[Jeff Waegelin]

Well, first off, are you using the 40A breakers or 30A breakers? The 40s will help, though it won't solve the cause of your problem.

Secondly, are you running the drills in high or low gear? It sounds like you're not getting enough torque to drive up the ramp. Switching to low gear, or adding additional gearing could remedy this problem. It'll mean a sacrifice in speed, but if you're popping breakers, it's probably a necessary thing.

As far as the unresponsiveness, the joysticks and Victors have a deadband right around 127 (center). Unless you use programming to scale your inputs and outputs, you'll have an area on the joystick that does nothing. There are a few threads about this (try a search) so I won't go into this too much.

Finally, the "smell of burning" means you're pushing your drills too hard and too long. Gearing will help this, but keep in mind, matches are only two minutes. The drills aren't designed for long time use, so try to avoid running your robot for extended periods. Give the motors a chance to cool off. It'll help a lot.