Saturday

Collected Dave and Becki and got underway about 10am, arrived at the Leas Cliff Hall, same location as last year just after 2pm having stopped for lunch on route. DB5 and Mr Happy (the feathers) were already ready, but Turbulence was without a speed controller as we hadn't managed to repair ours from the Birmingham event last week. So Craig (Tanto) kindly lent us his Vantec from TX-108 (thank you very much for digging us out of that one). We installed that ready for the 5pm show, just. The heavyweight draw was made about 3pm and Turbulence as drawn against Terrorhurtz, the one nobody wants to fight in a competition, especially after it took us two weeks to repair the damage after fighting them at Portsmouth last month. However, even with the flipper only working at about 60% as our valve seems to be damage, something that we hadn't had time to investigate as the vantec was the pressing issue, we won. THZ got a few good hits in a smashed in one of the front titanium pannels, but that was easily fixed after the fight, but it only took use two good flips to get them out of the arena. It was a relief as we knew that we only had the power in th flipper to do it early on. This put us through to the quarter finals against Iron Awe on Sunday. The whole featherweight competition was being run on the Sunday so DB5 didn't get a run out today, Mr Happy also didn't get a chance as we concentrated on our competition robots.
In the evening we went for pizza, at Becki's request, the joined, team's MAD, Storm, Behemoth and Kronic in the hotel bar. most of us stayed there until the kicked us out at midnight.

Sunday

We got back to the venue and prepared Turbulence for the next fight. The fight started very well for us, getting a fair few flips in on Iron Awe, but none close enought for us to get them OOTA. Turb the got trapped in the corner by some good driving and we were soon out of the arena. At this point we must say Iron Awe is now a very good flipper, but we are glad that there is no longer an axe to worry about as well as the flipper. Well done to them as the went through to the final to fight Behemoth. Which they only just lost in a close contest which was almost as good as last year's final with THz and Kronic. DB5 lost in it's semi final melee on a judge's decision. It also had a whiteboard in which it died, due to a still unknown problem. As with last year Turbulence will have a rebuild over Christmas, in which we hope to fully restore the flipper to more than full power, a lighter flipper and probably a new speed controller. Thanks to RR and the crew for a show that the crowd obviously enjoyed, as did we.

Pics to follow