Tech Checkers Conference and training day

at robots live i drew thz and kronic. not so bothered anout kronic but i thought it wasnt worth entering the comp and getting a pounding from thz which would have led to a lot of repair work on my robot. if i had hardox panels i would have gone into any battle with thz knowing it would have held up a lot better than my 5mm ali. so i withdrew from the battle. but now i can go to roaming robots barnsley event with a working robot to put on a show. its the same with kan opener. he has 2 robots. 1 for play and 1 for comp. the play one is as realible as a day is long and turns up to almost every event. if he only had the comp robot then he would probably only turn up to the uk champs.

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

oh and before you all start ranting back Envy weighs 97kg fully loaded and ready for competition. just thought i would say before you thought envy was overweight.

sigh Im not even going to even remotely think of the possibility of maybe doing something that might be deemed to resemble ranting but isnt it the nature of the hobby that we damage each others machines ?

I dont think excluding robots from events due to a little overweight is in the spirit of the sport, but competitions have strict rules and strict limits.

If it means we can put on more shows because of some extra hardox in whiteboards then good. Shows are very different to full combat.

Indeed, but if we all show up with hardox indestructabots on show events, how much show will that be for the audience?

Adding extra protection to the vunerable bits i could live with. But there should be some room for damage.

say that leo after you have attended 10 events in as many months with thor breathing down your neck

Very true.

You know I would if I could. And that would not change my position on it.

the amount of times beast had been damaged in play fights is a joke

if we had and extra 5kg sheet on the back of beast then we wouldnt have had the £1000s of damage

i dont really understand why we are talking about this though as in main competitions robots are always weighed and wouldnt be fighting if they were overweight

we are at the other events to put on a show and not to get damage - unless there was a few hundred pounds of prize money then ye we should be in the weight limit but i dont know anyone who rly cares if robots are 1-2kg over

featherweights is completely different from heavys and i dont think we will see a robot over 14kg after there 2nd event - and heavys are only a few kg over n who cares rly? were there to put on a show n have abit of a laugh not to moan about robots 2kg over

You can pile up as much hardox as you want, it wont protect against flippers.
And then, in the end its shock damage that will cost £££.

If you need the extra protection to survive playfights, and not in full combat, something is screwed on wrong.


And, no fight is fair. More money trown in, more time, or more creativity. But it always means we try our best to stack the odds our way.

ok, so if it is not a proper competition, then is it ok to say heavyweights weighing 105kg and feathers 16kg?
i never realised weight wasnt a problem unless it was a major compeition.

my only reason is i got flipped out by a apparant 19kg fw damaging my br reciever on my robot which was always protected fully with loads of foam, and that reciever has never been damaged in the past god knows how many events!!
no offense intended but i wish someone had told me oh btw dont worry about your weight if it isnt a major competition

not moaning at your robot kenny, just wish someone told me weight wasnt an issue, then i could of protected myself more against your monster




(Message edited by promo robots on February 10, 2008)

obviously 19kg is 2 much but as he thought it was alot less then we have to believe him

and i think 16kg is 2 much - id say max is just over 14 and id say 105 is the limit for heavys

we have to understand that were going to pick up some damage but with cash prizes then i dont mind

Ok then Ill build a heavy with a hammer, and for playfights Ill fit a 5 kg heavier weaponsystem.

Just because everybody else is uparmoring, and I want to make dents.

Soon enough somebody will enter with a 106 kg heavy, or a 107 one? Sorry, the new top armorplate was a bit heavier than expected.

At the moment I think there are only a few feathers which are well overweight (one of which being my robot aftershock). It currently weighs 15.8 kg inc. gas and I am working on lowering the weight.

As it is so heavy at the moment I do not enter it in any competitions at any event in case someone was to accuse me of cheating. It will continue to run in whiteboards until the weight is 13.6kg.

Will
http://www.teamshock.4mg.comwww.teamshock.4mg.com

I understand the need for survivability / repair cost of sustained entertainment events.

But like Adrian ... Im a little surprised at this practice.... however if its required to sustain the sport and not abused then fine.

Gentlemen,
At the end of the day its really very simple, if your machine is a bit fat and I mean a bit like say 2.5% +/- (I.E around 350g for a feather & 2.5Kg for a heavy) Then providing the event organiser is happy and you only want to run whiteboards, I dont see any problem.
Any more than that and people may, quite rightly, imply that your machine is a fat bugger and you really need to put it on a serious diet!!
Plus you may find an event organiser wont even let you run it in a whiteboard!

