Question about the order of the Track Meet events

Q: I was wondering if you knew the event layout in order for the track meet this year?  The reason I ask is my team was considering entering into several events but we only have 1 kit and needed to know if we had enough time to disassemble after 1 event and build for the next?

A: Well of course you can always enter the bridge and speed build without impacting your robot, we put those in there for that very reason.  In general (hey we have technical difficulties as well) we start events as follows:

The first three take the longest and are started one after the other (once one is STARTED, we start the next) so all three of these will be running concurrently.

• Slope Climber (takes a while)
• Strongest (also takes a while
• Fastest (takes a while because of so many entrants)

As the above are finished we start up the middle three, but since we don’t know what order they will finish it is hard to predict at what order they get going.  A lot depends on the number of entrants in each event.  If we only have 5 in the slope competition it might not be bad, but if we have 12 then it will take a lot longer, that kind of thing.

These three tend to be very quick and if you were in two of them, you would ask the official at one to go first and go last at the other.  Normally the teams all go once, then go a second time, then go a third time to get their highest score (in case of mishaps, breakages, bad batteries, etc).  But if you need to be in two places we can let you go once, twice, three times and then head off to the next event, as long as you understand you might end up with a problem three times in a row without time to fix.  We’ll be as open as possible.

• Table Clearing
• Delivery Mission
• Steeplechase

The last three are done after everything else is done and they are done one at a time, so no overlap with the first 6 events.

• Speed Build
• Ping Pong Shot Put
• Bridge

If there is ANY chance of purchasing a couple of extra motors so you won’t need to rebuild the robot, only swap the NXT that would save you a LOT of time between events.  Motors direct from LEGOeducation.us are $19.95 each, so for $40 plus shipping you could take care of that problem. And while extra wires would be good too, those are easy to swap when you swap the NXT.

And check eBay and bricklink.com for motors as well.  Although I’ve seldom found electronic components on Bricklink for less than the new price, so buyer beware.  But a great place for most everything else.  I saw one seller from the Czech Republic selling 15 used motors for as low as $14 each.  (Czechoslovakia is one of LEGOs main manufacturing countries) but not sure of shipping cost or time for shipping… food for thought.