So I'm going to splurge my thoughts a little bit. No pictures really besides one I took before the event started.

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So the big thing is the side guards and armour. This is actually an offcut of the Extreme Robots arena I must have picked up after Chatham (most like) and had lying around. With time running short, I visited the workshop in Burton (thanks Marler) and had a couple of cuts made to bolt in the polycarb using some M12 bolts. Problem sorted.

So my transmitter issues have been ongoing and Joe Brown (who also uses one) was able to say they're not usual so I think maybe I need to invest in a better Tx at some point. This caused an issue in my first fight against Barrog Doom where I couldn't spin the weapon down before the fight, having to turn the Tx off and on again.

Then came the bit some of you know. Eoin slammed me against the wall and the shock made the pulley bounce off the weapon shaft. Ease of access maybe, but I'm finding more issues I screwed up in this. Then all of a sudden I lost drive. Taking it back to the pits at first I thought it was because I blew my 30A fuse. Given that these 775s were a lot more powerful than the drill motors I'm used to I was happy to say that was the case. But things only got worse.

Checking the wheels, I found the left side was seized up completely. Suspecting the gearbox, Dave Weston helped me take it apart. The gearbox itself is fine - the problem was the 775. The spindle/shaft of the motor was bent at an angle enough to prevent it turning properly. Dave tried his best to help me out with this, while I was about to work on a second solution.

This time on the right side it was the grub screw holding the hub on. At first I thought it was just stiff. But when the screw sheared as I was trying to undo it I lost it. I had no Gimson spares - I'd spent all this time thinking these were high quality reliable things and I wouldn't need to use my Black and Decker cheap drill motors solution. I'd spent extra money on Gimson hubs, and not prepared wheel mounts or positions for them to go. I had to drill out hardox on a time frame (you can imagine how that went) and only just got into the arena with my stupid 'drill chucks around an M10 bolt' solution that was used for Henry the Hoover at Bolton.

Obviously in the time they'd been in the toolbox, or maybe in the arena, they'd degraded a touch more. There was no grip between the drill chuck and the wheel itself and I spun uselessly against Crabsolutely Clawful. I got it into the arena and people are saying it's still great but I don't -feel- great. I feel exhausted, hot, sweaty, frustrated. I've come clean to James that I smashed up his 775 myself out of frustration and he's clearly not happy. I need to make some new wheels or cut the chassis further for it to work tomorrow, for which I have Forge Master and Mitternacht to look forward to - two robots that can actually damage me as much as I've been damaging myself.

I'm sitting here in my 'hotel' with a cider wondering if it's worth it to keep going on. All I've done and doing is just keeping this piece of shit alive when maybe I should have left it to rust in James' shed. I know I sound like Matt Smith right now being a whinging nancy but I'm just... what's the point? What's the point if you're not having fun and the robot doesn't want to respond?

I made a mistake with my booking and only got two nights instead of three in my accommodation. I was thinking to extend but the hotel is bad enough and the event is not going well enough, should I just go tomorrow after the rounds are over? What do I really have to look forward to with such a shit robot?