F R I D A Y

Day one of BattleBots, signing in/inpection/photo sessions etc.... Ed and Steve dropped me and all the gear off at the Pyramid and went to get breakfast. I set up our pit area at the far end of the tables the BattleBot guys had set up. I was really impressed with the powers supply boxes, so I grabbed a table close to one (that and I didn’t bring an extension cord). All in all, It was all very cool. I met a ton of people that before I had only known as screen names, and I got to see a bunch of awesome robots. The day went by in a blur, so I’ll just recap some of the better/more important parts (IE what I can remember):

Weight Grievances: Before coming to BattleBots, I knew SOS was going to be overweight... I just played it down, thinking: "I’ll figure it out when I get there", and low-and-behold they raised the limits by 5% at the last minute! Good stuff. Not only was I within the limits at 112 lbs, I also was able to add a kill switch and a couple little pieces of plastic, and some more bits later (IE the cold chisel) without having to go nuts with the drill press hole-ing out the frame. Some people were pissed about this, but whatev. I don’t think the extra 5 pounds added that much more go in the arena, it just made sure that all the robots that came, could compete. BattleBots has since permanently raised the MegaBot (now Middleweight) weight limit to 115 lbs, and no more grievances they say.

We installed the kill switch and took out a battery, which required me to re-solder my battery wiring harness. Ilya and he friends were nice enough to take a break from populating their actuator control boards (at least I think that’s what they were) to help me out with my stuff. I thought I was cutting it down to the last minute until I saw Illz and crew working away at pile of resistors and a couple of bare PCBs, in hopes of getting their stuff running. Later I found up they stayed up till 5am or something, but then packed it in. Ilya’s robot Carnivore still worked, but unfortunately without its lifting arm (or whatever it was they were trying to get working)

After getting the robot all together, we weighed in and went through the obligatory photo-shoot. During safety inspection, I demonstrated Son of Smashy’s weapon inside on a pallette. I hit it with a couple of glancing blows, but no damage was done. After the photo shoot, we pulled SOS outside to do something (I’ve forgotten) and we brought out the palette. I turned on the smasher and I just let it go on the palette for a while. The noise brought a bunch of people out of the pits to see what was going on, and I soon had a audience. I kinda got in a weird mode while breaking the wood and I couldn’t hear the safety guy saying "that’s enough.... that’s enough...." oh well. I finally stopped and some people applauded. It was a great feeling to have fellow robot builders show their appreciation of something I built to break stuff with. Thanks guys!

We spent the rest of the day messing around with the robot, talking to people and being media-whores. There were a lot of people with video cameras, asking questions and such.. Over the weekend I think I did 4 or 5 interviews (I even drove a guy’s big ass TV camera around on top of the robot), but I have heard nothing of them yet. If you see me mentioned anywhere in the media, please drop me a line.

Later that the day after seeing some more crazy things (like Killerhurtz impaling first, an interior wall in the Pyramid, and then the caster wheel on the dumpster). We found out they were serving food upstairs. When we got there, we discovered that not only were they serving food, they were also serving free beer! Steve and Ed were overjoyed! We all had a pint with dinner, and then Steve and Ed took it from there. I continued to work on the robot, and they kept making trips back up to the keg. By the time we left the Pyramid, they were pumping their own drinks and had lost count many moons ago. They insisted that they were just keeping up the good old Canadian tradition of anti-sobriety. Good thing I drove home. Incidentally, the next day at dinner I asked the Pyramid guys if they had beer again, to which the bartender replied "You guys drank it all last night..." -- who told him!?! I then realized he was speaking about the contestants as a whole, not just my team (oops..).

The day ended there. The robot was set and I was looking forward to seeing all the machines in action the next day.

To see more pictures from friday, click below:

More Pictures from Friday

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