Team Storm - Storm II


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Robot Wars Extreme New Blood Championship Mentorn were looking for new teams with new machine to appear in the "New Blood" tournament on the BBC. A real baptism of fire - none of the "Mercy Clauses" that the usual competitors get to sign, if you lost in this your machine was going to be thoroughly trashed by the House Robots, there was even a briefing given before the competition explaining what was in store. We entered Project:2 into the competition as "Storm II" - it seemed the natural name. There were admittedly sight ironies in entering a machine into a "New Blood" tournament called "Storm II", but that's not for us to worry about. So in October 2002 Storm II turned up to filming of Robot Wars Extreme.
"New Blood" involved 24 robots that haven't been seen on TV before - but that didn't mean that the quality was poor. There were machines that showed a great deal of potential in Series 6 such as "Revolutionist 2" and "Thor" as well as charity event veterans such as Mute. The fight structure was 3 heat fights (3 way melee, one on one, and a one on one heat final). Each heat finalist then went into a one on one semi-final before reaching the grand final to be named the "Robot Wars New Blood Grand Champion" - and also gaining automatic qualification to Series 7. We arrived on the Sunday morning at 9:30 to be checked in (weighed in at about 96Kg) and headed to our pit table. Due to the sheer number of robots turning up we didn't go through tech check until about 3pm in the afternoon. We had some problems with the new interface we were testing between the radio and the 4QDs - however after a marathon diagnostic session by Ian Swann et al we managed to get it fixed and tweaked in time for our fight (which I think a lot of our fellow competitors in the competition didn't think we were going to manage).

Round 1 - Storm II, Direct Action and Revolution. Filming Date Wednesday October 20th 2002.
Before the fight both teams had asked us if we would be willing to make a pact with them. In the end we ended up in the same booth as Revolution II and thus sticking with them in the melee seemed the most sensible course of action. They were sure that their weapon could cause damage, however they felt they needed a good 15 seconds to compose themselves and get their weapon up to speed, so for the first 15 seconds it was up to Storm II to do as much damage as it could. Activate was called and both Revolution II and Direct Action started to spin up their weapons. We were impressed (and worried about) the speed that Direct Action could get its 20Kg disk up to speed. Do not be fooled, that's one serious piece of spinning metal - more than capable of making a real mess of someone. Once we had our footing in the arena we let Storm II rip with a charge across the arena and slammed Direct Action into the side wall beneath our control booth.
I'm not sure if we hit Mr Psycho first or the arena wall, but either way it smashed one of the huge teeth off the disk of direct action in the process. Sadly we lingered too long in the corner of the arena and Mr P decided to take a swipe at us. Luckily all that solid construction paid dividends at this point as we were totally unscathed other than a slight ding in the top of the scoop.
		By this point the Revolution II had got themselves going and came in for some action. Unfortunately due to some confusion in the control booth they ended up taking a swipe at us.... but that was Ed's fault for mis-hearing a call in the booth. In the end the fight was over pretty quickly. We managed to keep on top of things - our allies Revolution II sadly bent one of their spinning blades meaning that their weapon was immobile. This left it to us to give them a quick shove as a thank you.... and release the pit. There was one hairy moment where all the audience gasped as Storm II traveled a little too close to the pit, however everything was under control and soon Direct Action vanished into the pit and cease was called. From our point of view a very successful fight and probably the 'best' fight we had. We were really able to show the speed of Storm II around the arena, something which took everyone off guard. Although Direct Action's disk had gone straight through the 3mm steel on the front of the scoop, there was still 7mm of Titanium beneath that they had only scratched - only cosmetic damage to worry about.
