The 23rd World Championships of Punkin' Chunkin', held from October 31 - November 2, 2008, was to be our first real hurling competition. We entered our new 8-foot Floating Axle King Arthur-style trebuchet, the Medieval Postal Service. Unfortunately, construction had taken so long to complete in the fall that we had yet to test fire with more than 200 pounds of counterweight and a 4-pound projectile. Entered in the Adult Trebuchet division (we were all too old to qualify for the Youth division - 17 and Under), we needed to be able to launch 8-10 pounders, and thus had some work to do. Despite the lack of true testing, we were still confident that we could take 4th place in the division, or at least be very competitive for it. Yankee Siege, Pumpkin Hammer, and the Magic of Merlin all figured to exceed 1500 feet and be the top three machines, but no one else was expected to break 1000 feet. We wanted to, but knew it probably would not happen this year.
Chris and Matt left Rochester around 2:30PM on Wednesday, October 29, and met Jason at his apartment in Syracuse (where he was working for 6 months on an internship) about 1 hour later. We then headed down to Delaware in 2 vehicles, Jason's father's Ford Excursion which was carrying the entire trebuchet and most of the counterweight, and Matt's car which was carrying the tools, remaining counterweight, and other assorted gear. We pulled into the hotel parking lot in Delaware shortly after 10PM, checked in, and crashed for the night; we wanted to get and early start the next morning.
We were waiting on line to get our pit assignment and packet at after sun up Thursday morning, but ended up waiting close to 1.5 hours before the welcome crew woke up - it was a cold morning, and no one wants to get up at 7AM, but we would have liked to get setting up earlier. But we eventually did get our stuff, and headed off to our pit, #93 of 120! There was a record number of entries this year, and most pits seemed to be occupied by the weekend except for several near our pit. On our way to our pit, Matt's car got stuck in the mud behind some of the air cannons (it had been very wet earlier in the week there, and the field was still drying out), but with some help we got it pulled out and got to our pit without further incident.
By around 9:00Am we were beginning to unload all of the pieces to the trebuchet, and all of our gear. John Norcross from War Hammer was there already setting up, and came over to see us immediately. We had kept quiet among the hurling community exactly what it was that we were building that fall, but we told John then what we had. When he heard that Medieval Postal Service was a FAKA, he was rather excited. Later he would realize just how big it was, apparently he didn't think it was an 8-footer at the time. Either way, we then began assembly. Assembling and positioning the base took a while as our pit had a ditch through it (probably from a plow or such, it was a bean field this year), but eventually we just moved forward of it and leveled off the base. From there rebuilding actually went pretty smoothly, and by around 1:00PM we had it mostly assembled. We left to get lunch, and to pick up our backstop netting that had been shipped overnight to the hotel by Matt's parents (UPS failed to deliver it on time to Rochester).
Then we stood in line to get our photos taken for badges, as we had sent in our information too late, and the line took a while as one of the computers they were using seemed to be having issues. We then assembled the backstop and finished up construction, but it was getting late by the time the safety committee had inspected us. We still had enough light to get a test shot off, but that was when we found that we had put the arm on backwards. Reversing this took enough time that we opted to not shoot in the fading light. But the afternoon had not been a total loss, as we spoke with people from plenty of other teams, including Tom Walker (also from War Hammer), Steve and Cathy Siegers (Yankee Siege), and many of the Pumpkin Hammer crew among others. All of these people Matt knew from his 2007 spectator trip, and they were all very interested in Medieval Postal Service, and loved how it looked. We did too.
The next morning found us on the field just after dawn, as we wanted to get off a couple test shots before competition began at 10:30. We cocked the machine with 300 pounds of counterweight and loaded one of the Luminas we had brought from Rochester, one that was starting to rot. We figured that it would be able to withstand this low power test. The shot began fine, but quickly went wrong, as when the carriages rolled forward, they pushed open the frame and the whole arm, hanger, and carriages assembly crashed down. Somehow, the pumpkin still flew forward about 100 feet despite releasing while the arm was falling.
