Spinner compatible arenas?

just wanted to ask our event organisers, how the future looks to them on fw or hw arenas that can safely contain spinners, even more so with the exciting machines we have around. I know we have robochallenge but are their any others?

appreciate whats involved to run these events and the £££ to have a spinner compatible arena, but was just wondering if you had any sort of long term future ideas or plans to share

btw im sure i dont speak for my self when i say all your hard work is greatly appreciated and is what keeps the sport alive, without you guys and gals i would probably take up fishing lol

quick edit, not that theirs anything wrong with fishing!

(Message edited by promo_robots on May 29, 2008)

I think Roaming Robots and Robots Live both allow FW spinners and Craig will be allowing HW spinners in Rebel Robots

And of course the USA already allow HW spinners in virtually all their arenas

(Message edited by Robot_Warrior on May 29, 2008)

fishing lol thats worse then playing cricket!

RL and RR dont allow spinner feathers in the arena they take to normal big events, but i think they can build smaller arenas which can, well i know RR can as they did for feather UK champs last year

we have rebel robots but im not sure how many events craig will be doing, i think iv seen on the forum that he will be only doing 1 a year but i could be wrong - i think it will all depend on how the event goes as well as if its mega popular and the public want more events then im sure craig will sort something out

hopefully it work out for craig, dont have the time and money to travel to usa lol, i remember RR had a spinner arena coz i fought in it against a spinner with my old fw last year? i think. does he still have it?

Currently the only arena capable of holding spinners is the Robo Challenge arena. RR have previously created one from their heavyweight arena using 10mm polycarb, but as far as I am aware it meant that some of the polycarb used on the HW arena needed to be cut up or modified which means spending a fortune each event or ruining his larger arena?
RL have not mentioned having a FW full combat arena. Rebel Robots are currently building a HW spinner arena, time will only tell to how this works out for craig and HW spinners but I hope it all goes well.
The next closest is the DRG arena, which is also very good - a similar spec/looks to our arena but larger. Previously the arena has been a little bit small, but I have heard about plans to possibly make it larger?? If they run a large event It would be well worth going over, it doesnt cost a huge amount (they always come over here!)

Dunno if John will get chance to reply as he out of UK, i know he has net but meh.

Roaming Robots can and still has the 10mm polycarb to make a FW Full spinner arena. We use some of the 10mm sheets for the big arena even instead of the 6mm that is only needed for the main events.

But it will be too much hassel for the type of shows we do at the moment and weight for a HW arena to be built from it from 10mm. Well its not the 10mm which is the problem - its the roof.

The roof has to be at least 6mm poly. Small arenas such as Robo Challenge and the Modifed Roaming Robots arena is fine and the structure can be amde to take 6mm poly +.

But when you have a bigger arena like the Roaming Robots arena and Robots Live Arena, its very hard to make a structure which is light and strong enough to take the 6mm poly. I know the Robots Live trussing rig wont hold a 6mm poly roof, and ours will only just hold it but its soo much hassel to get the poly up there in the first place

Hence why we can only have netting at the moment which is fine for Class 3 events.

Like grant said the DRG arena is small but is only main HW spinner event. If they can make it bigger- great! But also the arena is not rasised so no Pit etc? If im correct or not?

I personaly think the Robo Challenge arena is too small, is it 4m by 4m? Though Its fine and i think its the best FW arena for full combat feathers. Though i think the INNER arena walls are too low - hehe sodding flippers.

Its not the polywalls which is the problem, its the roof, and a good move was made i think to have polycarb roofs but putting 6mm polycarb roof up there for FW Spinners to allow to run at the big shows is too much hassel and takes up too much time and weight.

I dont think its the ££££ for the full spinner arenas, its the time and labour to do it for the 1 day and 2 day shows. Im sure if the RoboChallenge was twice the size, Grant and James will have kittens. LOL!

Well thats just my take on things, been in middle of alot of the chats about this area, yeah im gutted we dont get FW spinners at the Roaming Robots events main shows, but i know what the crew go through to put the roof up we have now and moving the ODD 10mm sheet we use around. 6mm Roof and 10mm walls, hmmm big big difference in time and labour to move things around. Also extra truck needed for the extra weight means extra running costs, so it dont make the big events viable sadly.

Adrian if you want to hire an extra truck and come with 5 labours your more than welcome to help us put up the Class 2 arena at all the events. hehe

Mr Stu

(Message edited by stu on May 29, 2008)

cheers Mr stu for your input. explains alot.

The weight of the Rebel Robots arena started out at a designed 4 tonnes, on construction its going to be close to 8 tonnes
its not practical to have a full spinner event run more than a once a year, the main problem ive having is getting the roof on.
My arena will (pending FRA inspection) be capable of spinners but wont be used alot, maybe once or twice a year

The drg arena is also modular and can be raised for a pit. We opted not to in Utrecht but planned it for last years event that was unfortunately cancelled. in its maximum size we are 9m x 9m, which is not very large but large enough for a serious event.

it was always my intention to eventually run a now class 2 arena for both heavyweights and feather weights.

I have done full combat events twice now.

Both times I have gone to great lengths to put them on and each time only a minority IMO of spinners have applied, and apart from a couple, none have really lived up to their reputation.

So i was left wondering if the extra time, cost and labour was really worth it.

