This was both mine and my school’s first FIRST competition and I was amazed at the help our team recieved from other teams. Neither of our two two engineers were able to travel to St. Louis with us so it was just the students in the pits. Throughout our many problems (we used seven different drivetrains before we finally moved more than six feet) many teams helped by loaning parts, tools, knowledge, and engineers. We probably had about 15 different engineers helping us at different times. I would especially like to think teams 906, 447, 45, 476, 1018, 1028 and several others that I can’t remember right off hand. They saw our engineerless team and ‘adopted’ us. Several of these teams even helped us even when they had severe problems with their own robot.
When we paged asking for a part or tool, there were always about 5 teams running over with what we need. I have never seen a competion of any kind where teams help each other out like they do in FIRST. Even though our robot didn’t move until they were announcing final call for our first match on Sat. morning, we still had fun and learned a lot from all the helping teams.
Thanks to all that helped Team #1020.
Josh