Due to funding and grant-related issues, my school wasn’t able to order the High Stakes field equipment until mid-September. I just learned that the field equipment kit (donuts/targets/ladder/etc) is on back order until mid or late October which puts us in a bind for our November competition.
In the mean time, we have the one donut from the Welcome Kit and I’m reaching out to my regional RobotEvents coordinator to see if we can get a target and a few more donuts for testing purposes.
Does anyone know when VEX ran out of the field equipment kits?
I’m trying to plan ahead for next year.
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I believe the kits stopped shipping around August or early September.
As for when to order them, its best to pre-order them around March or April to guarantee your organization to have them when school starts.
Here was when last year’s fields started collecting pre-orders:
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I have to echo the OP’s complaint. Our school district shuts down purchasing in mid-March every year, so we can’t even blind preorder the next year’s game set if it isn’t offered before late April. The result this year is that I have several teams unable to develop and test, because they don’t have the elements to work with. (I know about the 3D models out there, and my thanks to the folks who created them, but they don’t weigh or handle like the real thing would.)
By the way, the latest availability estimate (given to me today) is early November. Just in time for the Thanksgiving break. :-/
Short-term, can VEX sell a few mobile goals and rings to get teams through? (And by the way, it’s pretty cheesy IMHO to only send one ring to a school that registers multiple teams at full price.)
Long-term, can VEX open pre-sales earlier, so this doesn’t bite schools again?
Thank you.
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Depressing to hear that November is the latest estimate. I’m going to try and repurpose a Tipping Point target from a couple of years ago to simulate this year’s model. It is weird that they don’t send at least one donut per registered team.
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If you are trying to find a mobile goal to hold you over for the next few weeks, @1810T-Colby’s 3d Printable model has worked well for us! We were unable to print a flexible top, but for purely testing purposes it has seemed to work.
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Thanks to all who posted about the CAD files. Our field equipment finally arrived (ordered in September, shipped on October 15th).
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High Stakes Field Elements are finally back in stock!
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