"Follow the signs from Purley" the instructions said.  WHAT SIGNS ?  We arrived in Purley after a night in Croydon before the event and we didn't see any signs anywhere.  After a bit of driving around, and checking our direction was right by following people carrying toolboxes down roads, we arrived at about 9:45 at the event and went to check in.

We checked Storm in - and couldn't decide if we should enter as a Heavyweight, or Middleweight.  Remember, we were only running the prototype still and we had left the hydraulics at home, meaning that we only weighed in at about 48Kg, well into Middleweight territory.   We had a wander around a looked at the other middleweights that were there, most of them powered by small 24v motors...thin polycarbonate and an even thinner chassis.  Well if we were to enter as middleweight, we could certainly put on a show we thought, staring back across the venue at Storm sitting outside the van with its 4WD Bosch 750's, Hawker Batteries and Vantec speed controllers.

In the end we decided against it, and because we were so underweight as a heavyweight we decided to just take part in some demonstration events.  Unfortunately we were having problems with the chains, after they stretched at the Newark event and about 2 mins into our first demo with Onslaught our chains skipped over the tensioners and fouled up the drive on one side.  We just turned off the transmitter and left Onslaught to push us around the arena for a bit to put on a show for the kids.  It was a shame, but that's life.

Tornado, Bigger Brother and Stinger all turned up for the day - all a bit disheartened with how things had been going at Extreme the days before.  I got a change to drive Tornado in one of the demonstration events destroying a hovercraft in the arena.  Its a strange beast to drive, although it does of course have speed control, because it accelerates so fast, its more like and on-off control.  Its just doesn't take any time to get going.

Anthrax needs a little tweak....

....after having all sorts of problems

There was one scare at Wilson's Day, which possibly stemmed from a worry I had earlier in the day.  Now Wilsons is a well organised event, but there was one thing they missed.  There were no technical inspections of the robots at all.  We expected the usual check that you had a link, and that it worked ! likewise that you have failsafes and that they worked.  There was nothing - no checks at all. Clearly they were just assuming that everything was ok on the competing robots.

Well, in the final between Bigger Brother and Dominator 2, Dominator 2 lost control of their robot - and its a big beast to lose control of.  One of the drive motors was locked in full speed forwards (something that happened to someone the day before at Extreme - but I'm not saying who).  Dominator started to spin on the spot, faster and faster with sparks showering off the Titanium body as it scraped along the ground.

Ian tried to maneuver Bigger Brother in a few times to try to stop Dominator, but every time Dominator was going so fast it just pushed Bigger Brother back.  In the end Ian and Joe managed to get under Dominator and flip him onto his back where he lay with his wheel spinning.  The team members managed to de-activate the robot - but it highlights the need for reliable failsafes and ideally a remote kill switch.

Dominator goes into runaway - you can see the sparks from the front in the picture above

Ian flipped Dominator on its back so the link could be removed

Anthrax also bolted across the arena, this time because their software failsafes (I didn't even realise you were allowed failsafes written in software) failed.  Anthrax didn't have a remote kill switch either, and they too had to run into the arena to shut down their robot.  

All in all it was a good event, and I think everyone learned a lot about their robots.  I think the Anthrax team learned the most - though I did see them using their hydraulics, and they work very well, better than Storms do I have to say, but the Storm's aren't as advanced as Anthrax's !

A big thanks to all those who were involved in arranging the event, and my only feedback would be if you come to tell someone they have 45 mins before they are needed next - don't be surprised if you come back in 10 mins wanting them now, that they are working on their bot and not ready.  Also failsafe and link technical inspections would be sensible as well.  They might not have prevented what happened with Anthrax and Dominator 2, but they might prevent it happening again. 

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