[BB]: Regional Variations & Bagging It

[smcmahon]

Well I can now confirm that Pittsburgh will be a 2-day Regional. They just informed me of that as I registered for it. So. Load-in/practice will be Friday morning at Pittsburgh, and qualifiers will indeed start mid/late morning on Friday.

[Paul Copioli]

Did the registration say load in on Friday morning or are you assuming?

I am curious because load in Thursday evening would make it the exact model that the districts followed.

[smcmahon]

I guess I made an educated assumption because it said that Pittsburgh was going to be a compressed 2-day Regional this year, on March 12-13 2010. With neither of those days being Thursday, I'm assuming Friday (morning) will be load-in day.

[Paul Copioli]

The reason I ask is that the Michigan districts were classified as 2 day events and we still had Thursday night for load in.

[dtengineering]

Originally Posted by rjmah

I wonder if they really thought about having both Canadian Regionals as Bag and Tag. I think US teams would still need to ship their robot to those events. I don't think border officials would let any sealed bag cross the border, no matter what kind of paperwork accompanied it.

Well having crossed the border in the OTHER direction for the past several years, I wouldn't be too worried about going to a Bag and Tag event in the states. First of all, I would have no problem unbagging the robot for the border agents to inspect and then bagging it up afterwards. That is allowed... just log it. It will take some extra time, especially if you run into a particularly picky border guard, but there are lots of mechanical competitions where machines cross the border to compete every weekend... drag races, rowing events, VEX tournaments.... if you allow some time, have your papers in order and speak nicely to the border guards there is rarely a big issue. In fact they haven't asked to open our tool boxes once, going either way!

Of course if we were planning to go to Toronto this year, instead of Seattle, we wouldn't be "bringing the robot with us" unless we could either make special luggage allowances with our airline. What we would do is crate up the robot and ship it to one of the very friendly and helpful Ontario teams who would hold on to it for us until we arrived. That isn't so far from what we used to do, as the FedEx donation was useless for shipping within Canada, so we had to organize our own shipping on the Vancouver - Toronto leg anyway.

Finally, as much as I like having more matches, I really did like having lots of practice time on Thursday (especially once we could "bump" into lines when other teams didn't show) as it let me give lots of students a chance to be involved with a drive team and for some of the juniors to get a taste of being on the field. (Our limiting factor on practice matches in Seattle last year was that our motors were overheating...)

What really concerns me about starting matches on Thursday isn't the preparedness of the teams, but the ability of the inspectors to get robots through tech by noon... even if the machines are ALL ready to go at 8:00am Thursday the inspectors will be very rushed.... and the time for the field volunteers and systems to settle in to a routine.

But you know... if we'd been doing things this way for years and someone told us they were getting RID of bagging and requiring FedEx shipping, or cutting down our matches from 10 to 7 so there could be more practice time... well, we'd be just as concerned.

This will all work out in the end.

Jason

[Robert Cawthon]

Originally Posted by Cory

Instead of starting at noon on Thursday, why not run until 8 pm on Friday as well?

It would require longer hours for the volunteers, but I don't think there is a single team that would rather cut half of practice thursday vs staying later on Friday.

There might be other considerations like OT for venue staff. Maybe FIRST has looked into it and deemed it undo able. It would be nice if it was possible though.

True, but I think you hit the nail on the head when you talked about the venue staff. I know for a fact that we need to be out of our venue by a certain time due to contractual considerations. I do not know if the contract could be altered or how much it would cost, but right off hand, I would think that it would not be reasonable to extend the day. I am sure, however, that the volunteers would gladly do it.

[WCarvalho]

We usually compete at Silicon Valley and Sacramento. SVR, March 18-20, is a traditional regional with shipping. Sacramento, March 31-April 1, is a compressed, mid-week "Bag and Tag" event. Based on what we've been told by FIRST, we expect to be uncrating/unbagging our robot at Sacramento sometime on March 30 with practice matches late that afternoon. Because of the timing, I'm wondering if we'll be allowed to bag the robot at SVR and bring it back to school, especially if there's one of those 8-hour windows for unbagging it before Sacramento.

And do I understand correctly that the robot goes into a bag and then into its crate? We're in the process of designing and building a new crate that will be part of our pit structure, and this sounds like something we should consider.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by WCarvalho

We usually compete at Silicon Valley and Sacramento. SVR, March 18-20, is a traditional regional with shipping. Sacramento, March 31-April 1, is a compressed, mid-week "Bag and Tag" event. Based on what we've been told by FIRST, we expect to be uncrating/unbagging our robot at Sacramento sometime on March 30 with practice matches late that afternoon. Because of the timing, I'm wondering if we'll be allowed to bag the robot at SVR and bring it back to school, especially if there's one of those 8-hour windows for unbagging it before Sacramento.

And do I understand correctly that the robot goes into a bag and then into its crate? We're in the process of designing and building a new crate that will be part of our pit structure, and this sounds like something we should consider.

Wasn't there a Bill's Blog post talking about changes to crates or something? Sorry if that's totally wrong but I seem to recall something.

[WCarvalho]

I'll look through the blogs. Thanks.
<a bit later>
August 13: "Heads up, Section 4 of the competition manual (Robot Shipping) may change this year. FRC is working with a FedEX packing engineer to review our current crate criteria in an effort to improve efficiency in shipping."

Any idea when new specs will be available?

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by WCarvalho

We're in the process of designing and building a new crate that will be part of our pit structure,...

Even if it does meet the new specifications hinted at in August, you won't necessarily be able to bring a crate to a "bag" regional. Depending on the venue, the available entrances for teams could be too small for a robot crate.

[smcmahon]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

The reason I ask is that the Michigan districts were classified as 2 day events and we still had Thursday night for load in.

Paul- I guess that could hold true for Pittsburgh 2010. From what I understand, Pittsburgh is getting a new Regional Director this season. Hopefully we'll be hearing from that person soon with further details on this new format.

[roborat]

I hope it is an early load in for thursday evening. It will be a mess trying to get everyone into the service door on Friday morning and have any time to just get organized in the pits before qualifying starts. The loading dock is not very user friendly for trailers and 30 teams trying to get into it.

[ATannahill]

I don't know how we got so far without thinking of this simple answer of how to get each team 10 qualification matches.

Spoiler for Yes, it needs that much suspense:

We will have more than six teams to a 6 minute period.

[WCarvalho]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

Even if it does meet the new specifications hinted at in August, you won't necessarily be able to bring a crate to a "bag" regional. Depending on the venue, the available entrances for teams could be too small for a robot crate.

Luckily, Sacramento is at the UC Davis ARC again so access shouldn't be an issue. But you made me wonder if we might need a pallet jack to get the crate to our pit. Guess we'll have to wait for all the details on "Bag and Tag" events to be announced.

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by rtfgnow

I don't know how we got so far without thinking of this simple answer of how to get each team 10 qualification matches.

Spoiler for Yes, it needs that much suspense:

We will have more than six teams to a 6 minute period.

Quoted for truth.