Happenings at the Chimera Nest!

Even though it's our off-season we've been pretty busy!  
Fundraising events, side projects, learning or brushing up on our skills, training new team members, organizing our room, helping with new youth robotics teams and some fun volunteering as well! 

Our coach had given us a project to build a catapult and it ended up being boys vs. girls! The girls started out with a traditional prototype and the boys decided to use pneumatics and our 2016 practice bot base. They will need to be able to launch pumpkins for a fun "Pumpkin Chunkin" after our 5K event.  So the challenge has been in progress! 
The girls have been holding secret meetings, so pictures are unavailable! Haha! 

A few other side projects have been creating a football shooter with our mentor Matt, learning the machines with Rob, programming with Tony and working on a VEX EDR robot for competition in December. 

New youth robotics teams started this week as well in our room.  We are happy to be able to support them and allow them to use our space. It's also good for them to see what  they can do in the future with robots with the skills they learn!  A few of our team's mentors started the new VEX IQ teams call the Chimichangas.  This is a play off our own name (Chimeras).  We tend to have our name mispronounced a lot and a few people started giving us nicknames and Chimichangas was one of them.  So although technically it's fried burritos, they like to think of themselves as mini Chimeras with extra spice in their fire!  (since Chimeras are a fire-breathing mythical beast) 
We hope they do well and will mentor them as needed. You can visit their Facebook page HERE for updates!