[sciguy125]

One cause of great concern on my team our facilities. We've been worried about it since we started up, but the problem has become more pronounced with our suddent increase in membership. Our official location is the school's physics lab. However, we're allowed to use the other rooms in the wing after school as long as they are free. Anything messy, however, has to be done in the lab (because it has tile) or outside.

The problem is that we're sharing the room(s). We don't have them to ourselves. Often, there are labs set up, so we have to be careful not to damage any physics equipment and put everything back when we're done. We also can't leave anything out. When we get there, we have to unpack to get started. Before we leave, we have to clean up. Each process takes 15 minutes if we work fast. That's also disregarding the amount of time it takes you to get your head in the game after you've spent a while trying to figure out where you put something. We also have funny shaped tables that are hard to work on. In general, the room is not conducive to robot building.

We were lucky enough to get part of the closet in the lab and another, decent sized, closet outside. I think we were supposed to be sharing the outside closet with the janator, but it seems that our conquest of much of his territory has effectively evicted him. Originally, we were planning on using the outside closet for manufacturing (drill press and the like), but we've filled it up with stuff. The robots take up a sizeable amount of space. Then, of course, we've also had to store materials and some of the bigger tools.

We've accepted a lot of new people this year and a few of us are concerned about the future. It's become extremely crowded. We didn't have to use the other rooms we have access to, but now, there's so many people that we've been forced to. We used to be alright in the lab, but it's too small for everyone to work in now.

A few have gone on several surveying missions to try and find us a new location, but nobody has turned up anything useful. I'm concerned that we won't survive much longer unless we find better facilities or limit the size of the team. I don't think many people will take kindly to the latter, though. A few of us also discussed finding facilities off campus, but we don't think that it would be a very good option either. The biggest problem is transportation. It's just way too inconvienient to have to go somewhere after school. And a fair number of people won't have transportation to get there. We'd just be back to square one. Instead of packing and unpacking all the time, we'd be driving. At that point, we might as well stay where we are. Labor is cheaper and more convienient than gas.

I also came across some unsubstantiated information that another local team had the same problem. Apparently, they died and were absorbed into another team. I would prefer that we not go this route. For one thing, aside from the programming class, this is the closest thing the school has to a technology class. This is the only place that students can come to learn about engineering.

So, what does everyone else do? What are your facilities like, and how do you manage?