[Wayne TenBrink]

I highly recommend going to a second event. Try not to do consecutive weekends.

Besides getting more use of all the work you put into the robot and spending more time together as a team, you will have the opportunity to modify and improve on your original creation. As Ike said, this is often overlooked, but it is a very important part of the engineering experience. Nothing is perfect the first time out - hardware, software, strategy, etc. Being able to react to circumstances and incorporate improvements is almost as important as interpreting the game rules and coming up with the original robot.

Also, if your robot gets damaged and you can't fix it on the spot, you will have a very short and frustrating competition season - very uninspiring to all potential scientists and engineers on the team. A second event cushions that blow.