Tuesday, March 25th, 2003

Today, everybody met at Brian's after school. We rounded up most of the major components we are going to use. We weighed them and we have a major weight problem. Mostly, the drive motor is too heavy. Brian is a little possessive about using the large, 3 pound motor. Thee was a fairly large argument about where we cut weight. Tevis thinks we should cut the motor, Brian curses the weight limit, and I'm trying to remain open minded. I don't think Jamie has a strong position. While Brian and I were weighing, Jamie and Tevis experimented with the clamp design and made some progress. Brian and I ran off to the garage to see if we could get one of our ½ pound motors to do the job and we were able to rig up a test and it worked in 5 seconds with about 4 pounds of force. I think it should work and solve our weight problem. We then moved on to timing issues. We calculated that we will have to slide on the way down. We had another long discussion about it. The meeting ended at 5:30, which was a record time for us to stay focused. I think we got a lot done but not much that was tangible.

Jamie:

We have two main problems: weight and speed. We will have to slide on the way down. I personally am wondering how we will ever get done in time.