Medieval Postal Service Joins the 1000 Foot Club
Posted Nov 08, 2009 by Matt | Tags: launches, WCPC
Sunday is traditionally break it Sunday at the World Championships of Punkin Chunkin. Everyone adds more counterweight, torques up their ropes more, etc. And today did not dissapoint. After the 2000 foot shot on Saturday, Yankee Siege shot a high 1800's shot, 1870 or so. We will post final distances later. Pumpkin Hammer, still stuck as a HCW this year, did not improve their distance. Hokie Hurler added even more weight to their machine, causing it to lean noticably, but they did not get any more distance. The machine did survive the shot, however.
Great Gourd Experiment powered another shot out there, somewhere in the 870's. Our pit neighbors, First in Fright, increased their distance by 20 feet to 1081. We added 100 pounds of counterweight to Medieval Postal Service, a piece of information kept quiet until we launched (we kept the extra weight hidden all weekend). The weight did finally help us power over the 1000 foot mark, with a 1074 foot shot, roughly 7 feet behind First in Fright. Morgana also improved their day 2 shot, shooting an 870-something, the best they have shot in at least 3 years! Fred the Treb failed to get a shot off in time.
Shenanigans 2 tweaked their tuning and shot a whopping 1201 feet! They are also a FAKA design, though more traditional than Medieval Postal Service, and also 1 foot taller than us. They also had 800 pounds of counterweight on their machine. Treebucket finally got off a decent shot, though only a few hundred feet. The machine following them (don't have the name offhand) dropped their counterweight as they fired, but they got off a very nice shot, 700-800 feet maybe. Then came the new guys from Ohio and their very well-made F2K. They loaded up their counterweight to a whopping 2250 pounds and got off the shot almost heard 'round the world. That's right, they almost caught Yankee Siege. The distance: 1880-something!!! This needless to say got them 2nd place, very nicely done by American Chunker!
Next came Merlin, with yet another 1500 foot shot at 1545. King Arthur followed up with a 1100 foot shot, and the last two machines did much the same that they had in the previous days. Again, we will post the full division in a few days.
What a year for Trebuchets! Sandford Slinger in the Youth Trebuchet division set a new world record at over 850 feet. Yankee Siege became the first trebuchet to break the 2000 foot barrier. And the Adult Trebuchet division was INCREDIBLY strong. 9 machines broke 1000 feet, the first time more than 3 had even done this! 14th place this year at over 870 feet would have easily taken 4th place last year! And Yankee Siege actually beat ALL mechanicals, including trebuchets, catapults, torsion, and human powered. In fact, only Team Ethos in the torsion division even broke 2000 feet. No division was nearly as strong as the trebuchet division. No one could have forseen a 1074 shot taking home 9th place.
More to come in coming days breaking down just what happened out there. We shot easily as far as the 1074 shot in testing with less counterweight than the 700 pounds, so we need to figure out why we didn't shoot so well.