On the edge of the scoop they had gone through the 3mm steel and also 4mm of Titanium ! All three robots had come out of the fight with little damage either from each other, or the house robots, so no-one was going home in a bin bag. We had all agreed before the fight that if anyone was immobile that they would be pitted by the opposition. With no 'Mercy Clause' open to us in this competition, no-one wanted to hang around in the arena to play with the house robots. We did sustain some minor damage if you can call it that. We lost the heads of a few bolts on the front of the scoop caused by Direct Action. Also we broke the hinge on our link door so a quick trip out to the local builders merchants was required for a replacement stronger hinge When we came out of the arena the back door of the robot was only being held in place by the link attached to it and the cables. Thank god for thick strong cables ! Storm II and Revolution II go through, with Direct Action sadly going out.
Round 2 - Storm II vs Chopper. Filming Date Thursday October 21st 2002.
The fight against Chopper had us somewhat worried. The team seemed very sure of themselves - and we weren't sure whether this was just showmanship, or whether their machine had something up its sleeve. Chopper was a bar spinner with a pyramid body and lump hammers welded to the ends of the bar. In their previous fight they had taken heavy damage to their weapon and it had got badly bent out of shape. Sadly we hadn't seen the previous fight so had no idea if this was caused by then dishing out an almighty beating to someone else, or a structural problem with their robot. Either way the team were clearly well into 'evil' mode and had gone to the trouble of lowering their hammers down so they would strike the sides of Storm II rather than the top (Storm II's chassis is only just over 4 inches high remember !).
		Activate was called and we edged ourselves towards Chopper, just testing them, seeing what they were capable of. It was clear that their spinning bar weapon wasn't working to full efficiency and they posed little threat. The only problem was that we didn't really know what to do with them. In the end we tried the same move that had worked so well with Direct Action. Rather than just slamming into them, or just slamming them into the arena wall we slammed them into one corner of the arena at full speed. To our (and their) amazement they flipped upside down in the process..... they were stranded on their back in a CPZ. We weren't sure what to do at this point. Do we go in and get them out of the CPZ still on their back and push them about a bit before pitting them. Or do we leave well alone.
They're in a CPZ after all, and the last thing we want to do is drive back into the CPZ at the risk of some very trigger happy house roboteers coming out to play. To be honest it was so jammed into the corner we weren't sure if we could get it back out anyhow, we we left well alone.... waiting for the house robots to close in. Ideally we would have pitted them straight away to save them being attacked by the HR's, but we didn't fancy getting in too close with a machine that to date had taken zero damage. In the end the HR's toyed with Chopper and didn't inflict too much damage. In a clear moment we went and pressed the pit release button to encourage the HR's to pit Chopper. It worked and Chopper were out.
		What you may not have realised is that we made a fatal mistake when we loaded Storm II into the bull pen. During our repair of the hinge after our previous fight we hadn't re-attached the robot end of the link to its usual securing point - the link was just loose in the back of the robot. This wasn't a serious problem.... until we realised that as soon as Storm II hit anything on its right side, the link would slide across the back of the robot and turn off the electronics. Well just as predicted as hit Bash side on and switched ourselves off. Luckily Chopper was already out for the count by this point, but that small oversight on our part could have cost us the fight. Bash tried to prod us a bit, and tried to get us in his jaws, but we just didn't have enough clearance from any angle he tried. Refbot gave us a nudge too, but luckily we were already through.... a big sigh of relief from all the team !
From Activate to Immobile in 21 seconds - not bad for a robot without a weapon !
Round 3 - Storm II vs ICU. Filming Date Friday October 22nd 2002.
Our last fight to make it through into the Semi Final was against ICU, a robot with a similar look to X-Terminator. Armed with an axe and boasting four wheel drive this fight could be interesting if we didn't do something early on. We had been working on Storm almost none stop all through the filming at Extreme. Anyone who was there will tell you that there was hardly a point when we weren't doing anything. Not because we had to work on it, but because we were choosing to work on it. In between fights everything was being checked and re-checked. Shake proof washers on wiring, mounts for motors, batteries and speed controllers were double checked to ensure they were still tight. Tension on chains, the machine was cleaned out to get rid of the swarf and other debris that gets into machines during fighting were all painstakingly cleaned out. Every time we ran the machine and it came out of the arena without so much as a twitch in the wrong direction we knew that our almost compulsive attention to detail was worth it.
