A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel

[Gary Dillard]

Originally Posted by yaron

The practice field inside the pit area is not legal. In 2009 it was identical to the surface that FIRST Israel declared to be 95% close to the official Lunacy surface. In 2010 the tower was constructed from wooden square beams and not 1.5 inches pipes. In addition not even one gate and target were available. The carpet that was brought by one of the team was two small to even practice with one robot.

Just so you are aware, FIRST does not supply a separate practice field for the regionals. From The Competition Manual:

3.9.6 Practice Field
Many events will have practice fields on which teams can share practice time. Adhere to the system in place, work with the schedule and make every effort to keep the area safe, both in and around the perimeter.

The practice fields are generally supplied by one or more of the local teams; the regional committee coordinates to see what teams have available. The 4 x 4 posts that you saw on the tower are from the specification for the low-cost version of the field found on the FIRST website; as you are aware, they are not very representative of the actual field elements but would be sufficient for some testing if you don't grab the bar. As an example, our team wasn't going to go through the tunnel so we didn't build it, but we were grabbing the vertical bars so we had to make a tower that was more representative of the field than the low cost version.

In the future, I recommend you coordinate with your regional committee and the other teams to see what field components can be made available.

I appreciate your taking the time to detail all of your frustrations. We are listening. We are extremely proud of the efforts you are making and I look forward to seeing some of your teams at the Championship.