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Round 1 - Storm II, Supernova, Mayhem and Rhino. Filming Date Wednesday August 27th 2003. We went up to qualifiers on the Saturday before the week of filming. We knew that we were in as we were automatically seeded however Mentorn still asked us to go up so they could check over the robot. Storm II caused quite a stir when it turned up for the first time, and we started to feel quite proud of our little black creation We were told then that we would be facing Shredder Evolution and Supernova in our heats - two of the biggest spinners in the series, and two that quite frankly we'd have rather we'd kept away from. It was a very sombre car that returned from Nottingham back to Ipswich after qualifying, mulling over the news of who we were going to fight. Shredder we felt we could deal with, but Supernova was an unknown quantity - just how much damage could that disk dish out, and just how much could Storm II take ? We simply didn't know ! One of the areas that we
concentrated on between Saturday and Wednesday was ensuring that
everything was firmly affixed - yes Storm II gives itself a fair old
workout when its in the arena, but Supernova could put some horrible
forces into things. We weren't bothered about them going through
the amour - there was always the risk that they could tear a panel
off - though this wouldn't stop us, just mean that we had to ensure
we kept that part of the robot away from them and so in the grand
scheme of things was of little concern. |
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We powered up Storm
II in the bullpen and tested the drive and the lifter - all appeared
to be well. This was the first real test of the machine, it hadn't
actually run on the 'ground' since its upgrade from Extreme II. I
know that sounds naive and stupid, but there simply wasn't time to
get it all done. We knew that the drive train worked, the only
'unknown' was the speed controllers, but we all had total faith in
Dave's speed controller design, so out we drove into the arena to
wait for the 3..2..1. Activate !
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Supernova appeared to be
having trouble in the middle of the arena, and in the hotel the
night before I'd been saying how great it would be to use Supernova
to de-track Sir Killalot.
It was too good an
opportunity to miss - Supernova was sitting in the arena, pointing
at Sir K and Storm II was in the idea position to connect one with
the other. I scuttled Storm II around the back of Supernova and gave
a good blast on the throttle. Supernova scorched down the side of
Sir Killalot and in the process took off a track, the drive wheel
for the track (which was just totally obliterated) and two of the
idler wheels. |
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Supernova appeared stuck
and unable to move, so we decided that perhaps they needed a push -
so we rammed them into the side of the arena, and they failed to get
going again. Matilda came in for a quick look, but they were dead. Storm II and Rhino go through. Its also worth noting that the damage caused to Sir Killalot was the most expensive damage ever caused to a house robot in the history of the series - and also put him out of commission for filming for the rest of the day. So our apologies to Chris Reynolds who looked after the house robots :o(, we did get a bit of the track as a souvenir though ! They did get him back up and running later with a big round of applause from all around at the time ! Long live "Stormpernova"
as we were known ;o) |
 Sir K gets repaired - ALL DAY ! |
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| Round 2 - Storm II vs Trax - Filming Date Thursday 28th August 2003 | |||
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Trax is a robot that Team Storm actually
had some input into - we provided a little advice on the use of
Magmotors from the US to power it and on the gearbox design. The
picture of Trax on the right is a shot of it in testing at an event
in the UK - you can see the two Magmotors at the back on the
vertical gearboxes. We didn't see Trax fight in its first round heat - but knew that on paper it wasn't something to be under-estimated. Between their mele and our fight they had been welding steel bobbles all over the tracks to try to get even more traction in the arena. Between our first round fight and the second we charged the batteries and put some clean armour on - we actually took off one layer of side amour (which is mounted in two 6mm thick sheets) so we were running with half thickness on both sides. This means less weight to carry and more performance ! |
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The Trax team seemed worried about their impending fight with Storm II and were trying to work out a way that they could add more traction to Trax...... we were busy dusting the robot ;o) Tim was driving for this heat, and as activate was called he quickly got to grips with a robot he hadn't driven before - as I had done in our first round. Tim quickly go the measure of the robot and was slamming Trax all over the place. In our first round I'd never really given Storm II all it could give - simply because I was worried about mechanical failures. Storm II was a basically all new robot for Series 7 with no testing whatsoever, and therefore I was concerned about mechanical failure from something we hadn't thought about more than anything else. Trax was clearly having problems - ice skating around the place, and we weren't having any problems getting under Trax, and soon it became apparent that this would simply be a a war of attrition. Could Trax keep moving to the end to retain respect and force a judges decision, or could Storm II finish Trax off. In the end Trax took it all the way, surviving everything that Storm II could dish out - and it was still moving at the end. We did have one moment to put Trax in the pit, but given the way they were sliding we decided they were being so unpredictable in the arena we would play safe - after all we believed that we'd done enough to get through. In the end it did go to a judges decision, and Storm II won and went through to the heat final to face an old friend of ours who lives a few miles away - Steel Avenger. |
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| Round 3 [Heat Final] - Storm II vs Steel Avenger - Filming Date Thursday 28th August 2003 | |||
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This was a fight that to be honest I'd rather not have had to fight. John and I both live within about 10 miles of each other, and both work at the same place as each other. John had been giving us advice back in 2001 at events when we were still building robots that couldn't even turn on the spot. The last thing I wanted to do if I'm honest was to be the robot that put him out of Series 7. They did really well to get through their first and second rounds - I think they expected to be going home long before then. |
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Still, when in the war zone you can't go easy on people. After Tim's
excellent performance with Storm II against Trax, I decided it was
time to see what Storm II could really do when you pushed it hard.
Activate was called and we went straight for Steel Avenger - they tried to get a few shots in with their axe but missed - they managed to hit the floor ok though and impaled themselves - just goes to show you shouldn't underestimate even an 'old' robot in the arena. In the end though we wore them down and eventually got the opportunity to take them the full length of the arena into a corner - the same was as we had with Chopper in Extreme II. |
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| To our absolute amazement we rammed them into the side wall so hard that they just flew up into the air and rocketed out of the arena - we were speechless, we didn't know if we'd used the weapon or not. Tim knew he'd given it a little flick, but on seeing the footage that actually came AFTER Steel Avenger had left the arena. We didn't quite know what to make of the situation - if you look at the footage you'll see that Storm II just sits there motionless as we jumped around in the box going wild, having accomplished something no-one else had ever done, delivered enough kinetic energy with our robot to another robot through speed alone to launch them out of the arena ! | |||
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In the interview John said that we'd got them out through 'brute
force and ignorance' - I'd certainly agree with the brute force - as
for whether ignorance was involved, I suspect not, a lot of work went
into Storm II which was far from ignorance, but I knew what he
meant. We were all a bit shocked, not least of all Craig who
couldn't quite believe what had just happened. So there you have it - winner of Heat I, Storm II, and by all accounts it seemed a fairly convincing performance. On to the Semi-Finals now, and I can tell you that our first fight is going to be against the Grim Reaper in our fight in the Semis. |
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Some of the comments that the team have had since this heat aired on
TV
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