Robotwars
SERIES 5 - SERIES 6 - EXTREME II - SERIES 7
Qualifying for series Five
28th July 2001 - QUALIFYING ROUND, Sheffield Arena.
After a frantic final buildup on the night prior to our qualifying heat we met up and drove to Sheffield.
On arrival we unloaded and were told of the first problem. We had no
removable link for the power, we had fitted a turnkey system instead.
The next problem was weight. We had weighed the machine and found it to be
approx 104 Kg, but when it was weighed at RW they said it was 112Kg.
Also we were told that if it did run we wouldn't be allowed to use our weapon system - "We need to use this stage to complete the Live Events tour, that thing will probably destroy it!"
These problems led to us being unable to run that day, however we were told that if we could fit the link and get the weight down within the limit then we could go for qualifying again, this time at London.
Everyone who saw the robot appeared to be impressed, some of the RW crew were
very impressed with the design - several of the contestants were actually glad
we weren't running!
PHONE CALL
A surprise phone call from the producer of RW, he tells us that the crew at Sheffield loved the robot and asked if the problems had been sorted, I said yes and we would be going to another venue to try and qualify again. He sounded surprised and said if we didn't hear anymore from the staff then we should go ahead and attend a qualifying round.
5 minutes after that call we got another to say we had qualified!
I now have it all in writing and we are in heat F on Sunday 26th August, 11am.
Filming series Five
We arrived at Elstree Studios at around 9am, we had to assemble the robot outside in front of the studio before we could take it inside.
We were amazed to see other robots being carried out ready to go home, there was
no messing about this year! it was run like a production line - in, fight till
you lost, go home...
Once assembled we went in and were weighed and photographed, than hung
around for a technical/safety check.
Meanwhile we had a good look at what else was around, there were eight robots in
each group, these were arranged in rows across the pits. Our group was Heat F,
which featured Corkscrew. An 800rpm lorry wheel in a kilt, built by John Heatlie
and his sons, it looked nice but probably top heavy, `no problem` we thought.
Finally after many delays we lined up for what would be the second but last fight of the day, we`d only been hanging around for nearly 10 hours so we were getting quite excited...
Getting the robot set up in the loading bay I plugged the main power link in and gave the controls a quick test. Something was wrong as it went the opposite way to what it should have!, we decided to go with it as I could just run it in reverse - I`d only had an hours practice drive anyway so it wouldn`t make much difference ;-)
We got up into the control area and got ready for our first fight, Corkscrew
came out first and drove across to the other side of the arena. Then we came out
and immediately started spinning round and round and wondering off across the
arena, it was going haywire, fortunately Corkscrew cut out (honest?) and the
match was called off so we could both sort out our problems.
Our problem was our aeriel, it was stuck flat onto the body which had worked
well back home but was a definite no-no in the studios. We pinched a stick from
one of our supporters flags and fitted it upright in the middle of the body,
taping the aerial to it.
This worked and didn`t take long, so we managed to squeeze in to the last slot
of the day.
Again we went through the setting up procedures and we now sat poised for combat, Sgt Bash, Shunt and Ref Bot looked on in anticipation...
"3 2 1 ACTIVATE!" and I drove straight at Corkscrew full whack,
the control was still a bit hairy but we managed to do this quite a few times, then the `roulette` disc stopped spinning, one of the blades had bent down with the force of the impact and jammed the wheel against our own body.
We
took a few hits from Corkscrew which put some good holes in our body and into
our chassis too, narrowly missing one of our batteries! finally we went straight
for each other and Corkscrew got stuck fast in our kevlar body. We were still
mobile but couldn`t pull away from them, just drag ourselves around in circles
with the black disc spinning.
The `voice` called a temporary halt to the fight while the house robots were
used to try and separate us, this didn`t work so they stopped the fight.
We lined up next to Craig Charles to wait for the judges decision, we thought we had it as we were the ones still moving and had been so aggresive compared to Corkscrew, but they gave it to them because of the damage we had taken. We were a bit shocked and I think it showed on the TV when I was a bit stuck for words! I was trying to say it was a well matched fight, two spinners in together, but it just wouldn`t come out ;-)
After the match we went back to the pits and everyone had gone home - even the cameramen!.
We packed up and decided to go home rather than take up the offer of a hotel for the night, so long as we could keep the tshirts we had borrowed.
Series Six would be a little different......