05 and maybe 07 were Hatch. By 2009, 4FX had taken over the software/hardware for the field controls/scoring. The reason for a late departure in 2009 was probably teams having control system trouble…
Here’s our criteria for this year:
- We’re going to two regionals.
- They have to be back-to-back - Maybe going home for two days and competing again is bad, but flying 6000 miles home then back in two weeks is just plain stupid.
- We drive from regional to regional. Less than 375 miles is doable, less than 600 miles is manageable, anything over that is stupid.
- We spend a lot on air tickets, so we have to go somewhere culturally relevant. Events in the middle of nowhere aren’t really an option.
- We like tough competition.
- We’re from a big city (~ 1.3 million people, 4 million metro area) and from a developing country. What most teams consider “big” or “violent” or “not suitable for students” isn’t really much for us.
A personal criteria that some mentors share and that will have to be relayed to the school is that we’d like to go to Week 1-2 events this year. Being that Carnival (country pretty much stops during that time) is on Week 1, that means less work/classes lost by mentors, which surely helps. Yes, shipping the robot on Tuesday and catching a plane on Friday/Saturday will be a bit stressful, but should be a better option.
This has a lot to do with our event choice this year. We hope this will be the first year we can go to more than our home regional, and since we didn’t go to Champs last year, we’re planning to use that priority to register this year. I went to Champs with my dad last year, and regional events (while still really cool) just don’t compare. We have a good number of seniors this year who are pretty devoted, so we’d like to go Champs. Also, with so many graduating, this would be a good way to get younger members excited about the team and keep some members coming in. And of course we want to try to make as much of a plan of this as possible, instead of qualifying in our week 5 home regional and having to raise the money and work out the logistics in 3 weeks. Lastly, Champs is far more convenient this year: we can probably drive to St. Louis, whereas Atlanta was definitely a plane trip.
Obviously, this is contingent on raising enough cash to register for more than one event. If we can, we plan to also register for the new Lake Superior regional in Duluth (week 2), since it’s close by and might get paid for by NASA.
This event schedule would somewhat ideal. We would have a week 2 away regional to right away test and compete with our new 'bot, then 3 weeks to implement changes for week 5 at home, where we might qualify, then another 4 weeks to Champs. 2 or 3 events, we’d get to Champs with a good amount of experience with our machine, and some touchups besides.
shucks! only west coast regional before Hawai‘i is San Diego. :ahh: we’ll have to wait and see if we can travel further???
Here’s Shaker’s process.
First, we go to the WPI Regional. It’s as close to a home regional as we have and we had a great time last year. We really like the small event size, the fact that it’s on a college campus (students can see the campus and potentially tour if need be) and that the field has some strong teams in it (last year included 20, 190, 230, 2079, 3280).
However, we have enough flexibility that we can strongly consider eschewing the WPI regional. Back when we thought we’d have a budget this year :rolleyes: one consideration was attending both Waterloo and GTR, using the days in between to tour college campuses, visit science museums, and generally be educational. Unfortunately we found this wasn’t really feasible this year, but it’s on my list of regional paths I want to take.
For our second regional, we pick anything we can drive to from Shaker High on Thursday at 3 AM. Connecticut, Finger Lakes, Boston, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Pittsburgh, and Long Island are the main choices here.
In addition to the issues EricH brought up, at least one event in the first week of 2005 had incorrect rankings (see this thread for more info), and in 2006 matches had to be restarted when teams scored too many balls in autonomous. I still remember when we paired up with 1625 for the eliminations and we each scored all 10 of our balls in autonomous, only to have the foghorn sound. Multiple times.
Sounds like Trenton/NYC would be a perfect fit.
I think a little love for FLR in Rochester, NY is needed.
We like outside teams!
Good event, but hours away from the next, so I doubt it would be accommodating for 383.
Shaker enjoyed going but the drive relative to WPI, Boston, and Trenton makes it not our first choice, and being only 1 week before WPI makes it taxing on everyone (except me who would have spring break for both!)
What I remember most about Hatch was the 2nd week regionals being as bad or worse then the 1st week because one thing would be fixed and 2 things broken. The Arizona regional (referenced in that thread) was week 2. The FLR regional was 1st week and had no rankings for most of the event.
Not that any of this Hatch discussion is relevant to choosing a regional for 2011.
Its too bad that for some teams, the home regional is the Most expensive, from a robot shipment expense standpoint.
I’m sure its a factor for those that do multiple regionals in a season.
Not Week 1 & Week 2, but consider Week 3-Chesapeake in Baltimore and Week 4-Washington DC. Lots of sightseeing opportunities in both locations. If you will have a vehicle and therefore can drive to the venues, you can save $$ on hotels by staying just outside of the city. (For example, lots of cheaper hotels near BWI airport, about 5 miles from Baltimore.)
Baltimore and DC are only about 35 miles apart.
Some things to think about were outlined in the FIRST Senior Mentor call* held on 9/9/10 by Nate Knauss with Frank Merrick: http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/content.aspx?id=10124
We also have a NEMO white paper on this topic: http://www.firstnemo.org/resources.htm
- Very few people seem to be tuning into our calls. The schedule is sent out to team contacts in advance; if you have suggestions for topics you’d like to learn more about, contact your local Senior Mentor or Regional Director (or drop me a message).
On behalf of the Chesapeake Regional Planning Committee, we hope you will consider coming to our event in Baltimore on March 17-19. We are the week before the DC Regional, and less than an hour away by car or train. It would our pleasure to have your team join us. A number of our local teams do both events and we will do our best to simplify the transport of robots from one to the other. If you have any questions about the area or our event, please let me know. We hope to see you in March!