[TimCraig]

This is our third year. Our first year we used the auto shop to construct our robot. That summer school discontinued auto shop and remodelled the space into a dance studio. However, we were lucky enough to get a small dedicated meeting space out of the deal. Basically, we have one of the service bay areas. We also got an old lathe, a drill press, grinder, stationary belt sander, old manual Bridgeport mill, a smaller Jet mill and drill, and all the hand tools we could squirrel away. It's pretty crowded in there with two active robots, old #1 hanging on the wall, and the current robot under construction. The goal doesn't help much either.

We probably have 20 members who at least show now and then with maybe 10 hard core. Right now for adults there's my wife and I as colead coaches and one parent plus the faculty advisor. The adults have been vetted by the school district so we can meet with the kids without the faculty advisor. The 3 of us also have keys to the room.

Our meeting schedule for the build is:
MTTF 3 pm - 6.
W 2 pm - 6 pm
S 10 am - 5 pm
S 1 pm - 4 pm.

After two years of having no time left to test and practice, we decided to go to the 7 day a week schedule from the start. Of course, my hours go long beyond these with ordering parts and doing detailed design work. And the option to go into real crunch mode exists if it looks like we need it to finish. I've stated that I'm NOT going to be building a robot in the pits.

We always get zapped kind of hard during the 2nd week of build as that's semester end and finals so we give the kids time off. We try to finalize the conceptual design before the kids disappear so I can do some detailed design, order parts, make parts, etc.