22/06/02 and 23/06/02 - JCB Mappleton Fair and Roaming Robots at Rolls Royce

Tooo many events.... I'm sure we're doing too many events !  Bit of a hectic weekend this weekend, on Thursday night we were down in Kent helping a school that we mentor building their heavyweight machine, then on Friday we had to head up to JCB near Derby for a tour around their factory before going on to an event nearby on the Saturday.

The tour around JCB was fantastic, in some ways its a shame that more people couldn't make it - but then if there had been more than just us and Bigger Brother we wouldn't have had the chance to go out into the JCB 'parking lot' and drive our pick of machines.  We've got some pictures and video that we'll put up on here as soon as we get the chance, but I can assure you that the sight of Joe from "Bigger Brother" being given the controls of a JCB digger ON HIS OWN is something to make even the toughest man head for the hills !.... suffice to say we have some video of it ! Just all very very scary !

The tracked machine was brought along by Darren Brown and looked like a marvel of engineering...... luckily Storm seemed more than capable of dealing with it ;o) The pictures on the left is from the 'Blazer Botics' website and their writeup of the event.  It shows storm tussling with Flybot (even carrying him around)... oh and don't worry, we didn't really crush the hedgehog on the top of it.

Picture the smallest village you know..... now remove some houses from it.... then some more.... and a few more; you now have an idea of just how small Mappleton is.  Not that being small is a bad thing, I'm just trying to convey just how ickle the place is.  Which is why it was a total shock when we arrived in the town for a summer fair to find a hugh marquee sitting in a field surrounded by other attractions... and the marquee was just for us robots.  They had built a demo area outside, relying on a large expanse of grass (which robots don't drive on very well!) to protect the audience. We were there with Bigger Brother, Flybot, Gladiator, Suicidal T (nice to see them out and about!), Whipper from "The Stag" team, as well as Darren Brown and the MFL team.  Storm was the only heavyweight running - and we had brought along plenty of things for us to destroy in the arena.  We did a couple of demonstrations with the featherweights, picking them up (gently!) and carrying them around.

Storm "dealing" with a tracked robot

We were there with Bigger Brother, Flybot, Gladiator, Suicidal T (nice to see them out and about!), Whipper from "The Stag" team, as well as Darren Brown and the MFL team.  Storm was the only heavyweight running - and we had brought along plenty of things for us to destroy in the arena.  We did a couple of demonstrations with the featherweights, picking them up (gently!) and carrying them around.  Also destroyed some PCs.... which the locals liked soo much that they started to bring in things from around the village that people wanted to see crushed... videos...toasters...pushchairs !  Storm obliged everyone and had a good go at making a mess of everything - including a video which was literally reduced to its component parts !

In the evening they had laid on a huge feast (that's simply the only word for it!) for us all.  We can only extend our thanks to all those in Mappleton for a great day - they provided food and drink for us throughout the day....... we'll certainly be coming again if they would like us to !

Sunday - Roaming Robots at Rolls Royce

So impressed were we with the Roaming Robots event last week in Newark we decided that we'd come along to the Rolls Royce event in Hucknell today.  It was quite a quiet event which gave the Roaming Robots team plenty of time to give kids (and parents !) a chance to drive their robots.  

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