Pete Covert

Watch a video of the fights here

Fight 1. AlphaPujo vs. Spike, win by decision.
My first battle was against Spike, a small RC car with a wedge secured to the top of it. By small, I mean 3.9 pounds! This was my inaugural fight of any type, so I was a bit nervous. After the first couple of hits, I could tell that my hinged wedge was getting under him every time, although he was quite a bit faster. After going the full 3 minutes, I won by an undisclosed judge's decision.

(I was unable to get any decent frame grabs of this fight)

Fight 2. AlphaPujo vs. Carbon Conflict, win by decision.
Carbon Conflict was another RC car, this one driven by Thorin Tobiassen. Carbon Conflict was much larger then AlphaPujo, and was undoubtably the largest 12 pounder at the bash. Carbon Conflict actually was an RC monster truck chasis, with a carbon fiber wedge attached to the top. Carbon Conflict (CC) was much faster then AP, but again my hinged wedge seemed to be getting the better of CC. CC had car-style steering, so we missed each other quite a few times during head on runs at each other. Toward the end of the match, Thorin managed to get under my wedge, and nearly pushed me into the one hole in the arena. Luckily, I managed to escape a few seconds later. Again, AP won by an undisclosed judge's decision. I had fun getting to know Thorin, and I expect I'll see him at the next BotBash.

Fight 3. AlphaPujo vs. HyperActive, win by decision.
Whew! I was pretty nervous about this fight. I missed HyperActive's earlier fight, but had heard that Jerome had managed to knock 3 wheels of off Sake. HA was a 24 pound walker/spinner, and had inspired much talk between Ted and myself before the contest.

I replaced as many screws as I could before the match with grade 8 screws. I really didn't know what would happen on the first hit. My strategy was to face into the blade, so that it would hit my wedge, instead of letting the blad hit me on the side of the wedge.

I approached slowly, lined up, and drove into the blade. HA knocked me back pretty far, and I made several more passes. Eventually, I got my wedge under HA, and tried to drive him into the wall. I eventually made it, and sparks flew in an impressive manner. The remainder of the match consisted of me trying to drive HA over to the wall, but he kept trying to walk off of me, and he started turning the blade off whenever we approached a wall. The judges gave the match to me with a score of 5 to 4. Jerome was another fun person to meet at the contest, and he's already making plans on how to beat AP next time we meet. He did manage to completely kill one of my four drive motors, and ended up fatally damaging two more, but I didn't find out about them until later. Jerome gave me the 3lb spinner I had bent up. (Rumor has it that Tangled Marrionette bent up the Jerome's next spinner in a more impressive manner)

Fight 4. AlphaPujo vs. Neutrino, Loss by decision.
At this point, my teammate and I were the only two people left in the winners bracket. This was a pretty cool thing, but it meant we had to face each other. Neutrino definitely had the edge in most areas, and I was running off of 1 good motor, and 2 marginal motors. My only hope was to hide out near the hole in the arena, and hope that Neutrino would miraculously fall into it. Alas, it didn't happen. I lost with a score of 3 to 6. It turned out to be a closer match then I imagined, and in re-watching it on tape, there were a lot of good hits during the fight. It still was a lot of fun, and Ted did a good job of not rubbing it my face constantly during the 13 hour drive home.

Fight 5. AlphaPujo vs. Sake, Loss by decision.
Sake fought his way back in the losers bracket, pulling some pretty major upsets. I thought I had a pretty good chance, but AP was pretty beat up at this point. The match was very close, and I ended up loosing with a score of 4 to 5. We had to be seperated twice, and in re-watching the tape, Sake was wedged into the wall at least twice, if not 3 times, but managed to free himself by a combination of good driving, and crew bot charity. I enjoyed the battle, and would love to have another go with all four motors running properly.

Lightweight Rumble
By the time I made it to the rumble, I could only basically drive forward and backward. I could turn, but just barely. Knowing I wouldn't accomplish much, I set my bot down so I was pointed at HyperActive, and just drove into him when the match started. I knew my motors were already toast, and wanted to see if my frame and securement could stand up to the crazy hits HyperActive was dealing out. I got batted around by Jerome pretty seriously, hit a few other random bots, and eventually stopped moving due to dead batteries. The rumble came down to Tangled Marrionette and Carbon Conflict racing around after everyone elses batteries had died. TM eventually took the win.

That did it for AP. That place me directly in third place for the lightweight division, which was much better then I had hoped for. I've ordered replacement motors for the current incarnation of AP, and have started on a rebuild with a few small modifications.

Botbash was a complete blast, and I'm looking forward to the competition in February.

BotBash battle video
Original build log
Version 1.5 build log