't sell these teams short; they will find the playing field.

FIRST has not had to purchase Rnets; Motorola (my employer) has donated them. I believe they have 800 channels.

Below are the number of teams participating in the nationals plus a projection given a 37 percent annual growth rate:
1992 28
1993 25
1994 44
1995 48
1996 74
1997 113
1998 166
1999 203
2000 278
2001 381
2002 522
2003 715
2004 980
2005 1342
2006 1839
2007 2519
2008 3451
2009 4728
2010 6478
2011 8874
2012 12158
2013 16657
2014 22819
2015 31263
2016 42830
2017 58677
2018 80387
2019 110130
2020 150879