2010 Lesson Learned: The Negative

[Foster]

Originally Posted by Cynette

Little things - not showing the Chairman's videos at each regional. We are zero for two for the past two years at different regionals. And the list of WFFA nominees should be shown as part of the WFFA presentation.

Add me to the list of people that want to see the Chairmans Videos and the WFFA and Deans List nominees. Or publish their names in the official event program. Or better yet, do both. Those people work hard, a few moments of fame!

Originally Posted by Cynette

I am not a fan of the red and blue bumpers, but I have to admit that they win out over the flags! But my team really missed it's red camo bumpers. Or even the choice of putting red camo numbers on the bumpers. We would have made sure they were visible from 300 feet, so I still don't understand why we were limited to a solitary color.

Bumpers: I like the bumpers and after 6 years we now have bumper design and assembly down to a science. They are the same size, they mount / dismount in < 2 mins, etc. (We are thinking of having a three day class in Bermuda to teach these valuable skills, contact me off list if you want to go ) We buy pool noodles during the summer and stock them up. After three years it's a good bet we will need them next year.

We luck out because our school colors are blue/gold so we do gold numbers on the blue bumpers and it looks fine for our demo bots. But I feel for the teams that have massive color schemes like 1511 Red/Black camo and Moe's "Moe Green" not being able to have the bumpers match.

For VRC we have these little license plates that go on the robot. In FRC we could get 8 12" long (4 red, 4 blue) iron on fabric strips in the correct "FIRST Red and FIRST blue" colors with the team numbers in "approved contrasting colors" of the "required height and brush stroke" in the KoP. Make bumpers with your custom colors / design, iron on the numbers and you are good to go.

After this many years we should have bumpers down to a science. And there are more "mature" teams than rookies so we should be able to share the knowledge.

Bumpers save robot lives, but also I'm happier doing a demo in our sponsors space knowing I'm unlikely to leave huge gouges in their office walls.