Time to start catching up on the backlog of Forum posts.. Warning. LONG post ahead. you wanted an event-report right ??

Inspector General had a good weekends battling, and ran like an Unstoppable Train the whole time..

I did not have to any repairs on it the whole weekend. I just checked it over to make sure everything was ok, changed or charged the batteries and sent it out for its next fight. Awesome. (just as well actually, since I had plenty of other things to keep me busy)

It has had a few improvements recently, since changing the saw-weapon drive batteries from the heavy 24v NiMh packs to the Lithium 22v packs from my Helicopter left me with about 1Kg of weight to play with (!).

This was mostly intended to be used for a slab of "Anti-spinner-armour" rubber on the back, but also allowed a few extra bits like a nice curved angle-grinder-gearbox shield (which has been I.G.s weak spot in the past), and some improvments to the motor mounts to stop them moving around and popping the outer axle support bearings out.

These both turned out to be very worthwhile additions since they were the things I have had to repair frequently after battles in the past.. Its tempting to build a new bot, but I think theres a few good events left in I.G. Mk II yet based on its performance last weekend..

Once I've seen the video's, it might turn out that my memory of them is a bit different to the video, but this i how I remembered them..

Fight #1 - - The first fight was vs Steve's bot "Wonky" - An impressive machine for a young guy like Steve to build such a solid-looking mahcine all by himself, and then travel across the countryside to fight - top job steve.

Its very like I.G. actually, with the main difference being that Steve's undercutter spins a bar where I.G. runs a saw. The bar would probably do more damage than a saw, but proved to have a weakness as well, since after a few hard belts from IG in Reverse-Ram mode, the bar bent, which prevented it from spinning leaving Wonky weaponless.

That combined with I.G.s driving speed (slightly slower than RoboWars II, but still pretty damn fast, probably triple wonkys speed), gave me the advantage and I was able to bounce him off the walls a few times, shove him in between the red (heavy) barrel and the wall, a generally dominate the fight, with a few saw attacks that didnt do any significant damage - but combined with the dead weapon and the rams, won the fight..

Fight #2 - - IG vs Cheese Shredder
What ? Another young fella (Stu) to beat up ? I'm starting to feel like a bully here.. Well, at least I.G. generally doesnt leave opponents in pieces or seriously hurt, and he won his first fight, so I wont be knocking him out of the comp, just onto the "Victory-Challenged" side of the tree.

Apparently Stu had a slipping drive wheel going into tihs fight.. If so, he still did a pretty good job of driving, since I didnt notice any obvious signs of him being impaired. He managed to wedge me about a few times, but the cheese grater either missed the wheels, or I spun off again in a hurry, since they didnt seem to suffer any major tire chewing.

This fight ended with the Cheese and IG stuck together after a big spinning Hit that went right in the gap of Cheeses wedge plates and jammed them together good. Andrew and I had to belt them apart with a hammer and a big screwdriver before we could get them out of the arena ! Again IG won on points.

Fight #3 - - vs Skeletor
Argh, another person I didnt want to have to beat up on ! Gary, with his first time Driving a bot, and the intricate and impressively articulated 6 channel Skeletor.

Actually this one could be a worry. If those claws get hold of IG, The drill would go through the top PolyCarb panel with relative ease. Fortunately I.G's spin manuever is pretty good at fending off control bots, and while Skeletor did manage to sink his clawns into the relatively thin 1mm Polycarb side-panels and keep me stuck for a while, some frantic struggling kept me out of reach and eventually freed me again before the drill could descend.

Skelly is pretty fast though, which makes the steering twitchy and it a handful to drive and Gary had a hard time lining up on me, Eventually I think Skeletors rare-species IBC-X died, which gave me the win.

Fight #4 - - vs Scoopy Doo.
OK, this is getting ridiculous - Now I have to fight my Lady-Love again ? Ah well, I know Mel wont be holding back, so I guess I can go full-out as well. She's been itching to have another saw on IG since her batteries fell out last time we clashed. It sure gave Mark the announcer some opportunities to make some humourours remarks about our relationship being off for 3 minutes though..

