2009 BAE Granite State Regional

[Tim Baird]

Originally Posted by TheDark

Yeah, I was quite irritated at the refs for not having updated the rankings based on the last match.

Hey guys,
I've been reading and listening to a lot of people's frustrations about how the past 3 days went. As someone who was physically on the field working, I share your frustration and feel your pain from the double-selecting mishap.

However, please keep in mind that this is a brand new system and that the game play generates a lot of static electricity. I received a zap every time I had to disconnect a trailer this weekend. As we saw, after the airlocks were taped up and water was lightly applied to the carpeting, the system improved tremendously as robots were no longer discharging themselves when they went to drop off empty cells.

When airing your thoughts and displeasure, please try to remember that some of the best crew in FIRST were working that competition. They put in many hours trying to get everything up and running. The refs, FTA, and scoring crew are not out to spoil your day. Trust me, they'd rather see every match played perfectly once and go home sooner. Just be a little patient while all the kinks are getting worked out.

Just my two cents.
Thanks.

[paulamayfour]

I think one of the most frustrating parts of the regonal was that the officials would never expalin what exactly went wrong. There were some matches that went on without problems, but then there would be an error and when we asked what it was it couldnt be explained to us. Also in matches where something clearly went wrong, like robots not being able to move from the begining of the match, the match was played all the way through then replayed. They let it finish which took more time and caused more confusion and frustration. Also when they re picked alliances it took about a half an hour to announce the re-picking. Many alliances had already stratigised and the first matches had already been called for cuing. Alliance pairings is such an important aspect of the competition and they should be checked over before doing the picking. They were not done right and it was fair that they were redone, but the problem should not have come up in the first place.

I understand it was a new system, and that there could be bugs in it, but teams can not do anything to fix the problem. The problems were also talked about as being what the world is like, however teams could not fix this problem and could not have prevented it. It was the responsability of the regional to make sure systems worked and putting it to the system alone and the way problems were handled made this in my opinion a very poorly run regoinal.