Those look pretty spacious compared to say GLR’s pit setup…
lots more room there then at NJ this year.
I am ot happy with how FIRS set up the pits this year with the high/low number setup. It’s very hard to find teams. If they do this at the championship it will be near impossible to find teams and make scouting very very difficult.
I must also say Buckeye’s pits were more spread out than FLR’s pits which were for some reason all squished together even though there was like 50 feet of empty space to the south towards the shop.
Before I say anything too much about pits I must say that I truely enjoyed the Buckeye venue. I like this Regional. It is well run and the town has some great things going for it. I also like the fact that there is a Team Social for all to enjoy! Kudos to the planning committee and all those that helped.
About pit size, dimensions and room (or lack of): At Buckeye we had a corner pit and had more room (or so it seemed) than we did at GLR. I don’t know if FIRST has a “standard” for pit dimensions, but I’d like to see it increased if they do. If we preach so much about safety…then to insure that we are not tripping over everything (safety hazard) we need to come up with a solution to allow easy movement in our pits (both inside the pit as well as the isles). After GLR I went out this past week and purchased some shelving and a new tool box to help consolidate pit “clutter” which drives me absolutely crazy!:mad: I will continue to try to maximize on the minimum that we get for our pits. We are working on solutions to make the compact size of pits work to our advantage. As you look around and see the vast amount of stuff we drag in to support our robots it truly becomes necessary to give some thought to this subject.
As far as team number placement, yes it becomes very difficult to locate teams BUT I understand that we need to mix low number teams (older teams with experience) with those high number teams (newer team still learning) so as to be able to offer help and guidance. Just think if we had such a rigid system that place teams in the same numeric order at every Regional. We could easily find each other but then we’d never have new pit neighbors to meet and become friends with.
My 2 cents
Well if we were never next to 1714 Jeff Huspen would never have been as available to help them fix their robot just like he may not as been as available to help 1765 in FLR in 2006 if they weren’t next to us. It’s easier to notice you neighbors problems when you are witnessing them firsthand all day long then on the other side of the pits (it also helps to have a robot that doesn’t require alot of reapirs).
They did that last year at Las Vegas and this year at UTC. The only reason I can see for this is that the rookies have much easier access to some veterans who can help them with any problems they have. It would also allow them to share resources much easier. Instead of going across the pits to borrow a tool that may have been left at home or to grab a programmer, they just need to lean over into the neighboring pit and tap someone on the shoulder.
I agree, though, it does make it hard to find teams sometimes. At NJ, they stuck with just doing highest->lowest.
Chesapeake, IMHO, had the best pit layout I’d seen, roof leaks notwithstanding. You’d have a whole row of teams in numerical order, then shuffle the rows around until you had a proper mix. So if, say, I was looking for 75, I knew they’d be in the same row as 007–same if I was looking for a rookie team (they’d be in the high-numbered row). It was the perfect blend of mixing the rookies with the veterans and having a layout where you could actually find folks.
It may look like there was more room, but compared to GLR there is about half of the room… It was very cramped, but due to having all of the pits in the actual stadium the ventilation was much better, and you could at least breathe, and not have your goggles fog up. I think that overall this was an amazing, and I know that our team will definitely be back.
Man I wish there was room like this at every regional. Detroit was pretty bad as it usually is. I hope West Michigan is a little bit more spacious than it was last year.
The place with the most room is the championships.
Compared to the regionals it’s like a highway down there.
I second that one.
PNW had tons of space. The aisles between the pits were big enough to fit another row of pits We also had a complete practice field, which helps when its everyone’s first regional.
I thought the pits at Buckeye were quite roomy, compared with other set-ups we’ve had. I will say, though, that whatever team(s) your pit is next to makes a big difference in how large or small a pit feels. When one of your neighbors doesn’t mind your team spilling into theirs during a rushed time between matches, it really helps when there are multiple things that need to get done in a short amount of time, and it somehow makes the pit space seem bigger.
JH
Buckeye was definitely roomier than NJ, probably owing to the lack of a hockey rink wall. I also did like seeing the rookies next to the veterans, there was considerable value there.
The venues for Buckeye and NJ are remarkably similar. Buckeye is a bit cleaner, and they have real faucets on their simks (not those hokey ‘press and get 5 seconds of water’ thinguies), but access to the floor from the stands could be improved.
The aisles at Buckeye were definitely wider than NJ. But, that photo is misleading, the pits were almost empty at the time.
Don
Wow this is crazy, I can give you almost an exact time for when this picture was taken. It was at lunch on Saturday, probably 12:30ish. The reason I know, is because that group of students at the botom right are the drive teams for 537, 494 and 70 this was our strategy meeting. I thought the pits were a step up from the mess at GLR, but they still could be easier to navigate.
Spot on Jack! Really a good eye for detail you have! You are absolutely correct that that’s our alliance partners working out the details! Now that I’ve look at the picture again, this time a little bit more closer…I see that I’m eating lunch on those wonderful trash can tops that double as an elegant dining table! For that reason alone I’ll be back to Buckeye, but will bring a linen table cloth! Care to join me?
I CAN SEE MY LAPTOP FROM HERE!!! :yikes:
Anyhow… yeah Buckeye is just an all around awesome regional… only complaint is that it had the team social at the rock n roll hall of fame instead of the science museum… thats ok, our team had fun by figuring what the circumference, and diameter of the circular planter was in front of the museum… then we figured how many laps it would take to cover one mile, we decided it was too far to go, so we decided to do a cumulative mile which came out to an acceptible 1.5 laps… so we all ran 1.5 laps.
Of course our bus wasnt there yet so we decided to take a guess at how many window panes there were in one side of the museum’s glass pyramid type thingy. After that… we did 1/2 base times height and divided by the area of the triangle to figure that there were about 410 panes of glass… i didnt win the bet… 
Is 1024 geeky or what??? :ahh:
-q
I won’t lie, team 537 was rather disappointed with both the pits and the queue at this regional. The pits felt cramped compared to Wisconsin, where about 20 of the 52 teams were in the hallway outside of the actual arena. My biggest complaint was the queue, where it was almost a maze to get to the field, not to mention the line doubling back on itself and teams running into each other. There was plenty of space on the floor to provide a much better queue experience.
Nice eye spotting our little strategy meeting during lunch, it was great to work with both of your teams! We would love to see you two back in Wisconsin next year.
The pits at Buckeye were way better than at GLR We had a corner spot up front. It doesn’t get better than that, except for the trafic trying to cut through, and our close proximity to the speakers, which was pure torture.
Did anyone count the number of times in a row the exact same announcement was made?