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by Meral Bence I was introduced into the Roboteering world after I met my fiancé Tim Bence. It was a new world to me and I was unsure what to expect when I was asked to come along to the filming of Robot Wars, the 7th Wars. I had met a number of the Roboteer community at charity events during the year, so I was looking forward to seeing our friends such as Andy, Dave and Brian from Tornado, Stu from Pussycat, the Watts family (especially Ellie and Megan), Mike from Dantomkia, the Roaming Robots Team, etc. I first saw the filming studio in Nottingham when we went up to register, weigh in and have our tech check. I was overwhelmed by the size of it all and the number of Roboteers that were around. Walking around the pits I was amazed by the amount of imagination and creativity that had gone into getting the robots to were they were. Whilst still up in Nottingham, we found out which robots were going to be in our melee and that our first fight was going to be with Rhino, Mayhem and SuperNova. The drive home to Ipswich was a little solemn… Ed and Tim were discussing how good Supernova was as a robot and what the chances of Storm II would be of getting though the heat. The next couple days, until we made our way back up to Nottingham were a little tense as we did not know what was going to happen in our first fight. However it was amazing watching Tim and Ed working together as a team, they both have their strengths and both were using them without stepping on each others feet. I was pleased that I could be there to help them along with the little jobs on Storm II. I also enjoyed making Storm II look good for TV and assisted Tim’s sister Lucy with the art work!! The day came for us to make our first appearance in the arena. Before we made our way into the loading bay we got our first interview with Jayne and received a lot of well wishes from many of the roboteers. Going into the control booth for the first time was strange and even though I was not going to be doing very much in the booth I felt very nervous. I knew how much work, time and effort both of the boys had put into the robot and I had a better understand by this point of the mechanics of Storm II and hence knew how many things could go wrong… Once Activate was called and I started seeing Storm move around I think most of my nerves disappeared, I knew that all was going to be OK. We were now in the arena and the fight was going well, Mayhem received damaged and Rhino was limping around. Ed was enjoying the driving but was being cautious to not sustain any damage, especially internal like frying the speed controllers! Then SuperNova started limping and we knew that they weren’t going to make it through. We however knew that their weapon was still going and thought we would make the most of this and together the two robot were able to immobilise Sir Killalot, hee hee :o). Before we knew it ‘Cease’ was called and our first fight of the series was over, we were through to the next round of our Heat, phew.. Shortly after, having had time to clean up Storm II a little (its amazing how much dirt a robot can pick up in the arena!!) and charging her batteries we had our pre-fight interview with Jayne along side the Trax boys. They had furiously been trying to get extra welding onto their tracks when they heard that they were going to be fighting us. We had a good laugh at the end of the interview when the John Wayne and ten horses comment came out, and at this point I realised that we were all starting to relax a little and starting enjoying it all. It was now Tim’s chance to drive the robot for the first time in the 7th Wars and he did a great job in keeping his cool before the fight. I could tell that he was looking forward to driving the robot he had spent so much time and effort in rebuilding over the many weeks before filming, yet there was the nerves of not knowing how she was going to drive. But only a couple seconds into the fight with Trax, Tim got the swing of the controls and I could see the excitement and fun in his eyes when he was throwing Trax from one arena wall to the other. Demolishing the pit realise button was not intended but it did send a wave of laughter in our control booth. I could also tell that Ed was enjoying the fight and was admiring Trax’s ice-skating in the arena!! Before we knew it ‘Cease’ was called and we made our way into the centre booth with Craig Charles to get the result. We had made it- Craig told us, we had made it to the heat final!! Trax had done well against us and they have the determination needed to do well in the roboteering world, but it wasn’t their time- sorry guys. So there we were getting ready for our heat final, we couldn’t believe that we were only one fight away from the semi finals, so close… Despite hearing it on the grape vine, it wasn’t until Jayne came up to us to do the pre-fight interview that we knew we were going to be fighting Steel Avenger- our neighbours from Ipswich. We knew that this was going to be the robots last Wars and that a new model was in development so we didn’t want it going home in too many pieces, we didn’t have the heart to, really…. Ed was in the driving seat this time and he decided it was time that he too tested out the controls full throttle. It was a great fight and Steel Avenger did well to keep going. All the long hours slaving over the robot were paying off, the boys (and I) were having fun. Then came the surprise we were not expecting, with one long run up to the arena wall with Steel Avenger on the front, Storm II managed to send Steel Avenger flying over the arena wall and we could clearly answer the question on the bottom of their robot- “we did!!!”. So there we were, winners of the Heat final! Ed and Tim had shown great talent and expertise in a heat that on paper was one of the most challenging. They proved to all that Storm II had deserved to be seeded in the 7th Wars and that this was only the beginning, watch this space :o)
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