TORNADO - The Team with the Comedy Flying Cow
WHAT'S NEW

14/1/16 - Great News: Robot Wars is due to return to BBC2 in 2016. Please take the time to read our statement on Entering Robot Wars 2016 before emailing us about it.
Also made a few minor edits and changes to the site, on our Frequently Asked Questions, Build Diary and The Team pages.

3/10/09 - It's more than 10 years ago that we started building robots! Wow, it doesn't seem that long. Our team E-Mail address has not been working for a while, but it's functioning again now - apologies if you've sent us an email and not had a reply. Edited the For Sale page as everything was sold way back in 2006! Made some updates to the Build Diary so you can see what the team has been up to.

10/2/06 - Minor update - Lots of new stuff on the For Sale page as we've had a garage clearout! Also took steps to reduce the amount of spam by changing the way our E-Mail address is presented (changes to almost every page).

12/9/04 - Preparations for the FRA World Champs were underway, but then the event got cancelled... We were about 95% ready when we heard about the cancellation.
Changes to Home, the Official Merchandise and For Sale pages. Updated the Build Diary.

4/4/04 - It's been a long time since the last update! The demands on our time are such that unfortunately maintaining the Tornado site has had to take a back seat.
Deleted the counter from and made updates to Home. Updates and edits to The Team, Combat Record, Links and For Sale page. Updated the Build Diary.

7/3/03 - Tornado wins Robot Wars Series 6! At long last the Series 6 final is shown on BBC2, and Team Tornado win the UK Championship!
More edits to Recommended Batteries and Sponsors & Thanks. Updated the Tornado Budget, The Team, Trophies and Awards and Combat Record. Added the new Frequently Asked Questions page. Changes to the For Sale page to reflect some more sold items. Brought the Build Diary up to date, and added various edits (11-15/7/02, 3-6/8/02, 10/8/02, 21-29/9/02, 6/12/02).

12/1/03 - Updated the Sponsors & Thanks page, with information from Series 6, and the For Sale page, with pictures of the TIG welder, plus a few new items. Updated the Combat Record to include Series 6 info so far. Edits to Recommended Batteries, Series 5 (2001) and Series 6 (2002).

9/1/03 - Added images to the Dutch Robot Games 2001, War In The Wolds 2002, Robot Roadshow 2002 and Robot Fayre 2001 event reports, Trophies and Awards, and to the Build Diary (16-17/11/02, 2-7/12/02, 14/12/02, 22-23/12/01). Brought the Build Diary up to date, and added various edits (1/6/02, 5/6/02, 9-11/7/02, 20/9/02). Edits to the Official Merchandise page.

4/1/03 - Edits to the Series 5 (2001) and Series 6 (2002) Battery Recommendations, including new tidier performance graphs for Series 5, and battery weights and overall conclusions for Series 6.

30/12/02 - Defunct link removed from The Team page, minor edits to Official Merchandise, Suggested Suppliers and Press Info pages. Updated the For Sale page, as a few items have now been sold, and added more information about our weapons options to Specs & Technical Info. Updated the Recommended Batteries pages, (seperating recommendations for Series 4 (2000), Series 5 (2001) and Series 6 (2002) into seperate pages). Brought both the Build Diary up to date (adding entries for Technogames 4), and the Tornado Budget up to date (for the first time in more than 12 months). Added a load more Charity Events reports, for Medway Microbot 2002, London Expo 2002, All Saints School 2002, Newark Kit Car Show 2002, INSPIRE June 2002, BMIHT Gaydon 2002, Hardwick School 2002, War In The Wolds 2002, Oundle Mill 2002 and Robot Roadshow 2002, including images where possible. Updated the Combat Record and Trophies and Awards pages, including all events that are public knowledge, plus updated a substantial amount of the Victories and Defeats page. Added images to the Build Diary from 18/5/02 - 11/8/02. Updated the Site Map to reflect the new pages added to the site.

25/11/02 - Added more images to the Charity Events reports, this time to Robot Fayre 2001, Alstom 2001, Kent Robot Wars 2001, and Oundle Mill 2001 B. Also added more images to the Build Diary (29/9/01 - 24/11/01).

23/11/02 - Yet more images (21/9/01 - 17/3/02) added to the Build Diary. Started adding images to the Charity Events reports, beginning with Robot Mania 2001.

20/11/02 - Updated the Build Diary with more new images, from 28/8/01 to 8/10/01. Added another new image to the Gallery.

13/11/02 - Added our appearances in Real Robots Magazine to In The Press. Continued adding images to the Build Diary - 10/8/01 to 2/9/01 - and also added some new hires images to the Gallery, including pictures of the Anti Crusher Weapon!

10/11/02 - More updates to the Build Diary - up to date again, and at long last started adding more images, from 25/7/01 to 7/8/01. Updated the link to my mate Neil's site everywhere it appears.

31/10/02 - Added the new For Sale page, and made some updates to the Build Diary.

28/9/02 - Updated a changed link on the Links page, added the photos to The Team page, minor updates to Home and the Official Merchandise page, and rearranged the layout of the Site Map. Updated the Build Diary - a lot of new entries, right up until yesterday - plus some small updates to the older parts (as we can now talk about TNN Extreme 2 and most of Series 5, plus there were a few offsite links to change).

