S A T U R D A Y

The first thing I heard when I walked into the Pyramid on the first day of competition was an annoying bark coming over the PA system. This would turn out to be the announcer for the duration of the competition. It was in fact "Hawk" from the now defunct TV show American Gladiators. The only way he could describe me is as "the guy with the sideburns down to his knees.." Hmmm To put it mildly he sucked. He should stick to his day job (PhD Economist -!-). Enough of that though, on to the robot fights!

I checked the schedule as soon as I got in, and it turned out that I was scheduled to fight "Gold Digger" in the first round. Not only was this robot not complete, but it also was not in the Megabot weight class. I ended up getting a bye, which was ok, but I would have liked to have gotten out there sooner. I wasn't scheduled to fight until the afternoon now. The morning battles were pretty cool. You never can really get the feel of two 200 pound robots smashing into one another until you see it in person. We spent the rest of the morning watching fights and making sure that Son of Smashy was going to be ready for his first match.

After the lunch break I found out that I'd be going up against a robot named "Ankle Biter", which was a wedge shaped robot with a big, scary milling blade sticking out of its sloping front. I was a bit worried of this as the materials I used for armour (IE plastics: lexan and UHMW) were easy to cut through. Also, from the looks of the inside of Ankle Biter, it had some serious drive motors and pushing power, which SOS lacks severly. The last point of concern was that the wedge shape was made out of reasonably thick aluminum, and the builders had even bolted some extra <" plate on top right where my smasher was more likely to hit. I really wasn't thinking about winning, rather I just wanted to get out there and actually get to try out Son of Smashy in its intended environment.

The wait for the match was pretty agonizing. But then the moment came We pulled the robot into the Battlebox and the fight was on. I don't remember the whole match, but there were a few key highlights. Early in the match Ankle Biter showed it's torque against SOS by plowing my robot into the spiked wall, at which point SOS ended up on top of Ankle Biter who was jammed against the wall. The real problem was that I couldn't just drive off him, as my wheels weren't making enough contact with the top of his robot. At that point, I just turned on the ax and left it on. The jarring action of the maul coming down shook Son of Smashy free and I drove off the top of the wedge. At some point after this, I got a clear blow in on the wedge in an essential area: right above his drive wheel. I bent his armour in against his wheel and he was unable to move anywhere but in a circle - at the time I didn't know that this is what had happened - I just considered myself lucky that he wasn't pushing me around anymore. At this point it was pretty easy to get good hits in on Ankle Biter. I just left the maul on and focused on aiming at his milling blade between shots. A few shots later, the maul came down heavily on his milling bade, it shattered in two, and then smoke poured out of the disabled Ankle Biter! Son of Smashy won his first match by K.O. - awesome!

After the win, we pulled SOS out of the box, did the request interview and picked up my first BattleBots "winner" tag. Later, I went and checked on how badly Ankle Biter was damaged. It turned out that the shattered blade did something horrible to the electronics (I think) and the robot was pretty messed up. The builders, John MacKenzie and ? (sorry!) were really cool about it all, and they weren't mad or anything. They ended up giving me half of the blade, and I signed the other half for them. In the end, Ankle Biter was rebuilt and it saw competition again, but with a new set of saws. Son of Smashy didn't walk away completely unscathed either though. There were a couple big gashes in the UHMW underpan (one right under the batteries -!-), and an arena spike went right through the rear lexan armour panel - which was probably too thin - when Ankle Biter ran SOS into the wall.

As it turned out that was the only match I was to compete in on Saturday, so the rest of the day was spent watching more matches and doing some repairs and preparations for the next day. After looking at the damage inflicted on Ankle Biter, we decided that it was good, but not quite enough. Someone (I think it was Curt Meyers, builder of Kill-O-Amp) suggested we put a spike on the end of the maul. Luckily, we had brought along a cold chisel with us that worked just dandy. We fired up the MIG welder we had also brought along and welded it to the top of the maul, with it extending approx 4" out in front. Steve then sharpened the maul with an angle grinder from the SORC workshop (Good job by SORC on this BTW). Before with the just the maul, the robot's weapon was pretty cool, but now with the sharpened spike it was damn scary! We tested the new configuration out in the SORC testing booth putting holes in the floor (and walls, and door etc) and we were happy.

While in the booth, we saw a blue Nissan Pathfinder roll up to the loading bay of the Pyramid. It turned out to be Mark Setrakian, with his new robot Mechadon. At 450+ lb. it was enormous. Not only that, it was just plain incredible. We stuck around until Mark had it all together, and fired it up. Seeing it in action up close was great. I’m glad we waited it out. We had no idea what it was capable of until its demo on Sunday though.

Back at the motel while watching the local news, we saw they were doing a story on BattleBots. Not only that, but there were a couple of clips of Son of Smashy’s match against Ankle Biter! A good way to end the day.

To see more pictures from Saturday, click below:

More Pictures from Saturday 1 and 2

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More Pictures from Saturday 1 and 2