Hello everyone, last night my partner brought to fruition a welding competition that had been in the planning for about 4 months and ended up involving 8 high schools from about a 100 mile radius of our community college campus. Each school brought 4 competitors. This was not affiliated with any particular group such as VICA/Skills USA or any other organization, it was simply a concept that had been brought to us by one of the local high school metals shop instructors and pursued by my partner, mainly, with various bits of input from myself. The final version of this competition involved having the contestants cut out wrenches for changing bottles and removing torch hoses from regulators. They were given numbered pieces of plate with pre-marked outlines of the wrench. The arc welding portion of the competition involved allowing the contestants to select their electrode of preference: E6010, E6011, E6013, or E7018. They were then required to make a 1/4" fillet weld on one side of a horizontal T, on the other side of this piece they were required to lay down a flat stringer bead, these parts also carried the same stamped number that the wrench had to give aninimity to the competitors, the GMAW portion of the competition involved having the contestants use .035 ER70S-3 and 75/25 shielding gas to lay down a 3/16" fillet on a horizontal T and then on the backside of the same piece they were required to stand the piece up vertically and run a 3/16" downhill pass. These were also numbered like the other pieces. The judging for the wrench cutting was conducted by my recently retired partner(35years worth), the weld judging was conducted by one of our local CWI/CWE folks. Since all of the pieces to be judged were numbered, those judging had no idea as to who or from what school the contestant hailed from, we felt this was the fairest method to use. Ten of our own students aided with keeping everything on track and helping out with questions and other needs to keep things running smoothly. Three of our local welding supply distributors contributed generously in the way of basic welding tools: gloves, tip cleaners, brushes, safety glasses and one even contributed a dozen fillet gages. All of these items were dispersed to the various competitors and raffling was conducted in cases where there were not enough of a particular item for everyone. Pizza and refreshments were served to all who attended, everyone got plenty. All in all, it was a very rewarding evening, the local paper provided some coverage, our administration was involved in seeing this event take place and provided the opening welcome, the various high school instructors and some of the parents that came along were able to get an idea of our offerings and vocalized their positive comments for what they saw. The students that came for the competition were involved and interested. Our own students had a blast. If I can get some of the pictures, I will try to post them for you folks. To some this may seem a pretty trivial event, yet I felt many would enjoy hearing about it as much as we enjoyed putting it on. Best regards, aevald     EDIT: I included a couple of pictures of some of the banners and a gong that our students constructed to signal the end of the various portions of the competition as well as a folder that we use to promote the program at our school. I would be very interested to hear of alternative ways that others out there use to promote and get the word out. Thanks, will still try to include other pictures of the actual competition when they become available to me.