Anyway, it was a fun fight, and I was glad to do some damage with Nightmare. Stinger is an awesome robot, and of course I wished him the best of luck in the tournament!

After the fight, the autopsy showed that one of the sensors for Nightmare's locking mechanism had broken loose and was giving a false reading, which by the programming, meant that the pin mechanism was disabled by the software. (The timing on pulling both pins is critical- if the 2 pins are out of sync, the locking mechanism can destroy itself, so I I had put this 'safety' program in so I couldn't break the mechanism during testing). Even though the system was ready, I couldn't disengage the pins! The first thing I did was program a bypass into the system, so this would never happen again. Grrr!

The fight was fun, but since ABC chose to run a short highlight, instead of showing the full fight, my memory of it is all I have (which isn't great). I do remember Nightmare and Stinger going at it for a while, great driving from Matt (as expected) and a lot of action. At one point, Nightmare forcibly removed one of Stinger's wheels, and a lot of titanium sparks were flying! The two robots sparred on one side of the arena for a while, but eventually Stinger got underneath Nightmare and rolled him onto his back. "Excellent", I thought, now I can show off my "Inversion Conversion"! However, when I flipped the switch on the radio, nothing happened! The LED lights on Nightmare showed red, meaning that there was either a locking pin out of position, or other software fault. Stinger held back to give me a chance to show off the inversion conversion, but nothing happened, and Nightmare was counted out. Bummer!

Fight : loss vs. Stinger Nightmare was selected to fight Stinger. This would certainly not have been my first pick, up against one of the best drivers in the sport, and a machine that is tough, fast and durable, but this was a fight that Stinger's driver, Matt and I had talked about for years! I knew Matt was an excellent driver, so I had my work cut out for me.

BattleBots thankfully selected Nightmare to return for Season 2 on ABC, so I scrambled to get Nightmare upgraded and ready to ship. Of course, with the limited time, I was working every spare hour on the robot leading up to the day the crate got picked up for shipment. I managed to get 99% of the upgrades in place before he went into the crate, and the last bits went together once we arrived at the venue.

The fight started quickly. I knew I had to get in there and do what I could quickly, and not let Icewave get up to full speed. Nightmare cruised in at full speed, and the weapons clashed in a HUGE shower of sparks. The sideways impact actuallly temporarily deflected Nightmare's disc enough to shear off one of his own weapon drive belts, good thing Nightmare uses two belts! Nightmare's tooth also made direct contact with his support frame, severely gouging and bending that side of the frame. It took a while after the fight to figure this out. It took a SERIOUS sideways impact to cause this much deflection to happen. Icewave is NOT to be underestimated!

Fight: win vs Icewave When the fights were announced, I remember the builders who were gathered around in the pits, collectively shuddering and letting out an "Oooooh" at envisioning this fight of two massive spinners, one vertical, one horizontal, coming together in the BattleBox. One of my top-feared robots was my next opponent!

Wild Card! With 8 slots open for a Wild Card, after the Stinger fight, Team Nightmare was selected to re-enter the tournament this season! We felt encouraged, but embarrassed that getting back in came down to this. I would have much rather earned my way in with a legitimate win beforehand. But I'm not one to complain. Thanks, ABC and BattleBots, for selecting Nightmare for one of the wild cards!