She sure has improved on the driving though ! practice clearly pays off.. Scoopy was nearly always facing in the right direction to scoop me, and was very careful to keep her vulnerable arm out of harms way. I ended up in the Scoop a few times, but IG has plenty of ground clearance, and the arm takes time to come down, so I hurriedly scooted out of there again before the grinding could begin.

IG's saw spent a fair bit of time slashing away under scoopy, and that combined with the Agressive driving got me judges decision again. I offerened some conciliatory remarks, but stayed clear of Mel for a while after that..

Fight #5 - - vs King Cobra.
Hmm, Is King Cobra in the arena yet ? Oh ? Its that bulge in the floor over there is it ? Whoa, if the name speed bump wasnt already taken, then this would be it. Fast and powerful, the one advantge I had was the Glen was still coming to grips (or lack of) with Cobra's traction.

I managed to get the saw under him a few times, and made some sparks on his 6mm steel armour, but didnt apparently didnt reach anything critical, other than making nice noises. Cobra made a nice jump-ramp though and IG did a few launches over him as we charged each other.

Fortuantely he didnt manage to keep me on top of him enough to do any serious wall slamming with his dewalt power, since I slid off the top of him fairly quickly, so it was a fast and furiously driven match, with lots of circling and missed charges, but in the end Cobra won the match with a close judges decision. That was a driving battle and a half ! Bugger.. off to the losers side with IG's first loss of the weekend.

Fight #6 vs Stealth.
Mmm. soft chewy armour and a relatively slow bot, and IG is invertible, so the flipper didnt scare me too much.

Flip #1 didnt bother me at all, since that just put the saw up where it could do more damage, and pretty soon Stealth's nice shiny armour was starting to look like Ballistic's similair air armour, all caved in and gashed from IG's speedy spin mode..

Flip #2 meant I was back to attacking his wheels, which I couldnt actually see (was I hitting them ? I think I.G. needs a bigger saw ). Andrew was doing a pretty good job of driving and I wasnt particularly trying to avoid the flipper, which turned out to be a bad idea, since flips #3 to about #25 (or was it #35, I forget - Rick rang me and told me afterwards when he was watching the video replay) meant I.G. seemed to spend more time in the air than on the ground ! Thats got to be some kind of record for the number of flips in 3 minutes !

Nothing broke despite the repeated flips, and like a punch-drunk fighter, I just stupidly kept coming back for more, seemingly repeatedly flipping the invert-switch on the Tx (corrects the steering when upside down) more often than moving the sticks.

Doesn't this guy ever run out of gas ?! I was hoping I'd wear him down eventually and be able to beat on him in peace, but he just kept flipping me over and over again with no reduction in power that I could see. Despite the battered armour on Stealth and no damage to I.G., spending that much time doing somersaults impressed hell out of the judges, and Stealth got the win on points, putting a dizzy IG back on the bench, out of the comp, to go and sulkily suck up some battery power for the Wacky Race later.

A good win by Stealth, and a lesson for IG. Just cause you're invertible doesnt mean you can ignore flippers.

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I considered bumping IG up to 24v drive for the wacky race, but remembered the old racers saying "It doesnt matter how much power you make on the first lap, its how much power you make on the last lap that counts, and I didnt want to burn anything out, plus I was pretty good at driving the way it was and quadrupling the power might make it too twitchy and I already had enough speed, so the electrical nitrous option was skipped and IG went racing in stock form..

The wacky race was heaps of fun.
[race commentator voice:on]
Initially everyone mugged each other in a pile up that reminded me of a old-time start at Bathurst where someone had stalled on the start line, causing chaos, but IG managed to break free of the pack and dodge around Prancing Queen who was being a typical lady driver and pottering along in the left lane in low gear (ducks Mel ).

Jason blasted ahead with Battle Damage, showing that 4WD is much easier to keep in a straight line than a 2WD bot, while I wobbled about a bit wasting time sussing out the steering. how strange to drive in a straight line for more than 2 seconds !

The first turn was tricky, since I couldnt see IG past the tires, meaning I just had to aim and wait for a second or two hoping I reappeared out the other side, which I managed to do each time happily. I chased Jason down the back straight, and finally overtook him when he managed to bury Battle Damage into the wall and get stuck under the rail..

