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Brighton Model World 2002
| Now a regular annual event
held at the Brighton Model Center, Brighton Model World pulls in tens of
thousands of visitors every February to look at steam models, cars, boats,
trucks and of course, the big crowd puller the robots. The attendees
were the usual suspects - Dantomkia, Tornado, Wolverine, Bigger Brother,
Storm, Roobarb, AAT, Suicidal Tendencies, Razer and more.
We had decided a few weeks before to try
out a new hydraulic weapon system at Brighton and as a result of
'teething' troubles we didn't get down until the Friday afternoon (but in
time for a runabout in the arena in the 4:30 show). Storm's
hydraulics were fully working - having previously been tested in the
garage at home on anything that we could find - in this case a pan !
Reeeeeem went the motor and squish went the pan, a successful test. |
"Welcome to Brighton" says Mike.
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Razer surrounded by their fans
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We were only running the
pressure at around 1000psi rather than the full 3000psi that Storm can
develop, partially so we didn't damage anyone else, and partially because
we didn't have time to tweak the system up to the full 3000psi
anyway. The only problem with running at 1000psi is the lifter ram
doesn't have the force required to lift a heavyweight robot at the end of
the arm, or to self right us. A bit of a pain, but I'd rather that
than damage someone in a momentary lapse of concentration. |
| We had a game of football on
the Friday afternoon, we got stuck in, using the jaw to grab hold of the
ball and run with it (only problem was that did make us a bit of a
target). All was going well until Storm suddenly stopped
responding.... very odd we thought. Problem was we had the ball in
the jaw and couldn't open it - close inspection showed that in our haste
in the morning we had routed one of the cables in a daft direction and the
hydraulic control cables had been cut by the arm - d'oh ! It wasn't
until the next morning that we managed to free the ball. |
Behemoth Turned up for the Saturday
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Arnold Arnold Terminegger |
Arfa explains to the thousandth person that Maelstrom only for Battlebots |
Storm continued to run well -
other than a problem with the hydraulics box everything seemed fine with no real
running repairs needed at all. That's more than could be said for Grim
Reaper who broke their flipper twice during the weekend !
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Curry at "Chez Ian"
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On Friday night Ian (Watts)
was determined that he should cook us all curry back at his place - Kath
and I went out shopping and came back with a car full of beer and curry
ingredients which Ian (and his team of little kitchen helpers) turned into
a rather nice (if hot curry). We returned to our hotel in
Littlehampton for the night, not before I took a toilet stop on the way
back.... due to excessive quantities of curry. |
| The Saturday went well - Mike
from Dantomkia asked me if they could borrow one of our Vantec speed
controllers to try out in Dantomkia - they usually use a delbots interface
and 2 4QD NCC-70 speed controllers. Everyone in the pits was
interested as to what the difference would be. Many people have said
how good the Vantec controllers are, but I don't think that anyone has
ever tried doing a direct swap out at an event to try the before and after
effect. With the Vantec swapped out Dantomkia was loaded into the
arena. When we switched on first time we noticed a lot of
interference.... we waited and then switched on again, this time there was
no interference. Mike began to drive Dantomkia around and then I had
a go - we were both VERY impressed with the results, Dantomkia, even
without the gyro was much more responsive as well as far easier to
control. There was a big thumbs up to the Vantec from all concerned
and Mike has now got one of Storms 38E controllers on loan to play
with. On the subject of loaned speed controllers, Ming III was
there, and they have borrowed one of our 47E controllers to take away with
them in Ming |
Suicidal Tendencies trying out some linear actuators on the claw
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Gareth posing with Wolverine
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Later in the day we took
Dantomkia into the arena to see how it worked as a full body
spinner. Dantomkia can spin up on the spot very quickly because only
the wheels are in contact with the ground, there is no contact from any
bodywork when spinning. We spun her up and rolled a barrel towards
it to see what happened.... the barrel was thrown across the length of the
arena with great force.... a successful test. But wait, Dantomkia
wouldn't stop, it was still spinning totally out of control.
Switching the Tx off, which should have caused the fail safes to kick in
didn't stop it - meaning it could only be interference on the same channel
from elsewhere in the show.... probably a throttle channel being used on a
train or boat. |
| Arnold Arnold Terminegger was
the nearest robot still powered up and volunteered to stop Dantomkia
spinning so we could get the link out. Ian was either brave or
stupid (he assures is he was being stupid) to volunteer to stop
Dantomkia. He had several valiant attempts, but each time he was
thrown so far away by the spinning bot that it just span up again.
In the end Suicidal Tendencies drove into the arena and after much
deliberation as to the best way to approach, charged in and just about
stopped Dantomkia (they both jumped about a foot in the air in the
process). It was all caught on camera - there is a 600k video of the
incident which you can download if you want a look, its compressed in .asf
format which Windows Media Player shouldn't have any problems
playing. Click HERE to download the
video. |
Oh my god - Ian Lewis finds paper in Razers link - sabotage !
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