https://firstfrc.blob.core.windows.net/frc2017/Manual/TeamUpdates/TeamUpdate16.pdf
Was somewhat hoping for a longer game update to fix many of the issues brought up 
Here’s to hoping for a better week 2!
New England bumped their Dean’s List finalists up to the maximum value.
They edited the porthole rule again. At week 1 events, grabbing gears outside the porthole was ok, but now it’s not.
Did they? Grabbing gears being OK seems like a stretch interpretation of the blog post’s wording (a gear is not part of the carriage, it rides on it), though to be fair the situation didn’t allow for time to ensure consistency across events.
They did at least based on the refs’ interpretation at our week 1 event.
Out of curiosity, why would a district (Michigan) choose to award the absolute minimum number of chairman’s award teams and engineering inspiration teams when most other regions are sending their maximum? That’s a very odd choice to make.
Excellent! Thank you for responding to earlier input, NE FIRST and FIRST HQ!
Very happy to see this change! The students deserve the recognition.
And our refs interpretation matched the Update 16. It was definitely something they needed to clear up.
If FiM/Gail could choose less than the minimum, they would. Take it up with Gail.
I think he was asking for the reasoning of sending the minimum. Is it because they want to send more teams based off points? Is it to make the judges’ job easier? Is it to reduce the length of the award ceremony at the state championship?
Grabbing gears outside the porthole was never ok under most interpretations of the blog post and the last version of the S07 rules. This update simply makes it explicit.
If the head ref doesn’t demonstrate the lift and S07 violations during a driver’s meeting, definitely ask for one.
Exactly. I’m not about to criticize it without understanding the reasoning. All too often their are considerations for decisions like this that we don’t know.