Weaving my way through the bun-fight that was still going on on the start line, I managed to be the first to complete a lap and headed out in the lead.. (woo !). I dodged Dick-Dastardly (Tim/KO) who had decided that since he didnt have the speed he wanted to win the race, he was going to go the opposite direction and ram people coming the other way.

Bounced off the wall a couple of times, but IG's new nose saved me from getting wedged and I reversed back and took off again. Skeletor and the Cheese were waiting for me on the start line and ganged up to try and get revenge for their earlier defeat at IG's hands and managed to get me stuck between them briefly, but a quick reverse and dodge fixed that and I left them eating dust..

Cobra slipped handily under the walls (is there anything he couldnt go under ?), but didnt seem to be able to keep straight enough to use his speed to advantage, and reboot kept planting himself in the walls, those scooter drives are damn hard to keep going straight.. Some silly human (oh, it was you steve.. ) was on track risking life and limb trying to repair his robot or something in the middle of the race, but survived the chaos.

I then got caught in a Tussle between Dick-Dastardly (Tim), and Penelope-Pitstop (Prancing Queen) for a moment, bounced off a Speed-Bump, did another Jump over the launching-ramp (Cobra) and was off for another lap.

Stealth was lurking on the back straight flipping people as they came past, which was a bit naughty, as weapons were supposed to be disabled for this race, but whats a wacky race without someone breaking the rules ? I turned around and went back to belt him a bit in revenge and promptly got flipped for my trouble, so I took off again (now upside down) and left him to it.

Eventually, the race wound up with about half of the competitors dead, some smoking and as far as anyone could tell, I.G. Won ! It was near impossible to keep track of, but the camera guys seem to agree that IG went past them more often than anyone else did. What a blast..

Sorry for the Inspector-General focussed biased reporting, but hey, it is my build thread. If anyone else wants to provide their version of commentary, feel free.

I had an aboslute ball all weekend, and thought the level of compeition was great. Seriously hard fights that make remembering back to RoboWars 1's twitching and wimpy bots realise how far we've come. I feel sorry for any newbies coming into the comp these days with how well sorted most of the bots are now.



BTW: The Airbrush Paint on Inspector-General (and Scoopy-Doo) were done by my Brothers Wife - "Moody-LouP".

She is available for hire if anyone would like a custom airbrush paint job on their bot (or anything else, she does Helmets, RC Cars, Motorcycle Fuel Tanks and pretty much anything that can be painted).

--

I'll write a more general and less Inspector-General focussed report in the RoboWars thread shortly.

Thanks to everyone for the fun. See you all again soon !
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Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people

Are you happy with the performance of the Lithium 22v packs? What sort are they?
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So even the rain that falls isn't actually going to fill our dams and our river systems

ROFL ROFL ROFL.....tears and more tears of hystericalness as l read what Bretty thinks happened in the I.G V's Scoopy fight!

Allow me to clear your vision dear boy and straighten the story out so that it actually reads true:

Scoopy had a DEAD MOTOR. She couldn't go anywhere!! so after turning a couple of circles to keep I.G away from her tail - TAPPED OUT after 60 seconds. MY DEAD MOTOR and the fact that l tapped out - is what won I.G the fight.

Nothing more, nothing less. He won by my decision to end the match.

A tad different to your memory eh sweetie????
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It's a She Thing

Last edited by Mel on Thu Jan 19, 2006 7:28 pm; edited 1 time in total

I found that rubber armour section in front of the Dodge in the workshop, just as well you didn’t need it. It would have spoilt your paint job anyhow.

@Mel: Not at all, If all you could do is drive in circles, its not surprising that you just sat there and aimed the scoop at me all the time.. And I was trying to be nice and thinking it was your good driving - hah..

Won by Permission ? You call being disabled winning by permission ? Now I'm ROFL'ing..

*Surrendered* is the correct term sweetie..

@Philip: The Lithium Packs worked quite well for powering the low-current scooter motor. The NiMh weapon packs can put out about 60amps, The NiCd drive packs around 80.