Sadly the ICU fight was over all too quickly. Andy was driving and we hit them so hard in our first collision that we rendered them immobile. Their aerial was lying on the floor of the arena and ICU was going no-where. Very aware that a fight that is over 6 seconds from 'activate' being called wasn't going to make fantastic footage, and although our wins to date had been very convincing and almost surgical in their delivery, it wasn't making good television and we were worried about being branded 'boring'. In order to try to deal with this issue, once we realised that ICU was immobile we planned to flip and pit them ourselves. We pushed ICU onto the arena flipper... only to have it pushed off by a House Robot. So we pushed ICU back onto the flipper and tried to convey to the arena operators that we wanted to flip them, but it was to no avail. Ok we thought... how about the pit then. We drove Storm II down to the pit release button and hit it.... nothing happened. We hit it again, ramming it a few times for good measure, but the pit wouldn't go down. This posed a bit of a problem as we had of course made an agreement with ICU that in case of immobilisation we would pit each other, sadly it was clear that Mentorn were having none of it. In a last attempt to do something 'interesting' we tried to turn on the arena floor spinner in the hope of pushing ICU onto that - but again, despite pressing the button, all that they were interested in was charging in with the House Robots and smashing up ICU. After much smashing and bashing, ICU were taunted by the House Robots - we tried the pit release again to put ICU out of its misery, and this time the pit was lowered (second time of asking !) and ICU was dumped into the pit.
Semi Fianls- Storm II vs Thor. Filming Date Saturday October 23rd 2002
"The Box is Locked, the Lights are on - its Robot Fighting Time" Hmm, the wrong show, but who cares - it sounds appropriate. Well here we are then, we made it to the final. We'd had a tough first fight in our heat against Direct Action and Revolution II, Direct Action's disk was doing more damage that it appeared on TV, though you could see sparks being thrown up as they hit the Titanium armour on the front of Storm II Sadly the fights in the final didn't go quite as well as they did in the heats - due to one thing that would be our undoing, the spinning disk on the floor. It wasn't spinning, but it would cause us no end of headaches in both the semi final and the grand final.... but more of that later. The first of our fights in the final was against Thor. Now we hadn't seen any of Thor's previous fights so we had no idea how powerful the axe was, but what we did know what that they had virtually taken two people out with their first hits ! We were more than a little worried about the whole thing - although Storm II looks very tough, and certainly has a solid chassis, we were worried that the Titanium top armour might have enough flex in it to spring down and compress the motors or the batteries if they got a direct hit - so the plan for the Thor fight was two fold Stay away from the hammer Create as much footage as possible, get a convincing win and then play to make up for the complete lack of footage of Storm II in our heats !
		Tim would be driving for the Thor fight - he hadn't had a chance to drive the robot before (not ever) however with the possibility of there not being a Series 7 at this point in time it was a case of everyone getting a go in. This would explain our somewhat nuclear powered start to the fight with Storm II flying around the arena as Tim got to grips with the somewhat sensitive controls. I have to admit I couldn't watch as Tim occasionally skimmed past Thor worryingly close to the axe. Not to worry though as he soon found his footing with the robot and brought the fight under control and soon we were back on top playing with Thor around the arena. However then disaster struck - we drove over the floor spinner, and got the front of the scoop wedged under it, doing so bending the front of the scoop down.
