Are you ready for week three??

Week two of build season has come and gone, and let us say hello to week three! This week we conquer t-shirt designs, the finishing touches on the drive base, and the all and mighty Chairman’s Essay. Even though we’re still 1600 characters over, we are optimistic. For our t-shirts, we’re thinking a castle being BLOWN APART by a tank, because we are Rolling Thunder. For our drive base, it has been torn apart and put back together on CAD four times now! Our designers have been pulling tooth and nail to get these drawings out to Harris so that we may begin to build our bot.

What is happening on our robot besides the drive base? I’m glad you asked! As I have said, our drive base is coming along swimmingly. We have a bucket (even though it’s not a bucket) intake system prototyped, a lifter that is slowly but surely coming along, and our CAD designers are hard at work sending away all of their drawings (not to mention making some of our own!).

In the world of the team, we’re all doing pretty well. Our game test was released today, and all of us are cramming for random bits of robot knowledge before we take this 42 question test. All drive team, pit crew, and scouting leads must get a 100% on this test. Our mentors call it a test, but we like to think of it as a knighting.

Our Dean’s list nominees have been chosen! Hannah Seppala and Amal Elhelw are our choices, and we hope that they go far. We eagerly await our regional to cheer them on.

Our field is done! Well . . . almost. We got the concrete tonight to pour into the tower. That’s right, you heard me. Concrete. What else will keep the tower from falling over at Rally when three robots try to climb it? Oh! By the way, I nearly forgot. You are all formally invited to Rally, February 21st. It’s held at our high school (Penfield High School) in our gym, and it’s only two days away from stop build this year, so it’s more important than ever! Come test out your bot (if you have one), come listen to our guest speakers, and be amazed at the things FIRST kids can do in six weeks with a little help from our mentors.

All in all, week three has been treating us well, and I hope that you have the same prosperous days to come. May your shops be lit, your tools be sharp, and your robot designs coming to life!

-KT, Student Blogger