There are two different Lithium packs with 2 batteries each in them (11.1v each for 22.2v in series). One of them is made of "18C" rated 2000mah packs by Align. The other one has "20C" Rated 1800mah Flightpower packs.

Apparently (like everything in the Hobby World), the "C" ratings are fairly optimistic, and 12-15C is a more realistic rating, which means they can theoretically crank out around 24-36 amps. Fine for the scooter motors, but a bit low for powering drills, so I wouldnt use them for drive.

Also, they're a bit slow to recharge, since unlike the NiCd/NiMh's they work on a constant-voltage charge (rather than constant current), so the charge slows down towards the end, and you're not supposed to charge them above 1C, which takes between 60-90 minutes to fill em up. A bit slow for combat duties, which is why I had two sets of packs. One on charge, and one in the bot.

The NiCd Packs will accept charge at 2-3C I find, and NiMh's will take that, but get hot, so I generally charge them at 1.5C unless I'm in a hurry.

So, for low-current applications, they're fine and save a lot of weight, but at around $85 for an 11.v 1800mah pack, they're not cheap.
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Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people

hehe I love your commentry on the race, I missed most of it, speedbump is stupidly hard to control in a straight line, it needs another bot to ram to keep it centred!

also with Stealth, it uses very little co2 a flip, and Andrew had just placed a new bigger bottle in there, meaning he had about 150-200 flips available

quote:

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If all you could do is drive in circles, its not surprising that you just sat there and aimed the scoop at me all the time.

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Just watched the video.... Stealth flipped (Actually lifted IG off the ground) IG 29 times! That is nearly 1 flip every 6 seconds!
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https://www.halfdonethings.com/

eeek, I didn't realise weapons had to be disabled for the wacky race!

Sorry people!
I was actually surprised by Stealth's speed on the concrete, but it drove better in reverse than forward

As Lindsay has said, I should be able to do 150-200 flips on a tank of gas, so I can basically fire the flipper as fast as it reloads for a whole match

No damage at all was done by the undercutter thanks to my undercutter protection skids
The idea was that there's enough clearance for the blade to go under the skid, which then lifts the wheel up so the blade spins underneath it.
Over the whole weekend I didn't get a single mark in the tyres.

I'd also like to point out that the only armour damage by IG was done while spinning on the spot upside down while I drove straight into it for some more flipping
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The Engine Whisperer - fixer of things

hmmm dumhead you just gave me an idea


hmmm hows that saying "hell have no fury like a woman scorned" sleep with your eyes open man or we wont see you again
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For West ausies interested in robotics email me at: theoneshrug@hotmail.com
OR
dragoonarie@gmail.com
best quote ever:: "Those Gas-Turbine style warehouse heaters arent illegal, and neither is remote controlling one as far as I know."

Hi Brett, just doing an autopsy on IG, did you realize one of the drives jamming up in your last fight?
One of the drill gearboxes had 2 pins popped out.

Just wondering if cutting back to one battery pack is a possibility or do you definitely wont separate batteries for drive and weapon?

Yes, the last fight was the grudge against the Kero's.. the Drive was definitely bodged back together after the Bender match, so that doesnt surprise me at all..

Hmm, 1 pack.. Possible, but that would mean upping the drive voltage to 24 or lowering the weapon voltage to 12.. might require some changes to the weapon motor or drive motors in that case.

probably should talk about this via phone.. easier to kick ideas back and forwards that way,
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Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people

Throw in a set of those moded gear boxes i left on your table jsut replace the 12 volt motor with your 9.6 ones

Thats quite likely to happen thanks Andrew. I'm out of Jaycar spares, so I'll be collating my motor/gearbox combo's and deciding which ones to go with..

I'm hoping to get back close to the pushing power I.G. had at RoboWars II
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Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people

you should have 3 moded sets floating about i made two sets from the parts you sent up that time and i left a brand new set of xu1 mods on your bench if your not sure which is which look for silastic around the gearbox end plate and silastic in the clutch holes if still in doubt take the motor off and look inside behind the first stage the last stage will have a washer with 6 pins visible from the rear . just dont mix the cariers and gears with other drils .All my mods have oil and not grease .