As we are now finished with week 4, I would love to hear how often this misfortune takes place.
As teams are now attending more and more tournaments, the rope used to climb via a velcro attachment to the climber are getting frayed more and more. This makes them cling to the retaining velcro just a bit to vigorously.
This week in Sacramento I saw multiple teams miss their climb because the rope did not release freely from the retaining velcro on the Airship. It would fall just below the rail, outside the Airship and not fall to climbing position. This causes the Pilot to make a decision: Reach out and release it, thus risk getting a Yellow Card, or just stand by and watch a team miss a climb.
From my interpenetration of S07 I assumed pilots would be able to reach over the edge of the airship to unstick the rope from the Velcro as long as the rope did not fall below the deck of the airship.
Our rope has a velcro bottom to it. We made the point of specifically asking the head ref about this situation. If the rope has not fallen below the deck of the airship, everything’s fair game*. If it has, you cannot touch the rope without triggering a foul, however, the velcro release mechanism is not the rope. If you can free the rope by, for example, vigorously shaking the retaining velcro, you’re still good.
The * here is this – if how you reach out is not “safe” you’ll get a foul for the unsafe action. Put another way, don’t jump on the rail and lean over with 1/2 your body.
Our pilot grabs the retaining strap, physically separates the rope from the retaining strap by pulling apart the rope and the strap, and then drops the rope over the side, ensuring that the rope falls to its full length
Not really an interpretation if it’s specifically mentioned in the rules. From what OP describes, it sounds like some teams at Sac just didn’t know the rules thoroughly enough.
There is no rule that prevents you from sticking your hand out of the airship, to ensure your rope is dropped. This was clarified and revised after week 1 events.
Not sticking your hand out for gears is still in place.
We had similar concerns at San Diego and Sacramento. We tried to discuss it with referees at both events and were told “just because it doesn’t say you can’t doesn’t mean you should.”
This did cost us a match at both events. We’d appreciate further clarification from FIRST. It seems like the referees we encountered are going off of the rule’s headliner text rather than the wording of the rule itself.
We trained our pilot to be careful when releasing our rope for this reason. I think we only missed a single climb out of all our attempted ones between both regionals.
S07 D only gives an example of what would be considered a deployed rope. Though the OP’s problem seems to be resolved, I was just curious if FIRST had a concrete answer.
Pilot training issue here. I can see where the problem comes from but the pilots need to be aware of the issue, especially if they are your own pilot. Most robots do not need the full 30 seconds so I’d say take the extra second or so to fully separate the rope fully from the retaining velcro before tossing over the edge.
In the worst case scenario, the pilots need to be aware of their situation (how many yellow cards do they have if any, and can they risk this bot in question not climbing given your opponents and the score of the match at the time).
