The HoN was held on August 17-18 at a Best Western hotel in Philadelphia. It was pretty crowded in a small room, but still turned out to be a great event.
I was up till 1:00 the night before trying to finish Kris v2, but still didn't have time for the electronics, so I just brought Hooloovoo. I forgot my digital camera, and my friend left his video camera somewhere, so I don't have any pics from the event, but I took some shots of the damage when I got back.
I woke up at 5:00 AM Saturday morning with only 4 hours of sleep and packed everything in the car, including Kris v2, just to show off at my pit table. I arrived at the event around 8:50, and stole a pit table near the door. I was lucky to have some cool neighbors at this event, Dan W (Fork Bot) and Eric S (Ground Zero) in front of me, Andrew (Ti Joe) to my left, and Erik (Belladonna and Morning Star) behind me.
In the first round we got a bye, so our first fight
was against Up Chuck, built by Will Tatman with a huge (7" I think) verticle
saw blade. He was having problems with it, though, so we let him have more
time. Eventually he was ready, so we got Hooloovoo into the ring equipped
with our secret weapon.. the Froot Loop. The match started, and Up Chuck
seemed like he had problems with his drive train, so Hooloovoo could easily
get behind him, away from his saw blade, and push him into the wall. Once
or twice, Andrew drove Hooloovoo into the saw blade by accident, and it
made a few scratches in our plow and cut off our Froot Loop!
The match ended, and hooloovoo won by judges decision, but I forget
the score.
Some of the cool scratches Up Chuck made on our plow
Our next fight was against No Doz, a super speedy beetle
made by Al Kindle. This match was basically No Doz spinning and charging
while Hooloovoo charged at him, missing half of the time. When we did hit
him while he was spinning at full speed, he bounced right off our plow
and into the wall which was pretty cool. The match was a decision 23-22
for No Doz, who definately deserved it.
The marks on our plow from No Doz's wheels
The next morning we were scheduled to fight Mangle Gore, a really cool hammer bot built by Sam Hanson. Since Hooloovoo only had paper armor on top, we decided to use some of the neoprene we were using on the wheels (which we had to replace after every single match because it got really torn up) Sam Hanson came over and challenged us to weigh Hooloovoo again to make sure it still weighed 3lbs with all the neoprene on top. unfortunately, the scale only went in half-pound increments, so it still said 3.0lbs.
He was having trouble getting Mangle Gore ready , so
we gave him as much time as he needed to get ready. When he was done, we
put Hooloovoo in the box. The fight started, and Mangle Gore didn't have
very good control, so we could easily avoid his hammer and ram him into
the wall over and over. The match ended, 43-2 for Hooloovoo, and we would
be going to the finals!
In the finals we had to fight No Doz again. He was ready for the fight, so we got Hooloovoo into the box, and the fight started. This time we knew No Doz's strategy, and so we kept on him and chased him wherever he went. We had the upper hand (I think) until suddenly we lost radio contact. Andrew tried moving, but Hooloovoo didn't respond. KO for No Doz. We took Hooloovoo out of the box, put him on our pit table and turned on our Tx, and he worked fine. We must have just lost radio contact. Oh well, we still got 2nd place, and that's good enough for me.
Later, they had a beetleweight rumble. That was really fun, and somehow Hooloovoo won it. We took a lot of hits from the Yattering, and even Mangle Gore got a hit on us, but it just barely got through the neoprene and missed anything important.
All the marks from The Yattering on our plow
The little mark is where Mangle Gore hit us with his
hammer, the big hole is for our kill switch.
Over all, I really enjoyed this event, especially with everyone coming over and complimenting Kris v2.. that was really cool. I hope to see everyone at more events in the future!
