Advantage: Funding. Core group commitment.
Disadvantage: Small team size. 3 mentors who know about as much as the students.

Last year we had 2 mentors. We're improving :D

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage - Good core group of dedicated mentors, at least one for each subteam (Mechanical, Software, Business, Electrical), and a core group of dedicated students.

Disadvantage - Small shop with machine contention. We reorganized this shop this past off season and it has helped tremendously. It also helped that we finished making the pickup arm prior to the start of the final shooter so the machine contention was down a lot.

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: experience, lots of build space, dedicated older members, great mentors

disadvantage: large number of new members on team, not so much dedication. Coaches who don't listen to students and make the robot an ego-fueled power game

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: Core group commitment, ~12 years acquired robot parts, technical knowledge, nearby university.

Disadvantage: Far from other teams, weak funding, oddly low mentor count (this year), a few more students than I know what to do with (this year).


Though we're far from a lot of teams, we aren't nearly as rural as pfreivald (we have at least 4 stoplights in town!).

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: Having FIRST as part of our high school's curriculum. Thus, class time to build robot.

Disadvantage: Having a large number of members that don't know how to use tools.

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: Having three big time sponsors that give us unlimited access to their CNC mills, laser jets, water jets, automatic breaks and welders, CAD resources and pretty much any other kind of machining equipment you can think of. All with a two-three day turn-around time.

Disadvantage: We are in a very rural area and have little or no student interest for robotics. We officially have eight students but only two that ever show up and participate.

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantages: High Resources (Good shop, sponsors, funding, lots of people, plenty of enthusiasm)

Disadvantages: Lots of (inexperienced) people who "just want to build"

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantages:One of out mentors has a voice and a half which is quite for yelling at everyone to get working. Also, out team has an almost even 50-50 split between boys and girls.
Disadvantages:Few consistent sponsors and regular periods during which the snack supplies deplete significantly until the power that be refill them.

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantages: highly skilled seniors who know how to spend two weeks doing the same thing to get it right (from wiring to bumpers). Being close to other teams, and sharing a deep pool of part and traditional shop resources. Positive energy from the school community.

Disadvantages: only a handful of juniors to take up the slack next year. Only one teacher (me) who can commit to the program, so it only happens when I can be there. The deep knowledge the swerve drive is beyond our abilities.

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: One mentor builds cnc machines and 3-D printers, we have a giant warehouse for a field, our robot is light enough we're only bagging the frame and leaving the entire shooter off to put on a new frame for practice, our design is totally different from anything I've seen

Disadvantage: Lots of useless freshmen playing video games, our robot design is totally different from anything I've seen

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: Experienced mentors (some have been around since FIRST began). Large dedicated workspace.
Disadvantage: Limited budget which did not allow us to go to a first regional which puts us at a HUGE disadvantage at FLR compared to many of the teams who will be doing their second event.

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Our advantages this year are that we have gotten to a decent level of funding and have a fairly dedicated group.

Our disadvantage has been being limited to being able to work only an hour and a half or less every day afterschool because our teachers can't stay long :(

I feel you. Just on Saturday none of our teachers wanted to come in Sunday or Monday... The last very crucial days of the build season. We were unprepared for that so we couldn't take it to somebody's house. If your teachers have things to do, take initiative and take it home to work on it.

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: We are given space in the University of Wisconsin-Platteville Engineering hall to work and have access to the resources there like computer labs, multiple CNC machines, and some great faculty who are willing to help us.

Disadvantage: Most of our mentors are college students, so there is a near complete turnover in mentors every 4 years. We do have a few wonderful engineers from John Deere who help out, but the team is still very dependent on getting new college mentors.

Re: Biggest Advantage/Disadvantage
 

Advantage: A founding member team of the "Forbes Alliance", very powerful.
Disadvantage: Our machining capability consists of a table top bandsaw, tabletop drill press and assorted hand tools. Yet we are quite resourceful.