Build Diary March 2001

Some work did take place over the winter - but not much. Following on from the fights in Uckfiled, BP was put in the garage and the weapon stripped down. We did some work on a new axe blade (longer and a better shape than the previous one) and managed to get hold of some aluminium scaffolding poles. These will be perfect for the axe shaft as they are much stronger than the old pole and flex further. The downside was the discovery of the reason for the drive problems at Uckfield. The plastic gearbox on the right C5 motor has started to come away from the body. This was causing the terrbile grinding sound during the Uckfield event. I'm not sure whether it can be fixed yet!

From March, there are two new members for Team Panda Monium; Cathy and Steve are two of my workmates and have volunteered to help out this year. I need the help as there is a lot of work to do to make BP a more reliable fighter. They've had a look around the workshop and have copies of the rules and diagrams of BP to help them think about things. Now the weather is better, hopefully we can get things sorted more often.

Also we had a visit from the production company working for Discovery. Their researcher came and had a look around the garage and at Big PAnts. I explained the history of Panda, MPM and BP and outlined some of the plans for the future. We also demonstrated Pants and Cannon Fodder on the World Series arena. It seems they are very interested in showing all aspects of the robot fighting world and want to feature the ants quite a lot. Don't know what part I'll be taking yet, but there should be some milage in it for us.