Interview with Joey McConnell

[AJ]

Hi there, Joey! I thought I would do a vapourboteering
interview.

Your 1st question:

How did you start vapourboteering?

[Un Autre Monde]

I was ordered to by my master to further my learning?

Seriously, it happened by accident largely I was into webcomics at the time and one evening in late 2007 found a comment on the User Friendly discussion boards (...stop laughing...) about the Extreme 1 antweight special from a reader who had actually been involved in said battle, driving one half of Legion. As sometimes happens, that comment revived my interest in Robot Wars (which I'd lost in 2002-ish) and over the next couple of months I began to research the show, what had happened to it and what sort of events were still going on, then I found YouTube videos of various series and found myself turning into a full-on Robot Wars fan again.

Then while I was looking for information about Oblark (from the Forces' Special, representing the firefighters), I happened upon Richard Southworth's excellent website which had details of all the results of every Robot Wars related show ever screened, and after reading through the page with results on like the obsessive person I am, I poked around the rest of the site and discovered his archives of the tournament he had written, Velociraptor's Fanfic Tournament (which is one of the pillars by which all great fanfic ends up being judged) and after reading a bit I ended up following the archived b\ttles and heats very closely, liking what I saw a lot, and wishing I could have a go...then I followed the links on the site to the FRA forum...registered in January 2008, but there was some delay between me registering and the account being approved. I took the opportunity to read the forums and come up with some very basic vapourbots, and you will probably know what happened next

[AJ]

Your next question:

Who do you have friendships and rivalrys with in the community?

[Un Autre Monde]

...oh gods XD

Friendships: You (mr. Andrew Jackson!) to begin with, if I'm honest you've become one of the best friends I've ever had in my 18 year existence in the year and a half or so I've known you, and you've helped with my vapours and stopped me from going insane and generally been an all around nice person Martijn Benschop's done many of the same things, he is also one of my best friends in and out of the community and I can't thank the pair of you enough for tolerating me and all that you've done.
Dave Weston (who was in fanfic once don't ya know!), Steve McGregor, Kody Kunz, Frank Goacher and Alex Holt are also among the people I'd consider good friends that I've met through the fanfic community, and I suppose I get on well with most people involved in vapourbots.

Rivalrys: Mark Elam and Chris Mason mainly, I don't get along with either of them for well and not-so-well documented reasons. As far as actual rivalries go I don't think I've been around long enough to build up anything on the magnitude of Spin Dash/SoR or Slammer/The Disc

[AJ]

Before you started competing, did you have any favourite vapourbots?

[Un Autre Monde]

I didn't really get much time to observe the community before I started competing, I got enough to pick up the odd bit of technical knowledge but not enough to really identify or choose favourites from the many vapourbots, so my judgement was based on what I could find in peoples' stat banks - which in the pre everyone-on-ZED era were quite sparse

I really liked Alex's Darkestar, I will openly admit to that as at the time it was an incredibly tough machine with dual layer tracks that enclosed most of the components and were designed to be largely impenetrable, and that probably showed when it won (after completely unbiased battles of course!) CC1. It basically combined a lot of the things I like - cool names, cool CADs, tracks, oddly shaped spinning objects - into one machine and was far the better for this...while reading VFT5 I gained a lot of respect for The Disc as well, I had already been in awe of MDU's power and Frank's machine seemed to carry that in a small, between-the-wheels package, and the way it won VFT5 was very businesslike and comprehensive...well, it won the tournament, that last bit goes without saying

In my opinion though, a lot of my favourite vapourbots have been designed after I started competing, I don't know if it's a sign of any influence I might have had (yeah right) but there's a lot of very good all around vapours today that wouldn't have been possible or competitive back when spinning power and kinetic energy was everything or when people were still using 'truck window wiper motors' to power chainsaws in the really early days.

[AJ]

When you said:

In my opinion though, a lot of my favourite vapourbots have been designed after I started competing, I don't know if it's a sign of any influence I might have had (yeah right) but there's a lot of very good all around vapours today that wouldn't have been possible or competitive back when spinning power and kinetic energy was everything or when people were still using 'truck window wiper motors' to power chainsaws in the really early days.

What on Earth were you going on about? ;D

[Un Autre Monde]

I was going on about how a lot of my favourite vapourbots were designed after I started competing, funnily enough I like robots that can hold their own in just about any situation and aren't massively specialised to do just one thing, and there's a lot more of those around than there was before.

Reading that now though, it does look like I wrote it at 3am (and by extension might not make any sense, heh)

...next question?

[AJ]

Why do you poke your tongue out so much when you know it annoys me and Liam? ;D

[Un Autre Monde]

Because if it doesn't get enough sunlight, my brain loses some power and I can only see in black and white.