[craigcd]

Thanks for you input. All your ideas and suggestions are good. Having a running robot in week three and four usually leads to the problem that I am trying to solve. The sooner that you have a working platform the better. Most rookie teams have only seen may be one robot during the recrutiment and have never driven one. The parts that are included in the kit are very adaptable and flexible. I don't feel that the teams would be "locked in to a design" by having a running robot at the start of week two. Changing the basic design of the robot and upgrading is made easier when you have a working robot to change and experiment with. I have found in my experience that the rookie teams take far to long to get to up to speed in the design build process and this hurts them in the end. I would really like to start the teaching process early in the school year but the majority of my team recruiting does not get on track till November and trying to organize the teachers and students is hard to do when I am still trying to recruit engineers and mentors. We do workshops (technical and non-technical) but this does not start till after the kickoff.