Damage actually wasn't too bad. The trough was broken in a few places where the counterweight landed on it, and the cross brace at this place was also broken. Aside from a few gouges where the main axle scraped by the top of the frame, and a bent counterweight axle, that was it. Oh, and the end of the arm had a bit of a dent in it. We knew that a field repair was very possible, but whether we would fire that day for the competition was initially in doubt. We quickly figured that we could make it in time, and began repairs. We remounted the arm and carriages on the tracks (the right way around) and glued up the broken cross brace (we brought several clamps and a bottle of Gorilla Glue with us, thankfully). The trough was tougher as it was plywood, but we managed to piece it back together, stick some glue in the breaks, and wrap the whole section in duct tape. It wasn't perfect, but we felt that it would hold for the weekend.
In the meantime we discovered the cause of the carriages falling off. We had all the outriggers braced in position with chunks of wood, and one of them sank into the mud (that morning there had been quite a bit of frost on everything, and when it melted the ground was a bit soft) as the carriages had rolled down the tracks. We put a wider block in this place, and made sure to check all the outriggers before each shot to make sure this would not happen again. We didn't have another problem like this all weekend.
We turned out to have plenty of time to repair before needing to be ready to fire, as the line moved slowly. It was late afternoon by the time they got to us, as we were pit 93, and so roughly 90 machines had to fire before us, including all the air cannons that are very similar and take forever to shoot. They make up roughly 25% of the machines there, but take a good 1/3 of the day to all shoot. Nevertheless, the firing boss got to us in turn, we told him to put the spotters for a 5-600 foot shot though we really had no idea how far we would fire, and fired. The pumpkin flopped on its side as we were cranking back the actuator, and we knew that we might get a dry fire, but it was too late to readjust, so we hoped for the best and continued. Luckily the pumpkin did not slip out, and we got a solid 500.01 foot throw, with a decent trajectory. We were cheering hard as we had finally gotten a pumpkin downrange with no damage to the machine. And the first to come up and congratulate us was none other than Chris Gerow, inventor of the King Arthur trebuchet, and captain of his newest design, the Magic of Merlin. He loved the design, and seemed happy to see another King Arthur in Delaware, something he had been waiting for for years. Our arm had stalled too early on the shot, which was not unexpected for the mass ratio we had, but we were on the board. More counterweight would help with the arm stall, and that was on our agenda for the next day. After day 1 we were in 5th place, and within spitting distance of 3rd - Morganna at 666. Yankee Siege had misfired, and Pumpkin Hammer was in the lead. Merlin was right them behind despite having spent all morning setting up - they arrived late Thursday afternoon around 5:30 due to truck problems.
Yet again we were on the field at 7:30 Saturday morning. We wanted to get a test shot or two with 400 pounds of counterweight to see what would happen to the tuning. Finally, we had a perfect test shot. The trajectory looked good, and the pumpkin went well past the 500 feet from the day before, though how much was unknown since we were not about to wander downrange as other machines were firing to measure it out. But since everything had looked dead on, we opted to not touch anything and shoot another 9-pound pumpkin like we had just launched, hoping to get another shot like that. Later that day we were given two very nice round 9-pound Luminas, and one of those would be shot that day for our official shot. Now to wait for our turn again. Jason's parents came down late that morning, and were on hand to see Yankee Siege smash their old World Record of 1702 feet with a mammoth 1894 foot shot! Needless to say, that put them solidly in first place. And when it was our turn, we had a carbon copy of the morning's shot, getting a nice distance of 686.79 feet. Not as much as we had hoped or thought, but still not bad at all. It kept us in 5th place after day 2, less than 35 feet out of 4th held by Hokie Hurler at 721.05 feet. We were feeling good, as Hokie Hurler had maxed out on counterweight with that shot, and we still had 200 more pounds to play with.
That evening we upped to 500 pounds of counterweight and took a test shot. The pumpkin went downrange, but the carriages blew out the front end stops, partially dropping to the ground. We had been hitting the end stops on all shots during the weekend, but this time blew them out. The hanger had not hinged about the arm as it was supposed to, contributing to the issue. Nothing could be done except remount the arm. The daylight was gone.
