With 400 teams how many fields will be at each Championship ?
Six
6 divisions at each championship.
https://frc-events.firstinspires.org/
I’m not sure if there will be one practice field per division or if it will be 1 practice field shared between 2 divisions, but I’m sure that will be announced before next week if it hasn’t already been clarified.
6 fields with the winners moving onto the Einstein field
FIRST Championship app shows 2 full practice fields and 6 regional style wooden quarter fields.
I wonder what the limiting factor is with practice fields. I’m sure every team would agree that more is better (especially this year with testing red and blue side autonomous modes).
Sheer availability of fields? The practice fields are full fields, I think they’re pulled from trucks just like the full fields. If so, you’re talking about 9-10 trucks, depending on the number of fields for Einstein. I think there were only 11 or 12 trucks this year. I think there just might not be enough fields available to reasonably do any more practice fields.
Also, minus refs, it also takes a full field staff to run them. So the volunteer capacity, even for something like Champs, goes up a lot with practice fields.
Also, it appears that the space where the extra practice fields were was replaced with a seating area for some reason. That’s cool, but I’m pretty sure there’s a certain Tech Challenge that could put their pits in there, and then have two competition fields on the unused areas left by the absence of two FRC fields.
This is only true if FIRST continues to insist that practice fields should run as if they were real matches, which is something I am pretty sure almost nobody prefers, and it still amazes me that FIRST seems to think practice fields are for actually practicing match strategy and not for testing random things over and over.
And from the list I saw they are still recruiting lots of volunteers to staff the practice fields in both cities.
The practice field is not a desired assignment. They would much rather work a field.
Could someone share when the practice fields open on Thursday.
If it’s like previous years, it should be open more or less as long as the pits are open (might open a little later and close a little earlier for setup / cleanup).
Last year, there were two tether fields where you could be on field doing “random stuff” and two wireless fields where you could run two full matches in your 15 minute time period. Both types of fields were used, but 4 fields was more than was needed.
That said, there are plenty of teams that want to play matches on full fields.
The practice field is hard work and you don’t get to watch most matches your team might be in.
That said, you get to see robots from more than one field, you get to see teams try new stuff and you get to interact with those teams. Not to mention, someone has to do it and there are no small volunteer positions. There’s also the part where the practice field is closed Saturday, so you’re free to enjoy the playoffs and Einstein undistracted.
All teams in Houston today should have some papers with the official practice match schedule, as well as a paper detailing the practice field opening times and arrangements. I don’t remember the opening times, but I do remember that the practice fields this year are first-come first-served, no time reservations.
The field setups for both champs are not one owned by FIRST, iirc. I imagine FIRST has 8 fields at both events (6 divisions+Einstein+backup) plus 2 fields owned by a district system. That’s still 20 fields.
Considering the crunch for volunteers at both events, might not have been worth the trouble to ship 1 or 2 more fields, build them, and try to staff (and maintain! That is unfortunately very important this year) was not worth the trouble.
Iirc we ran ten minute cycles last year.
Last year there were fixed defenses on the practice fields, which meant no need for field reset. Hard to do that this year.
I heard the plan was to glue all the fuel in the hoppers and permanently attach a full suite of gears to the airship.
Just a rumor though.