(If I had my way and someone turned up with a 15+Kg feather I would call it an underweight heavy and make it fight with the rest of the heavies!! Excuse me Mr Reid, can you just chop a couple of Kg off this while youre about it?? :lol:)

BUT... You want to enter a competition, then YOU WILL weigh a MAXIMUM of 13.6Kg inc. gas for a featherweight and 100Kg plus 2Kg of gas for a heavyweight. This is not up for debate!

(please note that as of 01/01/2009 a heavyweight will have to weigh no more than 100Kg INCLUDING GAS to enter a competition.)

i understand what your saying geoff, but what is a competition? is this only uk champs, euros etc... or is this any event that is not a white board fight, e.g knockout tournament

a competition for me nowadays is with prizes, like money so if you do get damage then you can pay for it if you win or trophies but id say mainly money - i wouldnt stick beauty up against spinners in a competition where there isnt something to win and we never go in whiteboards during a competition as we might pick up damage - only time we have was when jonno begged me and we got damaged and fixed it - it would of prob happened in the next fight

and mario i dont think we will be seeing 106 kg heavys and you can build a hammer with that for a white board - its not up to the eos who fight each other in white boards - if people dont want to get damaged seriously then they just wont fight you

this is turning into a joke now tho

little john your wrong, didnt your dad tell you what hapened in ireland.... :)

Last fight of the trip, he put beauty in with 7 heavys, and it survived,,,,, how i dont know !! :)

I know i flipped it a few times into the polycarb!! i think the only reason it stopped cause it ran out of gas while upside down... sorry if you didint know !! :)

all we have to do now is build 8 beautys and well take the heaveys on lol but we need 8 drivers tho ;)

you can turn up with a 106kg heavy if you wish. but the EO can decide to weigh you.. and if your over, they can choose to tell you to put it back in the car.. is it worth the risk? If you turn up applying to the rules then theres no problems. The feather everyone is talking about was weighed at home, and he believed it to be abit over... but bought it along for testing none the less.. when he realised how heavy it was, he withdrew himself for the rest of the weekend as a jesture of sportsman-ship.

Be sportsman like, play to the rules. It keeps everyone happy.

ye jonno he showed me the video

wasnt a competition tho and since then its done rubbish! apart from 1 gd fight at robots live

time for a new 1

well its can be finished for sunday but your not there to drive it LJ ;)

ps its a cross between Envey and u know who may get it working but ill try but u gotot help me lol get off that dam pc and get in the garage

i charge £10 an hour for my help

and can u not spell envy

gotta get new 1 underweight aswel

cant fight in no whiteboards if its 2 heavy

i dont want no moaning

Adrain,
To clarify, I was refering to any FRA sanctioned championship, I.E. UK / European / World (one day!)

The main thing is still... if you build a fw of 13.6 kg that is well protected or you build a fw of 15 kg that is even better protected, at the end of the day you will still have damage and it will still cost you. The frame will still be bent, the armour will still have rents, there will always be something requiring repairs. If you need a plate of hardox on it in order to have it protected then you need to find the weight somewhere in the rest of the robot. What cant you understand about that ? Oh, you want to keep your robot pristine for the really serious fights, the ones of the championships ? Dude, people buy those tickets in order to see your robot get damaged. Not in order to watch a metal flea-circus.

If the ferry wasnt so darned expensive we would come over every weekend AND FIGHT. And repair.

People, the sport is about damage, the inflicting thereof and thus the equal chance of having it inflicted on your own precious creations as well. Moaning about how it can get damaged in a fun-fight ? For me even the fun-fights are serious. Even in a fun-fight your robot risks to become thoroughly smashed to pieces. And moaning about prize-money ? What is the chance of winning it ? I mean, there are usually 20-ish guys each yearning and competing for that prize. I feel prize-money harms the sportsmanship, it takes the fun away because everyone is going seriously for the bucks. I hate that. Sport should be fun.

In the end we have an expensive hobby. Ive been a student too once, with rather expensive hobbies back then, and I absolutely do know the value of money and time. Right now we are hard-working bills-paying wage-slaves and we still find the money and time to build and repair our robots.
Within the weight-limits.
At times even UNDER the weight-limits.

I still say that in order to have a level playing field we should only allow robots that are within the weight limit. If a robot shows up and it turns out that it is overweight, it should be up to the roboteers if they will allow the robot in the arena for whiteboard fights. Kenny showed up with a robot that is way overweight and if someone, just 1 person, had objected the EOs crew should not have allowed Kenny to use it. In any case it should have been made clear in advance to everyone.

But Kenny should be given a chance to at least test his robot on that day, only with opponents that are brave enough to enter to help out with tests.

Weighing in all robots before entering the arena is a good idea. Specially in the feathers it is a pretty easy operation, put a scale next to the arena entrance. Its also the best way, so that we never have the discussion wether the bottle is full or empty. Thats the weight you are going in the arena with, it must not exceed 13.6kg.

