Testing Space

[patTeam241]

One of my team's (241 - Pinkerton Academy) biggest problems is finding space to practice. Our school is very protective of the auditoriums, so we can't set up a field there, and testing outside in New Hampshire during the winter generally isn't an option. Anyone have any suggestions on ways to either keep warm and protect the robot, or find a way to practice inside?
Thanks!

Pat

[Astronouth7303]

Gyms. Usually big, and you can't be much more abusive than the PE kids.

[team222badbrad]

Ask a local building leasing company. Look around for empty stores at a strip mall.
We got a local company to lend us an empty building space for about 4 weeks.
This was only to find out that after setting up half a field we realized the building wasnt high enough for human player practice and their wasnt much room to run around the robot.

After a night of wasted time we went back old skool in the cafeteria. Nightly tear down and clean up......

[Jay H 237]

When we were testing the robot with out the field we used the cafeteria. We could use it so long as we put it back the way we found it which means we had to reset up all the tables as we had originally found them. When the field was needed we put the rug down in the gym and used that. We could only get the gym if it wasn't reserved for any thing else. At times we had to hold off on testing until we could get it.

[Bcahn836]

We meet at a technical center and we get permission to use different class rooms to practice. For example our playing field is in Diesiel Mechanics, our programing guys use carpentry, and the main area for use is the engineering shop and classroom.

I guess my advice is ask to use different class rooms, just put it back together when you are done.

[Ryan F.]

Look around for Empty buildings with nice owners..lol. Theres no space in our school...so we've used a warehouse our local utilites wasn't using last year, and this year we had an 18000 sqft warehouse for our use during build season

[Bharat Nain]

Maybe you can try finding a team near by you who can afford to do all this, and become good friends with them.

[Joshua May]

I think a school gym should work. Generally they have enough floorspace and definitely have the height. We have an open area right outside our shop, and we don't have weather problems since it rains two or three times a year (no kidding)

[Lisa Perez]

Our sponsor (DCX) let us build a field. They sponsor 3.. 4.. 5? teams in the area, so all those teams shared in the effort to build the field, as well as in sharing it for practice.

[greencactus3]

hallways... but watch out for rubber marks. janitors tend to dislike them.

[Matt]

Our school has no space either. We were told we could set it up out side or tear down and set up each day. We chose to stay in side even though in phoenix it does not rain a lot.

[patTeam241]

Thanks everyone, I'll keep your suggestions in mind.

[spears312]

we didnt have enough room for a full field where we built our bot, so we only built half of it and also had to take out a few ceiling pannels to get enough vertical room. We did make the mistake of leaving our movable goals out side once, they ended up being stolen or thrown away. We cant use our school for prac though because where we build the bot is nearly 30 min away.

[811SmallFry]

A local hospital donated the basement of one of their Charity buildings, which contains our machine shop and meeting place, and the church across the parking lot, where we build our field. The church is also where they store all of their random (trust me, it's random) stuff, and we have much fun with the Oscar the Grouch. (It pops its head up out of the trash can and looks around- It's awesome! ) We only have room to build about half the field, but that's way better than nothing. Also, we're locked out from the lights panel , so we were considering finding a new place.