TORNADO - The Team with the Comedy Flying Cow
ALSTOM 2001

This event was organised by the Stinger team at the Alstom open day in Lincoln, where Kevin, Karl and Tim work, and where Stinger was built.
The Firth Road site at which the event was held develops and tests industrial gas turbines - the sort of thing that might be used to power an electricity generator on an oil rig or for a hospital. We had a look around the factory while we were there, and witnessed a "Tornado" engine being fired up and run to maximum off load speed (a little surreal as we stood there in our Team Tornado shirts!), and had a good look at some of the technologies used in the turbines. The most impressive thing we saw was some serious 7 axis CNC machines that were producing four multi bladed jet engine turbine sections simultaneously! Or how about a lathe that could fit a complete heavyweight robot in the chuck with ease? Alstom has some pretty amazing and very large scale facilities! It was worth seeing even without bringing the robot along.

CLICK ON THE THUMBNAILS TO VIEW A LARGER IMAGE
Many thanks to Neil Isherwood for sending us his video of Alstom
from which we took the captures on this page. Cheers Neil!



Above images courtesy of Neil Isherwood

But what of the robots? In attendance were Chaos 2 (not fighting because George didn't want the covers scratched - he had a talk to do!), T-Bone - a new spinning disc robot built from yellow gas main (who despite our complaints were allowed to spin their disc up to demonstrate it to the crowd), Humphrey 3, 8645T ("Beast" if you haven't worked it out yet!), Velocirippa, Redevil (who had problems and did not run), Hammer & Tong 2 (who had engine problems and did not get to fight), Tornado, and of course Stinger.

Above image courtesy of Neil Isherwood
The arena was a really solidly built scaffolding construction, and it held Tornado back with ease. The crowd were kept well out of the way behind a tall fence, and a brilliant remote camera relayed the pits and arena action to a projector behind the crowd. It shows what can be achieved when a team who knows what the robots are cabable of builds an arena. Well done guys!

Above images courtesy of Neil Isherwood
The fights were scheduled approximately every half hour, and through the course of the event only about 8 took place. Tornado fought Stinger in the first fight and won, then we fought and beat T-Bone. 8645T threw T-Bone around a bit...


Above images courtesy of Neil Isherwood
Then T-Bone got stuck in with Stinger, followed by 8645T and Humphrey 3 having a rumble... In between the fights there were demonstrations from Hammer & Tong 2 (who picked up Stinger with their weapon), Chaos 2 (who hit the suspended ceiling with a car tyre!), and Velocirippa.

Above images courtesy of Neil Isherwood
We then fought the new Humphrey 3. All we could do to it was push it around, there's nothing on this version of Humphrey that we could touch - like Dantomkia, it's very solidly built!


Above images courtesy of Neil Isherwood
The finale to the event was a five way fight between Humphrey 3, T-Bone, 8645T, Stinger and Tornado. It was absolute chaos but great fun, 8645T lost a wheel, T-Bone got a puncture, and we were given the fight!

It was good to see where Stinger is built, and to have a go on Tim's air skates in his EMC shed! Tim also had his Silver Fury kit car there - it's very light and makes a wonderful noise - you'll have to take us out in it next time Tim!


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