[GeeTwo]

3946 is working out of a single rather large science classroom with adjacent storage rooms. To help with the crowding and time involved in setup/breakdown last year, we purchased rolling shelf units, one for mechanical department, one for controls (wiring and pneumatics), and they've helped a bunch. We also have an exterior door with a concrete pad outside, so most of our major cutting takes place out there in decent weather. We also have a single coach who pretty much has to be there for every session,so we didn't want to double the number of sessions - and we have enough trouble coordinating across departments when we're all in the same room!
This year, we put a t-shirt/mini football launcher out for several of our home games, and there were about twice as many interested in the team as we could possibly support. We decided to have tryouts - each mentor (and several of the veteran members) came up with a "challenge", which ranged from building a tower out of dry-erase markers and plastic coins to wiring up a basic circuit to "pressure math" to programming an arduino to make mods to the standard "sweep" servo demo program. We graded on both aptitude and attitude. About 30% of the initial applicants decided during tryouts that they didn't really want to do this after all, and another 10 to 15% were eliminated based on disruptive behaviour or a half-hearted approach to the tasks. We're counting on attrition to get us down to where we need to be by build season, though we haven't eliminated the possibility of a second cut. We used the aptitude portion of our testing, combined with student preferences and department needs, to assign departments.
Throughout the tryout process, I was a bit disappointed that we did this because we had to. After the first actual meeting following selection -- I want to do this every year! There is just no way to adequately compare the energy and attitude with previous years. With the disruptors and whiners away, the energy of both students and mentors is contagious.