Fix-it-window experience...

[Don Wright]

Maybe this will get merged with an existing thread, but I wanted to share my fix-it-window experience from yesterday.

We had a fix-it-window from 1pm until 6pm yesterday. In order to get everything done, we had to:

-spend 10 hours on Saturday making drawings, lists, getting raw material in place, marking all the pieces where to cut, drill, mill, etc...

-spend 5 more hours on Sunday morning trying to organize the best order for getting everything done that we needed.

So...that's 15 hours of prep time...

Then, I watched as 15+ energetic, excited, finally able to cut pieces and work on a robot, students and mentors hussled and worked like mad for 5 hours to get everything done.

I'm glad no one got hurt.

Sure, we had a lot of parts we wanted to get made to get our robot ready for GLR. You could argue that because we weren't ready in 6 weeks, we should have done a less complicated robot. But, why not try and push yourself?

We have one more scheduled from 5:30 until 10:30 tomorrow night. Good thing it is just cleaning up control board wiring and programming.

If FIRST wants to limit the fix-it-window time, fine. But the whole "you have to cram it into two 5-hour sessions" doesn't work. Let us do 1 or two hour sessions and just say you can't spend more than 10 hours working on parts and programming.

Anyway, just another little rant after actually experiencing a fix-it-window.