The next morning we once again got up and were on field by about 7:30, though at least we had an extra hour of sleep thanks to Daylight Savings. We decided to drop down to 450 pounds of counterweight for the day, hoping to get off a decent shot and top Hokie Hurler. We replaced the bolts holding in the end stops which had bent badly. The end stops themselves were not too badly bent, luckily. The test shot went smoothly, though the trajectory was a bit flat. Still, everything survived the shot except the new end stop bolts, which had bent too badly to be reused, though not as badly as the ones from the night before. We replaced them and awaited our turn to fire. There was a decent tailwind by the time our turn came up, which we hoped to harness to help our distance further. Unfortunately, the hanger again failed to hinge, and the pumpkin also nicked the actuator cradle, something that had not happened since initial testing in October in New York. The carriages, with nothing to slow them down, blew right through the end stops, bending them very badly, and also bending the bolts holding them in so much that they started to neck (meaning they were on the verge of snapping entirely - 3/8" diameter grade 5 bolts!). The arm flopped to the ground, and the tip over bar imbedded itself into the ground quite a ways.
Amazingly, the damage wasn't all the bad considering. The trough was toast, as everything had landed on it, and the tip over bar was a bit bend, but aside from the end stops nothing else was unusable again. Still, the competition was over for us, and we raced the setting sun to get packed up. In less than 3 hours, we were all packed up and ready to leave the field. We returned to Rochester the next day (Monday), though after sleeping in a few hours. All in all, a successful competition for us, though we ended up in 7th place as two trebuchets that had struggled the first two days found their full potential and snuck between us and Hokie Hurler, who also upped his total to 723.41 feet on Sunday.
Notes on WCPC 2008
Congratulations to Yankee Siege for a 5th straight title in the trebuchet division, bumping their new World Record up to 1897 on Sunday. Pumpkin Hammer hit 1700 feet on Sunday themselves, and should be even better in 2009; now that they have the whipper working well, they can focus on tuning. One of our pit neighbors was a 6 foot FAKA called Shenanigans, and they performed very well, hitting 644.79 on Sunday. They did a great job building their machine, and they have some improvements in mind for next year. In the torsion division, Roman Revenge shot a World Record on Friday (2215.79), which lasted all of 24 hours until Chucky II hit 2438.09 on Saturday, and an insane 3091.58 on Sunday! In the Youth Trebuchet Division, Troop 6 Shooter set a new World Record themselves, throwing 760.77 on Saturday. Congratulations to John and his troop. And Young Glory III, the current Youth Air World Record holder, set a new Adult Air World Record (they moved up a year or two ago) at 4483.51. It was a great year for Punkin' Chunkin', and the weather cooperated very well. There was sun most of the weekend, and absolutely no rain the entire time we were there, though it was a bit cold, particularly in the mornings. Still, what do you expect for early November? Furthermore, none of the heavy winds that plagued last year's chunk were present this year. Apparently it was one of the best years weather-wise for Punkin' Chunkin' ever.
Medieval Postal Service Notes
Cleary we had a few issues this year. Nothing major to fix, luckily. Obviously our tracks need to be lengthened, and we need a new pair of end stops. This will involve some frame redesign, but it should not be anything too hard due to how the frame is put together. Also, the actuation system needs to be addressed, so that we have no danger of hitting the cradle when firing. We have had a few thoughts on that one since seeing the problem in mid October, and will be looking at finding the best solution. Cleaning up the friction between the arm and hanger should help with the hinging issue (this spot is tight right now), as will a longer tip over bar. We will post about that soon. We would also like to look at the hoist system and an easier way to get the hoist out of the way for each shot, as it is a big pain to raise and lower it after each shot. But we WILL be back next year, and are determined to break 1000 feet. We are actually thinking more along the lines of 1200 feet based on what we saw this year for potential. We were only operating around 45% efficiency, we should be able to get much higher than this once we get up to full counterweight.
Check out the 2008 WCPC Image Gallery for lots more pictures from this year's event!
