[Madison]

I have no idea :-)

We're working with a rookie team this year, and we're really not sure what to expect. This past few weeks, we've been running them ragged through a practice '6 weeks' using last year's rules.

It's helped us a lot because Christina and I have been able to get a good idea of what the sponsors, teachers, and students don't really understand about the competition (like, we need to use the Bosch drill motor, not a Bosch drill motor!)

Overall, I've been quite surprised with the knowledge of the students, and I don't think we'll be lacking in any ideas. Our biggest problem, as far as I can see, will be actually getting any construction done at all. Our sponsored school doesn't have a screwdriver, let alone a machine shop. So, that means we're currently doing all of our work way offsite, and the commute times and having to work around shopkeeper's schedules really makes getting a lot of work done difficult. We should have complete access to our University's machine shop by January, though, so hopefully things will go a bit smoother. (P.S. - Christina, if you read this, e-mail me a copy of Patrick's constitution! I forgot to do it myself)

With all of that said, we've taken a huge leap of faith, and we've put a lot of time and effort into designing and building a drive system. It's really, really ambitious for a rookie team, I think, and we've got our fingers crossed that we won't have to do any major revisions to it. We're already beginning to manufacture a prototype version of that, and we hope to have a working drive system by very early in the first week.

From there, we can focus on putting all of effort and resources toward the other bits and pieces, and I'm hoping that'll help to alleviate some of our production hiccups.

Anyway, that's the plan :-)