Greetings Teams,
We’re having some snowy weather here, but it’s not slowing us down. The “elves” on the first floor are building field components while the fourth floor “elves” are helping get late teams registered for kickoffs and competitions.
Blair Hundertmark (he’s an Emcee at Championship) had a really good suggestion this week. When you’re building your cart this season, make sure to put your team number on it. Blair points out that once teams carry their robots out onto the field, the volunteers working the event often don’t know who’s empty cart is whose. If your cart is numbered, the Emcee can return your flag or prop during game play without having to search for a team member who isn’t busy driving the robot and the Field Reset Crew can keep track of carts when they have to be moved. It would save a lot of time and aggravation, so please, take a minute and put your team number on your cart.
We will have final information for you soon on the new crate shipping overage rule. Every time a team ships crate that weighs over 400lb the expense is charged against the total FedEx donation (for those of you who haven’t heard, FedEx donates a dollar amount and when it runs out –like it did just before championship last year – FIRST has to come up with the difference.) The $50 fee we charged teams for overweight crates in the past doesn’t cover the expense any more (the fee has held steady over the years, the cost of shipping has not). What’s taking so long is we’re looking for a fair way to charge teams who exceeded the crate weight while allowing some margin of error for differences in scale calibration.
If your team has started to meet please keep in mind you can’t design, fabricate or assemble any elements intended for the final robot prior to Kickoff. I know the 2010 rules won’t be released until kickoff, but I don’t expect the intent of this rule to change dramatically for 2010. More details can be found in of Section 8 of the 2009 Competition Manual here.
31 Days until Kickoff
See you there!
http://frcdirector.blogspot.com/2009/12/working-in-winter-wonderland.html
