I saw that and I agree, that was pretty messed up what they did - it's their fault for not using the correct size hook as shown on the scioly tutorial for making a CW.2win wrote:I wholeheartedly agree.GeoChamp96 wrote:It might be just me, but this might have been the least-organized State competition in a while.
And like, this is minor in comparison to the wind problem for Storm the Castle, but one of their weights was actually >15cm tall, which kind of screwed my team over because the guys weren't prepared for that (although it was kind of the guys' fault for not leaving extra space.) But when we went to ask to measure the weight's height, the proctor took it and put it in the 15cm cube... diagonally... Not saying he was wrong and we were right, but really, that was just super cheesy.
And div. B should look out for Cinco, they look really good right now.
I also don't think they enforced the energy rule that they clarified on the website well at all either. They looked to see if the arm was not moving while in the LOCKED POSITION. Although my arm was energy balanced slightly favoring the backside, it could have been so frontloaded with mass and they wouldn't have even noticed. The dude just said, "i could tell just by looking that your arm was balanced", which doesn't make sense at all. I wonder if the other FATs and got the energy rule checked properly... Also, that wind was so variable throughout the day - at times it would favor teams at variable magnitudes, and it would also change directions, screwing up calibrations and predictions everywhere. I asked the event coordinator why in the world they would hold it outside with such gusts, and he said some team told them that they would fire 30m, but I'm pretty sure that didn't happen. I suggested that they just lower the CW to make everyone fire shorter distances so that they could hold the event inside, but they said that would be impossible.
Also, apparently gravity vehicle had a bunch of rules broken/teams that got tier 2'd who shouldn't have. Maglev vehicles got time to accelerate before the photogate, favoring teams with longer tracks, which isn't supposed to happen.
With boomilever, I also tested on the far right station - I meticulously made mine so it was balanced and everything was touching the wall at the starting position, but apparently my compression member was about half a centimeter away from the wall at that station, meaning that when weight was applied at the distal end, the compression members angled upwards, potentially causing it to break much earlier than expected. Thankfully, I caught it before hand and loosened the bolt, increasing the stress on the base and tensions members to make a right angle compression. Idk, that could have just been a design flaw or something wrong with my testing station I have at home, but since others are bringing it up too..
Lastly, that small 16ft room for elastic launched glider was a real problem for a lot of teams; hugely different from what they had at regionals and invitationals which were typically held in gyms.
....really janky building event friday, but I guess with a brand new venue, some wrinkles just need to be ironed as the years go on.
