Best Weight Classification for a Newbie?

I've just watched a clip of the featherweight champs and wow, you guys are brutal! I must admit I got a bit bored of Robot Wars in the later years and looking at other robot combat clips online some of the fights could be quite dull, but boy you guys have build some hard hitting robots!

I've noticed a big difference between robot combat in the US and over here as well, watching US videos the american's either build bots that fall apart easily or built bots that rip others apart easily! Whereas over here there's rarely a bot in pieces by the end it seems, still exciting though watching the featherweights, look like there's some really professionally built robots there.

This was in April this year. Next year, as ever, the machines will be even more intense!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_zDLNbwK3k

Thanks for the advice guys, just a couple more questions if I may. I've just realised that the UK Antweights are a lot lighter than the US Antweights, I read Servo Magazine so had been used to seeing US antweights. Watching the UK Antweights they seem to small/light for my liking, it's more like a sumo contest and as Eventorizon pointed out, a Beetleweight would cost around the same amount, so may as well go for a Beetle or Feather.

Someone mentioned that the Featherweights are more professional and that I am likely to get destroyed, therefore would I be more competitive as a beginner in the Beetleweight class for now? I'm tending towards the idea of starting Beetleweight then one day upgrading to Featherweight.

Also, is there no Hobbyweight class (12 pounds/ 5.44kg) in the UK? It seems a nice inbetween weight and seems to be used quite a lot in the US?

Only thing close to hobbyweights in Europe are the Raptorweights (6kg) in Holland, Germany and Belgium.

If you go to either Robot Wars or Robots Live events, your feather should not get destroyed. Its only likely if you enter the uk champs.

There are several feathers which compete regularly at these events, which do not have the strongest of armors (even seen plywood being used), and yet whilst they get a few chips, they are certainly not destroyed.

To be honest, even if you enter the UK Champs, there's only a miniscule likelihood of your robot being destroyed. You may receive damage, yes, but considering how many spinners are out there and the power of them, there are actually very few machines that come out in several pieces.

I'd say I've probably received more damage in Robots Live/Robot Wars whiteboards than I've ever done at a UK champs. What with the floor flipper, house robots and overall a faster paced battle, repairs are usually always on the cards. It's never really obvious damage, just things like motors, gearboxes, bits of bent chassis etc, but still a lot more than you think you'd get for 'friendly' fights.

ill stand corrected :)

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Originally Posted by RogueTwoRobots

To be honest, even if you enter the UK Champs, there's only a miniscule likelihood of your robot being destroyed.

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I'm sure No Toy would disagree eh Jamie

Both years we have been we've come away with fairly serious damage but I have always put that down to not building the robots right, and my stupid driving. :P

There is no faster way to learn how to make a solid robot than to enter the champs. It'll be 2 years since we entered our first robot come April and I feel if we had shied away from the spinner events the latest builds would be very different.

Sorry, I probably should have worded my question better, I'm not so worried about being destroyed, more worried about not being competitive. I briefly tried radio control car racing as a teenager at a local club. I thought they would split the races into different classes so there would be one for stock standard Tamiya's, but there wasn't so my car was incredibly slow compared to everybody else's with their super fast motors etc, which was really frustrating and frankly boring.

So I don't want to build a robot and get to a competition only to find that it's vastly inferior and I don't stand a chance. I know I'm not going to be winning any time soon but having a good scrap is what I'm looking for, so I was just wondering am I likely to be any more competitive in the beetleweight than the featherweight, or does it not really matter?