Weekdays, we meet 5:00 to 7:30. Our school is out at 4:30 and students have to travel to our off-site lab. 7:30 is about as far as we can get before we have burnout and significant slacking off.
Weeks 4 - 6 we may push it up to 9 if we need. The goal is to not need it this (and every) season.
We typically meet Saturdays from around 11 - 4. Sundays if needed to meet a deadline.
Build Season for Fusion is :
Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday from 3:30 PM to 9 PM (some stay late), 3:30 to 4:30 is mandatory study hall (students tutor each other and go to specific teachers when needed), supper (parent supplied) from 6 PM to 6:30 PM.
Saturday from 12 PM to 6 PM, parent provided snack time.
Holiday’s follow the Saturday schedule.
Team members in my Engineering Course are allowed to work on FRC during class.
My alma mater met Monday-Friday 5-9 and Saturday 11-6. We continued this schedule after Stop Build Day.
Many times we would stay much later than the scheduled times as well.
Our schedule is Mon -Tues 4:00-9:00
Wed. 4:00-5:30
Thur - Fri. 4:00-9:00
Saturday. 9:00-3:00
Mentors can participate every day but students
are limited to Saturday and one day during the week.
This policy keeps up the grades which keeps admin happy and
Allows more students access to design, build and drive.
We have over 60 members on the team and this policy is why. Many students
will quit when upperclassmen hog all the robot time.
Roger
Build Season for 3216 is:
M,W,F 4-6
Sat 9-3
Around the last 2 weeks the meetings are typically much longer and often.
Build Season for 4571 is:
Mon-Fri: 3pm-8pm
Sat: 9am-6pm
Sun: Rest Day
I think this schedule is great since it gives everyone a day to rest and relax (or study in my case)
Students are required to at least come 3 times a week. We have about 30 on the team and 6 that make up the dedicated core (Never miss a meeting and always helpful)
TnT 280’s schedule is:
M - F
3pm until 9pm (later on Fridays based on availabilty)
3-4 is homework hour
6-6:30 we break for dinner (Provided by parents for all)
Saturday
9am - 2pm
Sunday is the same time frame but only if needed
We have an off school build site. One of our team parents shuttles members over after school. So M thru Friday we meet from 4 to 7. Saturday 10 to 3 or so. We try to avoid having to provide two meals on Saturday. Last year we only got together twice after bag and tag, but of course we did not have a practice machine to work with.
Regards a “core group” I would offer my observation. Take whatever number of students show initial interest in being on the team. 50% will actually sign up. Take your team roster. 50% will do almost all the work. That of course does not discount the important “niche” contributions of part timers. Often the kids who can’t make every practice are very capable but are busy with jobs and other activities. As our team has gotten a little bigger we can afford the luxury of having this sort of student participate. TW
This year, our build season schedule is as follows:
M-F 6:30pm-9:00pm
Sat 9:00am-5:00pm
Sun No Meeting
Our weekday meetings start so late because most of our mentors are professionals who don’t work locally. This gives them time to get home and eat a quick dinner before our meeting.
Saturday meetings have a lunch break in the middle from 12pm-1pm.
The past 5 years, we also had Sunday meetings from 1pm-5pm, but we’re trying to have a day off – we’ll see how that goes.
There are often people who stay later than the scheduled times, but we do limit school nights to 10pm (except bag day: we “party” until midnight, and since we’re on EST, it’s still midnight for us).
We meet as an entire team
M-Th 6 - 9pm
F 6-11pm
Sat 9am - 10pm lunch and dinner provided by parents
sunday is a rest day.
After stop build day, we will drop a day during the week and also saturdays will only be till 4pm
Monday through Friday: 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM (can go over)
Saturday (and Sunday if needed): 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM
We seem to build for quite a while during those six weeks.
Monday-Friday: 3PM-8PM
Saturday: 9AM-5PM
Off Sundays and Holidays
That’s also assuming we have no snow days, which we get every now and then here, sometimes for a stretch of several days at a time. If we get a snow day, it sometimes causes us to work even later on those days.
Someone with a lot of time on their hands should graph all of this data! It would be cool to see a graph of total hours per week, as well as possibly other graphs of like time for each day of the week etc.
I don’t know why I am doing this - i feel like i should be doing other stuff… but… ROBOTICS!
Anyways, I am attempting to get this all into a “analysable format”, and a spreadsheet would work nicely.
So… if you would be so kind, could you submit your teams information on http://bit.ly/submitmeetingdata
You can view this data at: http://bit.ly/viewmeetingdata
I am going to attempt to put the data that is already in this forum in.
If you would, please use the form to get it in a nice format!!
THANKS!
::safety:: 
EDIT: I got thru logank013’s post on page two. I’m tired xD
I used http://www.easysurf.cc/tspan.htm to calculate the hours and then put them in the form.
Heat map of teams’ hours per day: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1onCcwqVK_EHIYaw42NoVNroldSXcin85kSzAn6_klrY/edit?usp=sharing
Better than I could have done xD
Thanks!
6065 goes everyday during the week 3-6pm, and Saturdays 10-4
As of the previous post, some compiled stats from the heat map:
Average Build Season weekly hours - 26.3
Most likely times to find an FRC team in thier shop: Saturday 10am-3pm
followed by Thursday 6-8pm, then Tuesday 6-8pm.
I’m kind of glad someone said something about this sort of issue, because our team has a similar struggle. We represent a Catholic School and Parish, and we meet in the Parish Center, so we’re basically allowed to stay there until the building closes, and that’s about it. Because of this, our typical meeting schedule during build season looks a little something like this:
Mondays-Wednesdays: 5:30-7:30pm (We have to wait for our mentors to get off work and then, again, we stay until the building closes)
Thursdays (for Programmers only, Knights of Columbus also meets that night, so we have to keep the noise down): 5:30-7:30pm
Saturdays: 10am-2pm (Sometimes later if we decide to move the whole shop to our lead mentor’s garage and work 
)
I’m not sure how helpful this is, but I’m sure if your school is super strict on when they want you in the building, then there may be other teams in the area that are willing to let you use their space (or even a practice field if they have one!). There were a few teams that did this for us last season (Thanks 2137, 3539, 2612, 3098, and Bob Nichols of Kettering University!) and it really made a huge difference in how much we were able to get done (and how successful we were in competition).
I’ve always liked skipping Mondays and Fridays (unless Monday is a holiday) and doing the rest. Seems to help with burnout as the breaks are evenly space time wise.