This event had been organised by the same team that runs Wilsons Day - so we had high hopes for a good event.  We drove down in the morning and arrived at the venue by about 9am - we had no idea that the gates didn't open to the public until much later, but it did at least give us time to get set up in a good spot.

The weather was however not so good.  After a long hot spell we were inundated with showers, downpours, thunder and lightening.  The tents that we were under had water pouring down the sides and across the benches that our robots were sitting on and down into all the power connectors that we were charging from - at one point during the day they shut down the generator for fear of a serious problem somewhere !

The 'usual suspects' were there - Dantomkia, Wolverine, Bigger Brother and Tornado along with Toecutter, Tiberius (impressive fellow Hydraulic bot), Anthrax, Behemoth, Big Pants and probably others I have missed.

The event also marked a special occasion as Dantonkia - quite possibly the most famous robot never to appear on Robot Wars was retiring at the end of Saturday and Mike had made a special request that we try to send Dantomkia out in style. 

A group of suspicious looking roboteers

M2

The day went well with lots of bizarre events to keep the audience happy.  There was racing, tug of war, kitchen appliance and MFI furniture destroying - plenty to keep the crowds happy.  Anthrax also went into its first competitive fight.  Anthrax showed itself to be a very quick robot around the arena, though it did take a real battering from Dantomkia its aggressor.  In the end Anthrax stopped abruptly (turned out to be a minor problem) but the chassis and armour didn't look in such a good state.  Also a design fault with the claw was discovered.  Whenever you put something in it and closed the claw, the claw actually forced the object out !  These events are for testing testing and more testing so I'm sure Anthrax will only come back better than before as a result.

Dantomkia - Still alive at the end

A road legal jet powered trike

"I don't know what's in Big Pants" - quote Ed (MC for the weekend)

Storm was not running at this event, we were interested in doing some fundraising and had our raffle tickets on sale, as well as our mini robotwars arena with the mini house robots in it.  The kids loved the chance to drive against their friends/brother/sister/dad and Andrew, Dave and Bryan from Team Tornado lent us their driving skills - the delight on a child's face when given the chance to take on a real roboteer was amazing.

The Storm team did get the chance to fight it out in the arena.  Big thanks go to Tornado, Wolverine and Dantomkia for lending us their robots.  We all took a robot each and fought it out in the arena with an audience vote at the end - Ed won with Tornado in the end !

Andy manning the Storm stand

Supernova, very compact with a nasty looking disk.

Old faithful - Toecutter 2

At the end of Saturday we had an "everyone still running against Dantomkia".  We had 6 running robots in the arena and the biggest crowd you could imagine.  The plan was to destroy Dantomkia and send it out in style.  At the end of a grueling 10 min fight, the only robot that was still moving was Dantomkia !  The same thing was repeated on the Sunday evening - with the same effect.  Mike Dantomkia is just too reliable, good luck with the next one !

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