Tool
Season Planner
Competitions, deadlines, and build sessions in one place, with a countdown to the next one. Ties into Chapter 2, which is about treating the season as something you plan rather than something that happens to you. Export to your calendar when you want it on everyone's phone.
Add to the season
What kind of day
A real tournament. Everything else on the calendar is working backwards from these.
Think through before the day
- •Is the robot passing inspection rules, size and motor or wattage limits?
- •Is autonomous actually tested on a real field, not just in theory?
- •Is the notebook up to date and readable by a judge?
- •Who is driving, and have they had real practice this week?
- •Spares packed: what broke last time is what will break again.
Where you should be
1. Manual drops · Late April or early May
Read the scoring section first, then the general rules hunting for what changed.
2. Brainstorm · First few meetings
Analyse the game, generate rough ideas, research, debate, score them, then prototype.
3. Build · Summer into autumn
Drivetrain first, then the scoring mechanisms. Get it reliable before you get it fast.
4. Iterate · After the first scrimmage
Test, measure, change one thing at a time. Re-read the manual now, it reads differently.
5. Late season · Before your last events
Speed upgrades like a PTO belong here, only once the base robot already scores reliably.
August 2026
0 dates