Feather Weight Smash 2004 - March 6th / FeatherWeights.org

[geoff]

Peter,
There is no proposal before the FRA to limit ants to 27MHz. It was mearly one of several sugestions that have been floated.
There is some talk of allocating certain 40MHz frequencies to certain weight classes to avoid conflict when more than one weight class are compeating at the same event.
But at ant only events you will still be free to use any 40MHz (or 27MHz) frequency you want.
Hope that clears things up a little for you.

Geoff.

P.S. Adam, Odin is a damn fine machine..But robbed!!...I dont think so!!
(But then of course I would say that, wouldnt I!)

Im sorry you felt that way peter,
but as you said, the Feather Weights were putting the show on, and needed to be tech checked and in the arena to fight. If the feathers were not running - then the public would have complained and demand ticket refunds and all sorts. And to bite the bullet - the event was called Feather Weight Smash 2004. It was clear from the start that ant weights would be gap fillers and run if they can get the frequencys they needed.

But i admit it was getting a bit silly in the morning, and when finally i was told about it from Chris and Craig - i sorted it with TX control by giving set times between Feather Fights for just ant weights then all was fine. It was just due to the LARGE amount of feather weight battles needed to take part in the morning to one put on the show, and two, to get ready for the semi finals etc for the afternoon.
The ant weights sorted most of their battles in the 1 hour lunch gap. It took 3 hours to get the feathers ready for the Quarter finals.
So sadly when its mentioned people are biassed on the size and weight of the robots- well thats because they need more time, space, safety concern etc.

But im happy to admit - it might have been my fault in placing TX control too far away from the ant weights, which was a big part of the problem. In future this will not happen, and all will be fine. Please dont get upset over something little. Like was asid above, TX control Angie and Rach did a great job!!! We all live and learn.

Mr Stu

[fwsorg]

Re: Ants. Our original intention was to run ants in exactly the same way as we did at the smash in August- which was a success and provided an excellent balance. However, probably due largely to us, we didnt anticipate the problems that would arise with such a large increase in robots from last year to this year.

I can sympathise with the ants. I spent my first 3 years of robot wars building ants. With that in mind i was fairly keen that ants would not be as sidelined as they traditionally have been. That paid off in August. On Saturday, I was meant to be doing a lot more with the ants than I was able to, due to the unfortunate incident with Jass car giving up the ghost, so I was fairly preoccupied trying to sort out the feathers. After Stu and I discussed the situation over lunch, we decided that, with things quietening down on the feather side, I could spend more time helping with the ants, and we organised some more firm times for antweight battles as Stu mentioned. Thankfully things got going in the afternoon, climaxing in a great final that everyone enjoyed (especially Andrew and Mike driving the antweight tornado and dantomkia against each other :-).

We will be discussing heavily, in our de-brief, how we are going to make ants a much bigger thing (as Jonno has already mentioned). I admit I rather naively hoped that the ants would run as well as they did last year, without so much input from us. But as they say:
Experience is something you dont get until just
after you need it.
Sufficed to say that next year, with such positive feedback from the various people in mayoral bling, we will hope to have an excellent feather and ant competition lined up. With the forthcoming launch of antweight.com- a sister site to featherweights.org- we are moving towards an organisation more representative and embracive of all the smaller weight classes. We have learnt an enormous amount about running events, and thank you all for your feedback- it is invaluable in helping us improve our event formula, and with the experience weve gained over the last 2 events, we are acquiring a fairly sturdy knowledge and experience base which we can build on for future events. As the not-so-great Take-That! once said: Things can only get better!

Report up: http://www.teammad.co.ukhttp://www.teammad.co.uk - go events then Feather weight smash.

[ewe2]

Eddy,

It was D_Ream not Take that!

And as for the frequency thing...awe never mind, just give me another early 90s music quiz question! better still, the 80s

Ian
(Showing his age)

Ian u punker why u know popy crap like that

Report also up on http://www.ukrobotics.comhttp://www.ukrobotics.com - see LiveEvents/2004/FeatherweightSmash


Dominic

[geoff]

OK, 80s it is then Ian!...Theres a band playing on the radio, with the rhythm of rhyming guitars... Song title and artist please. Bonus point for the year!

My God.
80s Music - arrrgh.

Mr Stu

[geoff]

And your problem with 80s music is...?