paper: Stop the Stop Build

[Allison K]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

The withholding allowance rules also apply during unbag windows. You cannot introduce more than 30 pounds of non-COTS parts machined outside of the window, during the unbag window. You also get just one withholdling allowance for both the unbag window and the district event the same week as the window (District unbag times are tied to competing at events) - so it's not like you can put 30 pounds on at the shop and 30 pounds more at the event.

You can introduce as many parts as you want that were machined during the unbag window, into the bag.

While definitely a sound interpretation of the 2016 withholding rules, that sounds awful to try to keep track of in the context of a weekly unbag period... Uh, how many pounds did we add on last week? Was that part made inside or outside of the window? What's the total weight of parts we made outside of the window between last event and our next one?

Would a withholding even be necessary with a weekly unbag period? I suppose that might hurt teams that use withholding to keep their control system out so that they can use it on a practice/twin or test bed without having to buy duplicates of all the (rather costly for some teams) components. Would also get messy with regards to sending out parts to a sponsor... since it couldn't be withholding and would be impractical to try to have the machining done during the same window of the time the team is meeting (and even if it was practical, that's an awkward interpretation of unbag time).