T H ROW BAC K ON L AS T SEM ES T E R Written by Lars van der Lee Photo by Marion Christine Løkkevig
The fall semester is the shortest of the two NTNU semesters. Beginning in late august, and ending in December, which means it only lasts for a little under 4 months. During these months, the new team is recruited, plans are made, parts are designed and production has to be planned. All this in addition to following the full-time studies we are attending. To achieve this, we divide the semester into some phases, with a lot of help from Alumni and sponsors. The team is recruited in the beginning of September, and gets thrown in at the deep end right away. To get started, a lot has to be learned about the cars, Formula Student and engineering in general. This is done with the help of Alumni during the bootcamp. Over two weeks, we attend many lectures, workshops and demonstrations with Alumni. In addition to learning as much as possible, we also focus on team building. You cannot build a racecar without a good team! When the bootcamp ends, the first main phase of the project starts. The concept phase is all
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about analysis, new ideas, goals and performance parameters. The overall goals are set using data from the previous season and an analysis of where we can improve. Using the experiences from the previous seasons and input from Alumni, the team sets goals for each system. These will be the guidelines for all decisions we will take for the duration of the season. Setting goals is a tricky process, as they should be possible to measure and verify to see if we are going in the right direction and have achieved what we set out to do. At the end of every phase, we invite Alumni to Trondheim to discuss our plans.The team presents their ideas, thoughts and reasoning behind them, before being grilled by experienced Alumni to guide us. This is one of the ways Revolve can keep on improving year after year. Without guidance from Alumni, we would not progress! Shortly after the concept phase, when the mechanical groups have started designing parts, the PCBs are sent to production. We produce two rounds of all PCBs, in order to debug the
