Ah yes, the old "inserting igniters on the pad" thing.
On the one hand, I do see the reasoning behind this practice, and I do fully understand why being ultra careful in regards to range safety is important. That said, I have a few rockets where this is quite bluntly a major pain in the @#*. Inserting igniters into the rocket on the rail when I've got a twelve motor cluster, or airstarted second stages, or some other more non-standard setup is clumsy & inefficient at best, a time-waster where I've sometimes got all the other flyers in that round ready to go and they are all waiting on me to get mine ready, and I believe LESS safe at times due to a very tricky setup being done "under the gun" and in less-than-ideal conditions. Add to that the fact that many AT instructions tell people to insert their igniter when they are assembling the motor (which can be very confusing to newbies in particular), and you have some uncertainty at times.
So what to do? In practice I've found these issues are usually easy to address. When I DO have a complicated prep/setup, I usually go to the RSO beforehand and ask directly whether it would be ok to bring my rocket to the table with the igniter(s) already installed - I am prepared to show and tell WHY this makes more sense (and likely safer) in this particular instance. Most often, that RSO makes the judgement call and ok's it, usually with the requirement that I do the prep work there by the table rather than back at my own area, which is not a problem for me. This way I can do the prep work at my leisure with no pressure, no one is waiting on me, and I can do the work MUCH more efficiently and ensure that it is all done so that the launch/flight is SAFER. Everybody wins.
As is often the case, a little communication and sound reasoning goes a long way.
s6