Advice on rats.

When you set up the rat slide.  place the rat flat on the ramp at the very
end and then slide it forward to it's resting place.  If you place the rat
on the end  sometimes it gets hung up on the walls and is not quite flat on
the slide.  This fixed most of our rat sliding problems.

Mike

On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 8:58 PM, Stephen Scherr <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> There has been a small amount of discussion about this in the global
> FLL forum.  See http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=17889
>
> The word in the forum is that making sure that the slide is properly
> attached to the center wall helps a lot.
>
> I will note that the sets used in the VA/DC FLL tournaments all start
> out new at the beginning of November, so they might not have as much
> wear and tear as the kits that your teams will be practicing with
> before the tournament.
>
>
> Unfortunately, I am not prepared right now to make a ruling on what
> the "expected" behavior for the rat on the slide is.  All the ones
> that I have assembled slide really well when new, but none have them
> have been attached to an FLL table, or have had dozens of trips down
> the slide.
>
> Figuring out the "expected" behavior is important.  If rats sticking
> is common, then it's expected and there is nothing that the referee
> needs to do.  On the other hand, if a mission model is obviously doing
> something very unexpected, then the referee might think that there was
> a problem with the mission model and apply Benefit of the Doubt, which
> might include awarding the team the points associated with the
> malfunctioning model.
>
> Steve Scherr
> VA/DC FLL Referee Advisor
>
> On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 12:54 PM, Yi Chu <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > I observed that in several occasions, the rat was not sliding down or
> > sliding down very slowly.  It is causing issue for my team to decide
> > how long to wait for the rat to drop.
> >
> > I wonder if anyone else is experiencing similar issue.  If it happens
> > in tournament that the rat gets stuck and not sliding down, is the ref
> > going to count points for the mission?
> >
> > yi
> >
>
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-- 
--
Michael Brown
Y!:nrune AOL:nrune
GPS: Team Virginia Brown's

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