Wondercon 2014 - Day 3

Today was the third and final day of Wondercon 2014, at the Anaheim Convention Center. Today was to be the debut of droid #2.

I got up early and did the Droidmobile droid swap.

Out with the old...



...and in with the new.



I arrived at the convention center, unloaded the car, and carted the droid to the booth. I did some test driving, and my concern about not having filed enough material from the gas pipe appeared to be well-founded, as I could see that the droid wanted to lean back further than it's supposed to. Anticipating this might happen, I brought my file, to file a deeper flat spot on the gas pipe. Fortunately I still had an hour before the convention opened, so there was time to do this work.

That all went well, until it was time to put everything back together. As I was cranking down on the nuts for the U-bolt that goes through the vertical rail and around the main gas pipe for the legs, the threads on the U-bolt got stripped. None of us (me, Chris Romines, Dan Johnson) were able to get the nut on it to budge. Thus, the droid wouldn't stand up straight enough, or even be very stable for that matter.

With lots of help from Paul Thompson, Gene Arena, Dan Johnson and Chris Romines (and probably others), we used tie-down straps, gaffers tape, and zip ties to at least stabilized the droid in three-legged mode. However, his driving was done for the day. Fail.

About all droid #2 was able to do was turn his dome and play sounds, as controlled by Chris James' Stealth Controller. I can say it was wonderful not carrying a large and heavy remote control, thanks to Chris' Stealth system.



Other fun stuff seen today:

Apparently Tuskens are a natural predator of protocol droids.



Dalek vs. droids. He's outnumbered.



Baby R2, meet big R2.



Million Dollar R2 hat.



Princes Leia, the early years.



I did a brief interview with The Geek Speak Show.



Chris Romines driving R2-A1 around, in a rare moment that he's not blasting someone with the mist.



Getting the band back together.



Characters from a different trilogy/hexogy.



Finally, 5:00pm arrived and we wrapped up and headed out.




Back in the car you go, with pretty much the same distance driven as when you arrived.



I've got some work to do on low-rider droid. I'm going to have to take the legs off in order to slip the U-bolt off, and I'll have to saw the U-bolt in order to extricate it from the vertical rail. And then I need to try again. Whee!