This meant we were running on the back set of wheels only and a bit of bent scoop. Now putting 18hp through 6 wheels results in enough wheel spin, but trying to drive Storm II with just the back wheels meant plumes of smoke coming off the robot. Not really a problem, just what you would expect really, however I think that everyone else thought we were on fire...... still all good television. As for what happened to Thor, well we turned them off. It went something like this - first we hit them so hard we smashed the mounts that hold their Co2 bottle in. Then we smashed the bottle into their main valve, shutting off the gas, and then for the finale we smashed the bottle into the valve again - turning off the gas. The biggest problem we had with Thor, was after we'd decided we'd tootled about the around enough - and trying to work out how to get them off us we tried to get them in the pit. It was virtually impossible, they were such a bizarre shape and so big we just couldn't get them down the pit :o(. Still the judges called it in the end and we won, putting us through to the grand final.
Grand Final - Storm II vs Mute. Filming Date Saturday October 23rd 2002
Now Mute and the Storm team go well back. We fought them at the 2002 Debenham Robot Rumble where we were lucky enough for them to suffer a mechanical failure. We were both tired, it was now the end of a long week, We had all arrived on Sunday for filming, and this was now Thursday night at about 9:30. Most teams had gone home leaving just those who were in finals of the various extreme competitions left. To be honest the prime thing on most people's minds was a desire to get home by this point. Saying that though, we were both pretty determined to go home carrying the New Blood Grand Champion Trophy ! 3..2..1.. Activate and so we started - we'd managed to bash the scoop straight again where it had hit the spinner in the previous fight, and all was going well - we couldn't easily get under Mute, but didn't tend to end up running up them if we hit them head on. We knew that this fight was going to be a war of attrition, we didn't expect Mute to break down, so it was just a case of being the more aggressive of the two robots and fighting it out. The fight was going ok until the same thing happened as happened in the Thor fight, the scoop again got bent on the floor spinner leaving us running on the back wheels again and the front of the scoop where it had been bent - definitely not the situation we wanted at all ! We struggled on, despite the plume of smoke rising from our rear wheels. We even beached ourselves on the edge of the floor flipper where the floor was damaged, but Mute kindly pushed us clear. Then the defining moment came, we ended up on Mute's flipper and they flipped us - which put us back onto all six wheels again and the damaged scoop stopped being a problem ! After a bit of acclimatisation to being upside down - including a run in with Dead Metal we got going again, ramming our spikes (which were now about an inch off the ground) into the side of Mute...... after what seemed like an age, cease was called and the fight ended. I was convinced we had lost, Mute had got 2 flips in on us, and from where I was standing, whilst we'd probably come across as the more aggressive, would the judges class those flips by Mute as damage, or would they say that because we were invertible that the flips hadn't done anything. There was so much tension in the control box before the interview, it took the judges about 10mins to make their minds up, during which time we stood and chatted to Craig. In fact to fill in time there was an audience vote and people had to cheer for the robot that they thought won.... well the crowd cheer clearly suggested it was us, but all that really counted was what the judges thought ! Finally the news came through, and with the words to mute of "you've been pretty luck to get this far, but now you're luck's run out - they've gone for Storm II" an immense feeling of relief flowed through all of us. We'd done it - on our first attempt at Robot Wars, we'd received a Champions Trophy
		We'd earned our trophy. Yes there will be those who say that we're a robot without a weapon, but with a 20mph + hit we pack a punch. There will be those who say we took the easy option by building a robot without a weapon. But anyone who looks at Storm II will realise that a lot of work has gone into building something that can withstand the punishment it dishes out. 2 KO's, 1 pitting and 2 judges decisions later and we held the trophy in our hands. Automatic qualification to series 7 meaning we don't need to audition like the seeds and the name Storm firmly stamped on Robot Wars "Mission Accomplished".... and with that, we went and got very.... very... drunk :o)
To be honest, we really didn't realise what we'd built or it's potential. We were amazed to have won the New Blood competition and had no idea of where the storm of Storm II was going to go. What we did know was we now realised we had the potential to go far in the sport - and intended to step up to the mark, It was just after the filming of Robot Wars New Blood that Andy left the team, he moved house, got married and had kids all in a short space of time and wanted to concentrate on other things in his life.