Triumphs and Disasters

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Some of the happenings on the day that I have heard of

TRIUMPHS

Spohn-Gymnasium

This school entered for the first time and had teams in three classes. They managed third in the Super Standard class and were the only schools team to complete a lap in the 3D corner to corner competition. All this in a foreign country after a lot of travelling!

Thurleston High School

They stripped the gearbox teeth in practice. Someone (you can own up please), supplied them with replacement materials and they managed to rebuild the mouse to take first place in the Schools Standard class.

All the winners

Can you do it again next year?

All the teams that managed to complete a lap on the day

You managed to beat all the teams that failed to run.

All the teams that were there and failed to post a time

You beat all the teams that did not turn up. Only about 1 in 10 of the kits that we have sold have made it to the competition, so you beat all of them.

DISASTERS

Not everything was perfect, these are some of the catastrophes.

S.P.E.E.D.

A bad year for Steve and Creag's super standard mouse. It ran a middling time in practice but failed completely in the finals!

This mouse was built a couple of years ago and the construction standards were not ideal. It is the first effort by this team and their current machines are built to a greatly improved standard. I think it is time S.P.E.E.D. retired. Its great triumph was last year when it defeated the American, Millennium 2.

Tortoise

I can't verify this myself, but apparantly this mouse left home complete and arrived at the competition as a self-assembly Lego kit. The team managed to rebuild it and ran some 8 second laps so I don't know if this is really a disaster or a triumph!

Eat My Shorts

I don't know what happened but there must have been some disaster for their times to increase by 2 seconds between practice and finals. Perhaps someone can supply more information?

DASH 2a

Lots of embarrasment. The reason it stuck in the maze was that I had not fully pressed-in one of the batteries. DASH 2 reset itself and wouldn't start again without the front sensor being pulsed. It was only when I lifted it out of the maze that I found out!

 You can email queries to me at:- Duncan@swallow.co.uk

Date Last Modified: 12/7/99