Where do YOU practice driving?

[Kyler386]

We use our school cafeteria. A couple of years back, our team built wooden walls that connect together with bolts and wingnuts so we could take it apart, move the walls, and store them in our storage closet. however, if we are doing some simple tests, or if we get denied access to our cafeteria, we just use the hallway outside of our engineering classroom.

[MrBasse]

We practiced everywhere, I had students driving out base chassis in our shop and a little once we had our arm mounted. Then we moved to the cafeteria for a little while but we had to move the tables and chairs and set up and then put everything back every night. Once we realised that tile wasn't anything like carpet we took over our library every night to do some real testing.

This year our school's Alternative Learning Classroom moved locations and we got their old room for building and testing. It connects to the shop and is 40'x38' with 18' ceilings. We're pretty excited to be able to leave a half finished project out on a table to complete the next day without having to repack and unpack everything every day.

[Chris is me]

Local teams set up a field at the RPI Tech Park that can be used. It's pretty awesome, actually.

[sanddrag]

At 696 we traditionally have used the cafeteria/auditorium (auditeria they call it) or gymnasium over weekends. Unfortunately we do not have a place to really store a full field's worth of carpet. We now have a 20x20 space that we could leave set up, but it has an 8.5 foot ceiling.

On 968, we had an unused space in a local shopping mall to leave a full field set up year round. It made a big difference in competitive performance.

[AustinSchuh]

971 goes to NASA AMES and practices with 254 on 254's field set up in their lab. It is a great deal. I highly recommend it, especially since you are in the area. 254 has been very generous with us in the past, and we are very appreciative.

Originally Posted by AustinSchuh

971 goes to NASA AMES and practices with 254 on 254's field set up in their lab. It is a great deal. I highly recommend it, especially since you are in the area. 254 has been very generous with us in the past, and we are very appreciative.

While this is an idea, and 254 is a very generous team, I don't think it would be very convenient for us the Poofs if we came and went to their labs when we need practice. Plus, by the time we would drive there, set up, and get the robot ready, we wouldn't have much time to practice. We are thankful enough they let teams use their field in the build season.

[Nick Lawrence]

Our school board gives us space in a closed school-turned-resource center. We have plenty of space, the room allows for a full sized field and storage for tools, robots, etc. It's in the middle of nowhere, about a 25 minute drive for us. It's perfect and allows for ultimate secrecy.

-Nick

[Tommy F.]

Our team was fortunate enough to be able to use the old library at our school for building and practice. Before it was a library it was a cafeteria, so the old kitchen holds our build room. Outside of the build room we have space for a full sized practice field as well as an FTC field.

[V_Chip]

Buzz uses the school cafeteria where a whole field can be put together. Length is fitting, width may not be to spec.

BAE NH is our primary testing ground.

[cpeister]

In early years 781 practiced in the gym of a public school in town that had recently been closed. After that was sold, they used the school gym, but had to setup and take down every time they used it. Recently, the school has made it very difficult for us to book out the gym, so last year we set out to find a different space to practice in. I approached the owner of a gym that had recently closed in town, and they agreed to let us use the building, as it was sitting empty. We had room to set up a little over 1/2 of a field. We moved the carpet in on the Sunday after kickoff, and didn't move out until after the championship. They are planning to have the building torn down and turned into condos so it is unlikely we will be able to use it again. As of last June, we were working on getting use of old garage bays with room to set up a full, if not very close to a full field.

For quick testing, we used the portable classroom that is our build site, but for programming and full on driver practice, we used the practice field.

[maxwellt]

we practice just about any in our school just so that we have clearance for our robot like this year' robot and any where we can put a carpet. but we practiced outside on the capet if the weather was nice or in the school's cafeteria on the carpet if we could use it

[Jeremy Germita]

We have quite a few spaces available to practice.

1. Our shop. When not in use by the entire team, the available space for driving is near equal to field size. it is about 5 feet shorter(49') and 8 feet less wide(19') but the usable space is not perfectly rectangular.

2. Lancaster HS has a large quad area that we use on occasion. Our drivers set aside a day each month to try to practice here. It is an extremely large area, and if we wanted to, could set up several full fields here. The one catch is weather. Living where we do, the weather is not too favorable for driving. During build, it is windy, occasionally rainy, and cold. The wind can kick up some dust from down the road. Electronics don't like dust and water. Drivers don't like freezing our fingers off

3. The Gyms. Occasionally, the gyms can be reserved for robotics. For logomotion, we never used it for any actual driving, but we did use it for training human players.

4. Some local hotels expressed interest in letting us use their conference rooms in the late stages of build for drive practice.

We typically have movable field elements that can be transported from place to place

If anyone wants any insight into our practice schedule....
Off/Pre season: Our main drivers try to get biweekly practice in the fall. Others try for weekly practices. Some of our drivers are on our FTC team and get some practice out of that, also.
Build season: We try to get as much practice in as the build schedule will allow.

[onecoolc]

We are lucky enough to have a local and generous sponsor (Discover Technology) that gives the three local teams room in a warehouse. Every year we build a complete field for scrimmage and practice. The base dimensions (walls and carpet) stay up year-round, so it's never built completely from scratch.

For normal testing, we build the key elements of the field and keep them in our school's shop, dragging them out into the hallway/cafeteria area when necessary.

[1493kd]

We are lucky enough to have a full sizes field to practice on in the area. However with legal issues of teachers driving students and school hours it is hard to get kids to the field during the week after school to practice ( current practice field is about 15 minutes away).

I would like to be able to set up and take down a small area of carpet and some field elements after school so our drivers can practice right at school and not have to worry about students transportation issues.

We have in the past tried to use a section of carpet on the school floor but it would just bunch up wasn't very successful. Has anyone had luck with a system that you put down and take up everyday? If so do you have any suggestions.

[c.shu]

We have a large engineering room that we share with some of the classes at the school. There is enough room to set up some game elements for one side of the field. The past few years we have set up a full field (half field this year) in the adjacent gymnasium for a week 0 event.