Hey I’m new to the high school VRC program. Anyone know any good tips /tricks for new competitors?
This can be a forum where yall can spread ideas and stuff 
I’ll start : always double check you download your current auton program before skills/matches. (happened to us last year during states lmao)
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Make sure battery is charged and plugged in.
Make sure motors are plugged in.
Read the rules.
Don’t set anything on fire.
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Don’t forget “have a nice stay”
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rule 1 of vex robotics, screws are to be screwed upward
change my mind
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thank judges after interview?
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consistently work on an engineering notebook
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Don’t tell the judges that “I’m busy” when you’re obviously not.
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in general it’s best not to make any sort of excuse
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Also, take advantage of a practice field when available. It’s better to check your autons before a match, especially when they were made on the fly.
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I wish I had been told to not try anything too ambitious when I started out. I tend to overthink things, and I would advise against that. There’s nothing wrong with trying something new, but don’t make everything something new.
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Take lots of photos as you build. Share these photos on the vexforum or on another robotics community. Take feedback, iterate. There’s a bunch of people out there who know a lot more than you do (sorry), and they’ll give you tips (sometimes harshly), but valid points nonetheless which you might not have considered.
It’ll save you a lot of trial and error time, and help you figure out where to get better.
don’t forget about time management - good robot + great driver > great robot + good driver.
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Never say I, me, or my unless your introducing yourself during your interview.
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embrace communism,
our name is dimitri
The only advice I have because I’m unskilled is to have fun. Especially at competitions. Don’t take it too seriously and get too stressed out, chill with the people at the competitions and take breaks when needed. Most of my favorite robotics memories is from hanging with people, especially people I just met, more then wrecking some other people’s robots. Connecting with and helping out the community is great to me at least, so I’d recommend it.
Also, making connections can set up some reliable picks for alliances 
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Jokes on you, when we host there is no practice field, just a “skills” field.
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In that case - go to skills early, and have skills ready before the comp. Don’t disregard skills. Most comps will allow you to run skills before inspection, provided you inspect the robot in the same configuration after. RUN SKILLS EARLY. they usually give you 3 runs for programming and driver, or they give you unlimited. Figure out beforehand, unlimited runs means that you’ll be able to use the skills field over and over in the morning until another team decides that they want to run it. Skills is almost the easiest way to qualify to regionals.
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Well you see, unlike our sister teams, we qualified for states by winning a qualifying tournament.
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Global Skills will still get you a qualification to worlds after States / Regionals is over and there’s a double qual (which there WILL be).
So, if you can put up a high skills score before your regional event, that score might very well carry over for your double qual as a backup.
We noted that the top skills scores from a month or two prior to our provs was basically the scores that people would be achieving at provs (33/25 for tp), so if you could hit similarly that high for tt earlier, it’s a pretty good backup.
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lmao
rip
(stupid character thingy)
That’s why I put “when available”.
https://www.roboticseducation.org/documents/2017/09/how-to-start-and-organize-a-vrc-team.pdf
https://www.roboticseducation.org/documents/2013/06/101-things.pdf
Here are some resources from the RECF page. Also a scouting sheet is very helpful and practice driving as much as possible.
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