23/9/02 - Some fairly major changes to the site! Lots of reorganisation has happened, to make the site easier for you to navigate and easier for us to update. Every single page has been changed in some way, and a lot of new content has been added.
Rearranged The Team page (but the photos of the team are still missing), added our new Official Merchandise page (you can now buy Tornado T-shirts and caps!), added a new Combat Record page, updated the Image Gallery with a few new images, moved TV, Press and Web appearances/articles etc to a single section, and brought the information found On The Web bang up to date, with lots of messages from the forum! Moved a lot of information into the new Technical And Advice section, updating many of the pages within it, particularly our Design and Philosophy, Suggested Suppliers, and the Motors Spreadsheet including a new worked example that will help you learn how to use it. Updates to the Press Info page, a new (and hopefully less confusing) layout for the Home page, and a brand new Site Map complete the update.
All this is just the start of some big changes and additions to the site; watch out for more updates!

4/5/02 - Bryan's E-Mail address has changed. Updated the Robot Diary, added a few new links and reformatted our Links page, made a small modification to the Alstom 2001 report, and changed the small image of Tornado used across the whole site for a better one taken at Series 5. Started adding images to the site in the relevant places; to the Robot Diary, Wilsons Day 2000, Robots@War Arena 2001, and Dutch Robot Games 2001 reports. This is only the start - there's a lot more pictures to add yet! Put our best images into a new Gallery page. Re-added a page deleted a long time ago to save space, about the Wheelchair we bought back in April 1999. Added a little popup to the front page explaining the Hands Off Our Robots image.

24/4/02 - Finished changing the order of the Robot Diary entries - they can all now be read top to bottom in chronological order - and added "Forward" and "Back" links to each page. We're having to withdraw our Free Kart Tyres offer for good now - we just don't have enough time any more. Added a page to talk about the new Event Safety Document in which we are involved, and fixed an error in the Dutch Robot Games 2001 report. Also added a few more entries to the Robot Diary, and reports from the Robot Fayre 2001, Oundle Mill 2001 B, Robo Rumble 2002, and Kent Robot Wars 2001 Events. Modified the site Home to take account of all these changes, and note some of our recent achievements.

14/4/02 - Finally found time for another update! It's far from comprehensive and there's a lot more that needs doing - but it's a start. Brought the Robot Diary up to date, and added reports for quite a few Events - INSPIRE March 2002, Brighton Model World 2002, Robot Rumble 2002, Raving Robots 2002, and Dutch Robot Games 2001. Unfortunately there's a lot of images missing from the site, but for the time being at least, they'll have to wait. Also started changing the order of the Robot Diary entries to make them easier to read, at the suggestion of Jonathan Fors. We don't update the site often enough to have the very latest entries at the top!

26/2/02 - Minor change to Andrew's E-Mail Address (the altavista one is now defunct).

12/12/01 - Another reason for why I hate news pages - they show just how few times a website has been updated! Life in the Tornado camp is always hectic and it's taken a long time to produce this rather large update, which is still nowhere near as complete as it should be! There are some partly finished pages and hardly any new images, these will be uploaded when I get time!
Bryan's E-Mail address has changed, the Design and Philosophy pages have been updated to include our new spinning disc weapon, and the Tornado Budget has been substantially modified to conclude our costs for Series 5 and summarise our sponsorship. The Specs & Technical Info, Robot Images and Robot Rumble 2001 pages have had a couple of minor errors corrected, while the Press Information page has been brought more throroughly up to date. Our Thanks To... has metamorphosised into the new Sponsors page, and we have got some more kart tyres so we can re-open our Free Kart Tyres offer. We've appeared in three issues of the Robot Wars magazine since the last update, and these can be seen in Tornado in the Press. Substantial updates to the Robot Diary, going all the way back to the start of Extreme filming at the end of June. All event reports have been moved to the new Events page, including new reports from Robots@War Arena 2001, Robot Mania 2001, and Alstom 2001 - we've been to so many now that the front page was getting cluttered! Also moved the Oundle Mill meet from 2000 out of the diary and into the events section. Added a few new links to our Links page, cleared up a few points on our Recommended Batteries page, and added a few more Suggested Suppliers. Finally, updated the small oval picture of Tornado that appears on many pages of the site to one showing our Series 5 and Extreme incarnation.
In addition we are proud to announce our new sponsor, Knight Batteries, who have provided assistance to us since before the start of the Series 5 filming at Elstree in August.

2/9/01 - As of 17/8/01 we have run out of unwanted kart tyres, and so for the moment we must withdraw our Free Kart Tyres offer. My apologies for not updating the site sooner, but we've been very busy with the Fifth Wars.

12/8/01 - Added a couple of extra people to the Our Thanks To... list. Continued adding missing images to the Robot Diary from June 2001. All the new images from the last month or so have finally been added to the Robot Images pages, and at last relevant pictures have been included on the Specs & Technical Info page.

11/8/01 - I hate "What's New" pages because they're a pain to update, but I've had enough people moan that they don't know what's changed that I've been forced to start this page. So what's new? Well, this "What's New?" page for a start. Our (minor) appearance in the August Robot Wars magazine has been included in Tornado in the Press. The new battery test results and recommendations have been uploaded, and the old battery recommendations moved to another page. Details for all the battery suppliers have been added to Suggested Suppliers and there are a few new pictures from Wilsons Day 2001 courtesy of Gary Mc Nally. Dave kicked my butt for not being able to spell Bassetts in Our Thanks To..., and thanks to Marko and Allpunk for the extra links for Suggested Suppliers. Big update to the Robot Diary - finished off the Robot Wars Extreme section and started a new section for Series 5. Added Dave's original idea from when he was going to enter Robot Wars with Ian Moody to the diary - it's almost the first entry, being only 2 weeks after I started thinking about Robot Wars! Also finally added a large chunk of missing images to the Robot Diary from May/June 2001. The Tornado Budget has been updated - it's now at nearly £3200 for Series 5. The Robot Images page has been split into years as it was getting too big, and edits have been made to the Free Kart Tyres page, including new pictures.

OK people! You now know what's been updated. Are you happy? Then stop moaning!


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