Now before you say they arent devleoped because they cant run.... ok, i accept that but..... putting a heavy arena for 3 spinners isnt viable for me.

I will be very interested in Rebel Robots when it happens, how many spinners, and how far they get. Then you never know.

The only thing stopping an RR Heavy class 2 arena is an investment into some new 6mm poly to finsh the roof.

Its not the arena which stops me... its the event and making it viable.

maybe craig would tell us how many hw spinners have actually applied for rebel robots? Im interested to know ???

JOhn

As i previously said in the Rebel Robots topic, Im not willing to state how many types of weapons are registered, There are more than 3 thou

I take it there is at least one spinner then? (I cant really imagine Scorpion, Carnage, etc not attending)

theres more then 3 craig just said

Ah, misread the post :lame:

Our arena can be setup as a class 2 featherweight arena (12mm polycarb and 6mm roof), but its reduced size (from 12 x 10 meters to 8 x 6) means the shows would be mainly featherweight oriented, which is something were not looking at doing, as the costs would be the same as if running the normal heavyweight setup. It is a shame we lost the featherweight spinners from the normal live shows, as they did have an extra impact on the fights, nowadays even when there€™s 15+ featherweights in a fight they don€™t have the same impact on the audience as the heavies and can lose interest very quickly, this is the reason for us introducing the house robot into the featherweight fights. It€™s just that to be able to run the spinners the arena has to be more or less the same specs as if we were running heavyweight spinners.

Regarding the heavies, our arena is capable of being ran as a class 2 (12mm poly sides and 6mm roof), but the costs and restrictions (not just that of the arena itself) make it currently not viable to run it. If there was an opportunity (financially, TV etc.) then we would look at it again. But as Jonno said its not worth it for the few spinners that exist, you also get the argument of how many others are going to be willing to fight the spinners on a regular basis. Weve had teams refuse to fight the likes of THZ and Tiberius in the past, so I would expect them to run a mile if they had to fight a spinner!


Alan
http://www.robotslive.co.ukwww.robotslive.co.uk

Is there any possibility that stronger netting can be found which (perhaps in two or more layers)
would meet FRA requirements for running feather spinners?
Id run mile toward a fight with a feather spinner and would build one as well if thre were somewhere to run it.

As would I.

Before the ruling for for 5mm polycarbonate roofing came in we were in the process of designing our arena when an object went through a net roof and so we made a device to test different materials to see what would be viable (as said, polycarb can be a pain to put on the roof).
We tested all sorts of netting, lorry curtain sides (multiple layers with stainless steel messign sandwich) and multiple thicknesses of polycarb and woods.
We were not able to find a single type of netting/fabric that would even slow down our test projectile, even with mulitple layers and tensions. Even most types of wood could not stand up and yet 5mm polycarb bounced things off all day long.
Looking at the specs, to find any form of fabric or netting capable of with standing even a featherweights tooth comming off would be far heavier and more expensive than polycarbonate. We couldnt even find anything close to slowing down our projectile.
The FRA also looked into this with their own testing and came up with similar results.

As jonno/alan have said - trying to put up a structure to hold a large area of polycarb will require forklift trucks/cranes and most likely an articulated lorry with ALOT of hard work. I know our arena is heavy enough at over 2 tonnes, trying that with a heavy arena isnt something I would want to do every few months!
inner arenas bigger than that stu:wink:lol

When you did the testing, did you tighten the netting up or did you just let it hang over?

both, the bullet wasnt even remotely slowed down. there was nothing that acted even similar to polycarb.

So is it all worth it? may spinner pieces of debris may be contained in net roofs but as demonstrated at this years UK champs the odd piece that really comes flying off wont even blink at netting, tarpauling, stainless steel mesh etc etc. A piece from a hornet hit, bounced off our screens so hard it slightly melted the surface.

regards making a heavy arena to be honest i dont think heavys are anywhere near the calibre of the current featherweights. And so arnt as enjoyable for me personally to watch. seeing the flippers lauch thier opponants 10 times their own hight, seeing spinners spin up in under a second is pretty exciting stuff. just my oppinion.

Then you would looooooove antweights James.

A mildly silly statement James. Power and stiffness to weight ratios for drives and weapons, smaller chassis and panel sizes etc will always give an advantage to the lighter weight categories in the ways mentioned. Set against this is the sheer size and impact of the bigger machines, which audiences enjoy. In many ways I do regard feathers as the most sensible weight category for a number of reasons, certainly from a builders point of view- manageable cost and weight being the major ones along with the greater creativity and experimentation that makes possible compared to heavies. Most fans, I suspect, still prefer heavyweights.

notice i said And so arnt as enjoyable for me personally to watch

im not stating what i think audiences like, simply my personnal preference. In my oppinion Featherweights are the F1 robot combat. every type of weapon are really being pushed to their limits. Think of Flow as a flipper, LS2, LF3, Ploughbot, Basher, 360. All are pushing the limits with what can possably be done in a featherweight and that for me is more exciting. im sure many will agree.

For me I€™m putting the halo back on The Saint, there is only going to be one suitable venue I will be able to travel to, this may only happen this year and I only get to use it once in one fight and hardly get a hit. But I have always wanted to run HW spinners.
I like heavies the other classes of machines are good and featherweight robots are the best compromise for cost and practicality. But the heavy weight robots are the ones I like to use most, and I think the heavies are the ones people pay their ten pounds to see! But I could be wrong