AWS44 - Brize Norton, Oxfordshire

[EpicentrE]

Hi Spaceman, welcome to the forums!

It's not a stupid question at all! If you're interested in possibly getting into antweights, coming along to spectate at an event is a great first step. You'll learn loads from looking at people's robots, get hooked from watching them fight, and I'm sure some of us wouldn't mind letting you have a go with our robots in the downtime.

If you just want to come along purely to watch the fights and nothing else, that's up to the event organiser, although I can't see Dave having any issues with it .

Either way, introduce yourself to the event organiser and any of us who look friendly (which is most of us), and we'll be happy to familiarise you with what's going on and help you out with anything else you might need .

Look forward to seeing you there!

[Spaceman]

Thankyou very much. Looking forward to Becoming part of this community.

I am very much looking forward to putting an ant together and If I can make the event I'm sure it will give me a lot of ideas.

Spaceman

[Jordanmann]

I'm signed up this will be my first robot event
Hopefully I don't get too destroyed

[Hogi]

good luck!

[Remote-Controlled Dave]

Just found out via Facebook and a chat with Dave that he is planning to run a full beetle weight event at this AWS alongside the antweight, with some builders taking part in both. I just wanted to know what everyone's thoughts are on this, as I wasn't really aware it was happening.
This is certainly not an attack on Dave and his great organisational skills and I have told him I am putting it on here already, but I'm not sure this is a great idea and its certainly not one I've agreed on. AWSs are already time conscious and I spent a lot of money coming over for them and I'm worried this event is now overreaching itself. As I understood before, the beetles would be a presence, doing some demo fights and things IF there is time, but now I hear people are planning to come especially for a beetle comp that is to be run in between AWS rounds.
Am I just being pessimistic about this? Does everyone else think its fine and that it'all all work out OK? Or am I right to be a bit concerned, especially as we only have the hall til 5pm, including clear up? I realise me and Gemma travel a lot further than anyone else but we're paying a lot of money to come and take part in an official AWS.

[MicroGravity100]

Found Anti Gravity 3 in a cupboard this morning and signed her up. Got RPM the beetle coming too. Making this AWS my (not so) valiant return to antweights
As for running a beetle competition (BWS?) I'm all for it, even if time is tight, as there are, to my knowledge, very few active beetles in the UK. Anyone want to give me an idea of how many are coming to this event?

[Remote-Controlled Dave]

Dave told me 16. That's not "a few", that's at least a 15 fight tournament even just on single elimination and there's no drop off on that arena so those fights could easily all go 3mins. And a lot of the people bringing beetles have at least 1 if not 4 antweight entries, including the 2 people supposed to be doing the organisation. How do you keep it so one competition isn't waiting for someone in the other? This is why you're only allowed to enter the fleaweights or the warm up but not both.
I'm not against it if people want to bring them to play with after the AWS is fully over. Maybe a couple of melees or demos or whatever, but trying to run it all as tournaments simultaneously seems ludacris when we've barely had time for the AWS alone at the past couple, and this is supposed to be an AWS event. I won't tell you how much me and Gemma spend flying out and staying for the 3 AWSs a year but its a lot, not to mention the time and cost of building the robots. If we fly out to find the AWS comp has been rushed or compromised cos there's too much else going on, I'll be pretty annoyed!

[peterwaller]

I seem to remember some discussion on this previously although I can't find it now but I always thought it was a bad idea and likly to cause all sorts of problems.
Especially seeing that the organisers seem to be the ones interesting in promoting and taking part with the beetles.
Despite assurances that this wont impact the ants and fleas, what with the earlier finish time and the sheer size of the arena I don't see how it can't.
Especially as it seems to have grown from a demo / tryout to a full grown competition.
I still think the beetles should organise their own event or set up at one of the heavy / feather events where the are less time constraints rather than at an AWS / FWS where we are already stuggling to fit all the fights in.

[EpicentrE]

I share Dave's concerns. I don't think slipping BW fights in between AW fights will work, and if it does, it'll be at the cost of something antweight related (tag teams or melees, for example). As this is, and should remain, an antweight event, I don't agree with anything that shifts focus or time away from that.

That said, I think that this could still work if ran intelligently. It would only be a small tournament, and so the overall time taken should be short enough to run the whole thing on the side without interfering with the main competition. To do this, you'd need a few things in place. Firstly, you don't call a BW fight which involves someone who is required in the next 3-4 AW fights. Secondly, the BW arena needs a completely separate team organising the competition, calling fights, and judging, allowing both tournaments to run autonomous of each other. Thirdly, people need to recognise that the AW tournament is the main event; if you're being called for an AW fights but your BW needs repairing, you do your AW fight first or you risk disqualification.

Alternatively, leave the BWs to the end. Do all the BW fights while the rest of us are doing the just-for-fun AW stuff. If they run out of time, they've only affected themselves.

I have nothing against BWs or any of the guys involved, even if it's not a class I'm personally interested in, but we specifically have AW events so we can focus on them, and I wouldn't want that focus to be shifted away.

[razerdave]

The reason I suggested having BW fights between the ant rounds is because if I leave them to the end, and we have to get through the tournament one fight after the other, there won't be time for repair, and since these are a little more heavy duty than ants, they may take more than a bit if tape and hot glue .

I've decided to limit the fights to 2 mins rather than 3 to cut down running time. With a double elim tournament that comes to roughly an hour if all fights went the distance. As for interfering with other events like Tag Team and Annihilators, I simply wasn't going to run them because of the competitions already in place. I am going to try and get the hall for another hour (I should be able to afford another £12 come July ) to allow for any over-run or any other fights.

I wanted to do the BWS a part of this event because, as a class still very much in it's infancy, it would not work as a stand alone event, and having experienced people trying to run a competition at a HW live event, I know that would be hard to arrange (what with show times, etc). Because it's a smaller weight class, I was hoping to encourage some of the ant builders to get involved, but judging my the general tone, I may be mistaken.

Thankfully I got an extra hour at the beginning of the day to set up and such, so I would advise roboteers to show up at 9 if at all possible. Antweight sign in/tech check will be closed by 10:30 (maybe 11, undecided).