This weekend we will be traveling to Melbourne, FL to attend Panther Prowl, an off-season competition featuring last year's game "Rebound Rumble". We are bringing a smaller crew this time due to limited funding. We have a few veterans attending as well as some new members. The goal is to expose new members to the excitement of the competition. Live streaming of the event can be viewed at http://floridatech.orgsync.com/org/firstatfit/results.
On the fundraising front, we are doing well! After numerous grant rejections, we finally been awarded grants from JCPenney again this year in the amount of $1000 and from CFEF/Motorola in the amount of $5000. This is great news as it gets us our entry fee into the Florida Regional. A big thanks to JCPenney and CFEF and Motorola for getting us to this huge milestone!!
We are still however, about $12,000 short of our goal this year. We will continue to apply for grants as well as organize fundraising events. As of now, we have firm dates for our Open House on Oct 25 and a benefit dinner at the MLC on Dec 15. We are also running ongoing bake sales, planning for car wash(es), merchandise, and more.
The new Crandall Machine shop is coming along slowly but surely. We got power hooked up about a month ago and had some training sessions on the mill and lathe with volunteers from the Mag Lab. We have also received a MIG welder donated to us by Lively Technical Center. It just arrived today! So some more legwork will have to be done to get these machines set up and ready to use before build season.
In general, club meetings are continuing to meet on Mondays and Thursdays after school. We have a promising set of new young faces. Workshop training sessions were held early on and will resume after Panther Prowl this weekend. So far, we have taught cleaning/organizing, measuring, hardware, and safety. Future workshops will include hand tools, power tools, electronics, programming, CAD, etc.
There is so much more happening than what is posted here! If you would like to volunteer in any way, please contact Jasun at jasun.burdick@gmail.com.
