Practice Field

[Russell2144]

Hello, So since my team has begun we have been a small team of 10-14 members. Our school is amazing at funding us and we love it. We finally have really started expanding, getting some more room to work in etc. However our team is in agreement that what would be best is a practice field. I was wondering for those of you who have a practice field as part of their work area, how did you acquire it? I dont mean where to purchase from, rather, what did you say to convince the powers at hand that it would be a great idea? I have been working pretty hard on this with the school officials since build season ended and I would love some input. Thanks!

[Ozuru]

Isn't a practice field like $20,000? Most teams don't have that type of money.

[Russell2144]

Yeah It is pricy, we have plans for fundraisers and have been talking with our school about potentially doing some form of a funds matching idea... But we need to get the admin onboard with the idea of even having one first...

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Ozuru

Isn't a practice field like $20,000? Most teams don't have that type of money.

You don't need an official FIRST field border, or an AndyMark one. You can make something for far less expense.

[Pauline Tasci]

You can build a much cheaper field that is either the "team field" (ex: wood defenses) or a combination of the wood and metal field. We choose the latter route so it is more realistic to the game.

To cover costs we pair up with other teams and have the field be open to all teams in the area and hold it at our location.
This also allows a lot of practice with other teams which is also a great benefit.

[ATannahill]

Depends on the quality of your practice field. If you get a full size field with metal components and all the game specifics, you will be lucky to get away with $20,000.

A team should be able to get away with less than a full field, usually half would be plenty. FIRST will release team versions of the field drawings at kick-off which are cheaper and easier to make.

For carpet, talk to your local RDC, they often are able to give away the carpet from the regionals. One thing you might be up against is that they might give preference to off-season events that want the carpet.

[Ben Martin]

The biggest pain (at least for us) is finding the space. If it's too far away (in a different building), moving your stuff around all the time can be a pain. High ceilings are a must for many games.

If you want to keep the one-time costs around $2k-$3k, you can make driver's stations and sidewalls out of wood.

At least for MAR, there is new carpet every competition. They save one set for off-seasons, then throw away or give away the rest. If you ask the event managers, sometimes they will give away the carpet at the end of the competition if you have a way to transport it.

If the 'powers that be' wonder why you need to have a static field sitting there all year, you can put temporary tables on it and use it as assembly or programming space (since you always want to be driving on FRC carpet anyway). More space = more students are able to get involved in the fabrication and assembly process.

[Toatekua]

We have a carpet donated by a sponsor, and we make plywood stuff every year. That's all we need.

[Russell2144]

Originally Posted by Ben Martin

The biggest pain (at least for us) is finding the space. If it's too far away (in a different building), moving your stuff around all the time can be a pain. High ceilings are a must for many games.

If you want to keep the one-time costs around $2k-$3k, you can make driver's stations and sidewalls out of wood.

At least for MAR, there is new carpet every competition. They save one set for off-seasons, then throw away or give away the rest. If you ask the event managers, sometimes they will give away the carpet at the end of the competition if you have a way to transport it.

If the 'powers that be' wonder why you need to have a static field sitting there all year, you can put temporary tables on it and use it as assembly or programming space (since you always want to be driving on FRC carpet anyway). More space = more students are able to get involved in the fabrication and assembly process.

This is great! thank you!

[Collin Stiers]

Our team simply does not have a space we can dedicate to a full (or even partial) practice field, however we do have a large carpeted space in which we can drive the robot. So what we do every year is make the game pieces out of wood, and we cart them to the practice area when we need them. This has the benefit of being cheap and not requiring a permanent space, however it takes time to build the wood ones and set them up

[Kevin Ray]

As mentioned by Ben Martin above you may be able to obtain part or even all of the field carpet from your regional or district competition as we have. We convinced our district to repurpose a technology classroom with a twenty foot ceiling to become our shop. Since it had a loft for storage, we made that our actual shop and the downstairs area a 3/4 field. For the past two years it served well enough to not have any drawbacks. In fact, for 2014 we had a full court frisbee shooter and just used the diagonal of the room to make the correct distance for the shot.
Actually convincing the district to make the room a dedicated robotics room took many years of effort. We strongly subscribe to Karthik's belief that you need to create a "culture" of STEM or robotics (I forgot the exact quote). We adhere strongly to the belief that winning over the community and parents on a large scale to the benefits of the program will help pave the way to get what you want/need to be successful. In our case we felt that the room for the playing field was paramount to success--even more so than having the district purchase some of the large machines which teams so often desire.

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by Kevin Ray

As mentioned by Ben Martin above you may be able to obtain part or even all of the field carpet from your regional or district competition as we have. We convinced our district to repurpose a technology classroom with a twenty foot ceiling to become our shop. Since it had a loft for storage, we made that our actual shop and the downstairs area a 3/4 field. For the past two years it served well enough to not have any drawbacks. In fact, for 2014 we had a full court frisbee shooter and just used the diagonal of the room to make the correct distance for the shot.
Actually convincing the district to make the room a dedicated robotics room took many years of effort. We strongly subscribe to Karthik's belief that you need to create a "culture" of STEM or robotics (I forgot the exact quote). We adhere strongly to the belief that winning over the community and parents on a large scale to the benefits of the program will help pave the way to get what you want/need to be successful. In our case we felt that the room for the playing field was paramount to success--even more so than having the district purchase some of the large machines which teams so often desire.

What's funny is that is similar to what we are currently doing. We are going to use our current shop as a 1/2 field with some extra space for a table and some material storage. Then use a garage space for machining, another adjacent room for CAD, and yet another connected room for storage. We actually ironically sed the fact that you guys had one as a selling point to our district.

[Steph342]

We have a local sponsor in our area that paid for and hosted a practice field for all teams to use. Granted we are in Knoxville, TN and have several teams around. Other teams I have been with just do like some of the others suggested and just build the obstacles that you need. Only thing really important is to get the carpet as robots drive different on carpet. In our shop this year we just had a hole for the tower cut out in plywood and one defense that we put the 3 defenses on that we made (Moat, Rockwall, Rough Terrain).