There is a point that will come up of course, the scale is being used to weigh the co2 bottles. But a second scale should not break the bank, even if it is just a regular household scale.

(Message edited by leo-rcc on February 11, 2008)

(Message edited by leo-rcc on February 11, 2008)

i understand testing is needed but opponents had no idea that the robot was overweight i couldnt see any scales anywhere tbh. i was told that it was a little overweight and that could easily be sorted, i remember this as it looked scary and i really wanted to know if it was going to be in the compeititon or not.

(Message edited by promo robots on February 11, 2008)

adrian what would have happened if your robot got flipped by the arena flipper and hit the roof and hit the floor then bounced oota. ok it was flipped out by kennys robot, (which is overweight but looking good if i may say so) the same damage could have been caused by beauty flipping it out or mabee the arena flipper.

My view is that all robots should not go over the limit in any way for competitions, white boards is between the roboteers if they want to fight the over-weight robot.
For smaller competitions that are not full combat (most events) would be a little bit leaniant on the weight, but only by a matter of grams - but any big competition, especially with prize money and titles to be won then if your 1g over weight it needs to go.

grants said it

should close this thread - everything is just getting repeated

and no offence but from what i can see its the people who go to 10+ events a year who are saying they dont like damage every event - we have bin there done that got the receipts , got the broken roboteqs, sidewinders, wattys , motors, the lot! and it has cost 1000s, we have had nearly 20 roboteqs over the yrs - prob about 5 sponsored but that doesnt matter - if we went to 3 events a yr we wouldnt have spent anywhere near as much as we have

and prize money makes the event something more to fight for - i won alot last yr and hopefully will do this year - my tops cost £30-50 each - england is one expensive place to live - so i need abit extra from a hobby to pay for all my rubbish - even tho my dad robs most of it! :)

money makes the world spin round

(Message edited by john on February 11, 2008)

Well actually, this thread was not so much about prize money or overweight robots, but about the tech check conference.

To sum it up:

quote:

A read through the 2008 build rules with particular emphasis on the changes for 2008 concerning Radio rewrite to incorporate 2.4 GHZ
Very much worth doing, it makes the rules a lot more readable.
quote:

and to clarify pneumatic rule changes for pressure relief valves and their requirements.
As it now stands, low pressure systems where the regulator is directly attached to the bottle do not need to have a 1000psi Pressure relief device fitted. That is imho a good thing. Do note that if the regulator is not directly attached to the bottle but fitted with a hose or pipe first, a high pressure PRD is still mandatory.

quote:

It would appear that some machines still ignore these safety considerations despite some being given safety equipment by event organisers.
That to me is really silly, being given the tools and even then not doing it.
quote:

A collective decision by all the event organiser robot tech checkers endorsed by the FRA executive from TODAY, will no longer sign off as fit for arena use robots that do not satisfy the build rules in respect of

Cradles

Sharp edge protection

Power light fitment.
These things are so easy to do, I still dont know why this is such a problem.

Any thoughts, comments, defences as to why people still use a hammer or a roll of gaffa tape as a carrying cradle?

I agree with all of the above BUT not the power light!
why
well if a power light breaks does not work etc, this means the robot is safe NO if the link is in it should be taken the robot is alive but when (talking about beauty) has no panels there is no place to put one realy and it breaks every time,

so i cannot see if a light is fitted or not it makes it any safer my penny for thought

BUT I WILL BE HAVING A LIGHT SOMEWHERE OK

there is a light on the spektrum thing - why cant that be classed as a light? as when thats dead the robots dead?

and whats the powerlight for? to see if the links in? to see if the robots dead after the flight when its been flipped out? and if the lights out that means its dead? so the door people can just walk up to it and act like its a dead robot - no they always act like there alive

the power lights just break anyway - ours is always falling off

Any robot in the arena is treated as a live robot, wether the powerlight is on or not.

It is however a visual aid to the arena marschall that the robot is still live, and he can decide to do them first. Get the ones most likely not to be a problem (the ones with live power) first, and then concentrate on the ones where you cant be certain of wether they still work or not.

what if the robots upside down and the light cant be seen?

they should treat all of them the same and should go for the closest one and then the next? i thought thats what they did?

this is all extra weight aswel - the light might beauty 1 gram over and then i cant fight

You may want to continue this argument here:

http://www.fightingrobots.co.uk/discus/messages/9/618.htmlhttp://www.fightingrobots.co.uk/disc...ges/9/618.html

All the pros and cons already passed the review there. It hasnt grown in a while, maybe its about time. :)