Newark Kit Car Show 2002

17/06/02 - Newark Kit Car Show 2002

Its funny how things come around. This weekend we were at the Newark Kit Car Show with the Stinger team. We went along last time, Storm's third outing and really the first time that we had got even nearly close to having Storm's (then prototype) chassis behaving how we expected it to. We were determined that this time around would be very different and made an effort to ensure that not only did Storm look the part - but that it could do the business as well !

We arrived bright and early on the Saturday morning at about 8am and found ourselves a pit table next to our usual partners in crime - "Tornado". They weren't around for the Saturday, they were going to a Tesla Coil show (long story) in Derby. They'd left Tornado sitting in the pits for the audience to see, along with an advert for their new merchandise (buy your Team Tornado tops and caps!). Storm was all fired up and ready to roll. Its hydraulics were fully tested and working at 3000psi. The drive was running smoothly and all was looking good.

All that was left for the perfect weekend was for England to beat Denmark in the World Cup Finals and for the "Roaming Robots" arena which was making its debut at Newark to do the business.


Vader and Edge Hog	Silly people taking photos of each other !

The event was attended pretty well. The usual suspects were all there, Tornado, Dantomkia, Wolverine - along with many new faces. Other event regulars like Bigger Brother and M2 were sadly absent. M2 was at HMS Collingwood at another event...which I hear went very well.

Anyway...as for Storm at the event. We decided to go into the arena with G-Man for a run about, but due to a problem with G-Man they couldn't run once they got into the arena. For some reason there wasn't a queue of people wanting to fight Storm (something to do with Series 6 being a few weeks away and 5 tonnes of crush on the end of Storm I think). In the end Lambsy stepped up to the mark, but then we found that despite the fact they weren't on our frequency, they were getting interference from us so they couldn't run :o( In the end we threw in one of Storm's chew toys - a broken PC and chewed that up with the arm, smashing it around the arena with Storm frantically chasing after it when it had been thrown. The demo went well and the audience seemed to enjoy it. We were somewhat less satisfied. Storm seemed sluggish and the batteries only lasted a few mins before they were depleted. We weren't entirely sure what was going on... but after some inspection it was traced to a lose battery terminal.

It was announced at this point that England were 3-0 up in the football and most people scampered to the bar to watch the end of the match (though in typical style once we all go there, no more goals were scored !).

Storm looking very patriotic with its England livery

Saturday evening saw a large BBQ fest in the camping area with more burgers and sausages than you could ever imagine. Our thanks to everyone involved in the cooking - and hats off to Tornado for some amazing cooking skills. I've never seen anyone so good at spotting the difference between charcoal and food as Andrew from Tornado... after he'd finished cooking it all looked the same ! ;o)

Click to view video of Storm

As a late update to the event report, the Vader boys have sent us this short video capture of Storm running about with a PC case in its jaw and generally looking very patriotic (remember England were playing Denmark this weekend..... hence the full England St George's Cross outfit for the machine).... well if we're honest we just wanted to ensure that if there was a crowd vote for any competition we took part in that we'd get a good shot at winning it.

Anyway, thanks to the Vader boys for this ickle video file of Storm running.

On Sunday we decided to take things easy, we still had a few worries over why Storm's batteries were fading so quickly. We had two worries, one was that something in Storm was drawing far more than it should, the other was that the charger wasn't fully charging the batteries up. In the end it turned out that it was the latter we think and Storm ran much better on a set of batteries charged up by Mike Lamberts monster 50amp battery charger.

Feeling more confident we entered Storm into the car pull competition. Every year at the show kit car teams enter a car pull..... this year they were pulling Bryan's 101 Ambulance Landrover... 3.5 tonnes in total. The kit car teams had challenged the robots to a timed pull over a distance, and it seemed that they wanted the roboteers to compete as well !

Storm and Tornado were up first for a dual pull. We managed to set a time of 24 seconds, which didn't seem to bad at first. We had got the truck up to a jogging pace pretty quickly. Sadly though when the kit car teams went there were all setting times of 20 seconds with their 6 man teams. All that could be done to restore our pride was to beat them at their own game. Our six man team took up the strain and set a winning time of 16 seconds, beating all the kit car teams hands down :o) We were amazed, and put it down to the fact that underneath we're all fiercely competitive !

Miss Kit Car poses with Storm and Tornado outside

In the afternoon "Miss Kit Car" was being paraded around the venue having her picture taken with various cars. The organisers wanted some publicity shots of her with Storm and Tornado (only the best !) before we got some decidedly x-rated pictures taken with Miss Kit Car... something which the Stinger team seemed very proud about having laid on for us (they really should get out more!).

We might put some of the pictures on the website, problem is, we're just not sure that they're the sort of pictures that you should be looking at. The worst offenders were Alan Gribble... who had to be reminded to breathe and Bryan from Tornado who was taking far too many pictures.... presumably for his 'personal collection' ;o) ?

The afternoon finished with a few runs of the Roaming Robots with paying customers on two of their machines. We decided we wanted to take Storm out for another run and so put it in as a house robot with the Roaming Robots. Sadly most of the roboteers had left by this point and so missed our prizewinning piece of action. Twice one of the Roaming Robots fell into the pit - much to the dissatisfaction of the kid driving him. Well there was only one thing we could do. We manoeuvred Storm up to the edge of the pit... carefully closed the claw down on the robot in the pit and then lifted it out using the arm. Straight up in the air, and straight back onto its wheels on the arena......with a round of applause to boot. I don't think anyone (including the Roaming Robots... or Stinger team) had ever seen anything quite like it.

We headed home in the evening... and right now its all still sitting in my car waiting for me to get around to unloading it all. It was a great weekend - as it was last year. We'll certainly be there next year again. A big thank you to all involved in the organisation and finally it was great to see some new teams at the event we haven't seen before. Hopefully word about these 'charity' events is spreading and attendance's will continue to improve.

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