Post-Champs Event Report

So another championship has been and gone, and it was a fantastic affair all round. Not quite as successful on a personal level but much fun was had and that was the important thing. Here's a run-down of the fights.

Drumroll II v IronConkers v Massacre
Drumroll II started off terribly. Ten seconds into the fight it just died completely. IronConkers then started smoking and the fight was halted with the victory going to Massacre. The failure was traced to a connection on the fuse which I had soldered over a year ago with a semi-duff soldering iron. I meant to re-do it when I got a new iron recently but completely forgot and it had been working fine in several events over the past year and got through the tech-check on the day without any problems. (1 point)

Drumroll II v No Toy
Up and running again, and after a couple of bog-standard impacts I managed to immobilise No Toy. Adam very sportingly agreed to carry on and I planned to just toss it about without causing too much damage. Instead the teeth caught a corner and ripped it apart, with components flying out. Felt pretty bad but thankfully Adam managed to get it back together soon enough. Apparently my reaction when it happened was pretty comical. (4 point KO)

Drumroll II v Conker 2 v Night Fury
Needed another KO to stand a chance of progressing and managed it quite nicely. Attacked Conker 2's backside first, spraying bits of MDF (where was that hiding?!) all over the arena before ramming it against the wall upside-down and out. Then tussled with Night Fury, getting a few hits here and there, before catching a corner and thumping it. They lost their power but I managed to bend the drum shaft and suffered sheared pins in the left-hand drive in the process. (4 point KO)

Drumroll II v Galactus - Knockout stages
Was quietly confident of making it through this; instead Drumroll got well and truly duffed up. Galactus got the first big hit that bent my wedge and turned me upside down, and in the process of self-righting and trying to get back on the attack, Galactus kept coming at me, eventually bending my wedge against the drum to jam it and knocking the power out (blown fuse). Excellent showing from Galactus.

Losers' meleé
Up against six other robots with the last one standing going through. Well it wasn't me, knocked out first in about 10 seconds again (another blown fuse, don't know why though), leaving Drumroll finishing 16th. The rest of the fight was intense though, with Satanix suffering the best/worst exit when it was thrown sky-high by 720 and crashed back down onto Binky's spinning disc, which launched it out of the arena. 720 went on to qualify.


As usual there isn't a lot to report on Carcinus's battles, being hit repeatedly and pitted by LH3, having its claws smashed to bits by LS4 and getting flipped out by Explosion. Managed six points though which is an improvement on last year, and the new claws look smexy

Looking forward; gonna have a few weeks off from robots as it's being all-consuming since February through the Glasgow Science Centre event and this, then I'll work out the best steps to take. Carcinus will probably just be repaired and kept going as is. It looks good and although it's not hugely effective, it's fun and gives my dad something to drive.

Drumroll II is looking a bit worse for wear after a few whiteboard battles (including against LS4). I've had to replace the left-hand drive gearbox about four or five times over the last couple of week due to pins failing in the gearbox, and the electrical faults it suffered at the weekend were uncharacteristic, so I'll have to address both those issues. I reckon 125mm wheels on drills/Gimsons is pushing it load-wise so I'm going to look into adding an intermediate drive stage (1:1 either chains or belts), or switch to 24:1 gearboxes and drop down to 100mm wheels (which would require chassis mods). As much as I liked the wedge, I can't have a repeat of the Galactus fight so it's gone. Sticking with the same brushless setup which has worked faultlessly, but will be going back to the ring-tooth design. Probably warrants a whole new build so the current Drumroll II might be renamed/downgraded and kept for whiteboards. Haven't yet stripped it down so all that might change depending on how it looks.