What a weekend - don't think I've driven quite so far in my life... ever.  It started at about 4pm on Friday night, I had a list of places I needed to visit and a long treck ahead of me.  First stop was Braintree near Chelmsford to pick up some parts for Tornado's new weapon (yes you see roboteers do work together) on this occasion we had pulled in some help from one of our sponsors to provide Tornado with the vital parts for their new weapon system.  I then headed from Braintree to Huntingdon to deliver the new weapon parts to the team for them to work on over the weekend.

Next stop was up the A1 and west - Derby, home of Suicidal Tendancies to pick up the Vantec speed controller.  Martin and Charles got to work on the robot (didn't realise it would be a fit while you wait service).  They first checked everything you could imagine that is testable on the robot (which passed) and then fitted and tested the Vantec.... it worked.  Next stop for me was Gloucester :o( it was already getting on for midnight and I still had a long drive ahead of me.

I headed off towards the A38 which would take me pretty much directly to the M42 and the M5 which leads to Gloucester - but then disaster, the A38 was closed due to an accident and I was sent on a long winding diverted route.  To add to the problems the car was running out of fuel, and I could see the petrol station just down the road from where I was taken off the A38..... it was another 40 miles before I came across one open, on the M42... and believe me I had totally accepted the fact that I was going to run out of fuel and was counting the miles to the service area.  

Anyway, I got to Gloucester at about 2am in the morning and crashed out on my bed in the hotel.

Next morning I was up far too early, went for a swim, had some breakfast and headed over to the event.  When I got there, no-one else was there, there were just some people putting up the arena.  After a bit Mike (Dantimkia) arrived on site and he showed me his new toy - "Bad Attitude".  Mike got in trouble for pulling the arena down, but then the organisers seemed to think that their sleeper barrier wall would be able to stop a robot....oh well.

We pulled Storm out of the back of the van, and fiddled with the Rx box before putting it into the arena.  It drove fine - no problems at all.   Then a problem, we seemed to have lost drive to one side of the bot, not sure why as the wheels weren't locked and the motor was turning.  What had happened was we had sheared part of the gearbox... Storm was immobile.  We spend the rest of the day showing off the hydraulics, picking people up (mostly the Dantomkia team) and squashing things.  

Alan from the Pussycat team invited us back to his in the evening and we repaired the robot, and his good lady provided me with a great meal which was much appreciated.  I headed back to the hotel... in need of sleep.

The next morning the same thing happened, but to the other gearbox (we suspected it might) we stripped the motor out of the gearbox and took it for repair.  We were running all afternoon once that was fixed and all seemed well.  At the end of the afternoon we did notice some smoke coming from a Bosch... but later inspection showed that it was just where some oil was burning off where we had got a bit over excited with our greasing !  

Back at base that evening we took a look at the gearbox and the motor that had been smoking, more detailed inspection confirmed that the smoke that had been seen coming from the motor was probably a mixture of the oil burning off and the water that had been on the arena surface getting splashed around inside the robot.

Overall a good weekend, and Storm's first real run in public.  People were impressed, other teams were impressed and most importantly, we were impressed !

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