Punkin Chunkin: An Interesting Competition

[java]

Hopefully this is the right forum....

For those into homemade spud guns, trebuchets, catapults, and other popular household seige engines the Discovery Times channel will broadcast "Punkin Chunkin" starting tomorow at 2000 and 2400 hours. As a long time hater of the ground sucking devil spawned orange gourd and fancier of homemade weapons that produce loud noises and displays of pyrotechnic awe, I have found the Annual World Championship Punkin Chunkin Contest to be a source of great amusement and satisfaction. The comporessed air cannons are approaching the 1 mile range for rapid airborne punkin delivery. (and great says I as the sooner we breach this barrier the sooner reaserch will push the technology to turn the orange scourge into sub-orbital payloads...... but that's another rant.


Intriguing to watch the various home grown methods (especially the human powered centrifugal machines) designed to hurl the allies of squash to an early gravitational demise. The site above also has some excellent links for folks interested in building their own squash seige engine etc.

 

[mwerner]

They've done a couple of shows on the punkin chunker competition on one of the science channels. I've always been fond of catapults and such, and I was looking into spud guns a few years back and saw the link to the competition.

 

[tarsier]

Last July, I read an interview in the paper about a man named William Gurstelle who wrote this book about similar topics. The interview isn't available anymore on the paper's web site, but the story was immediately interesting to me, and probably almost all males of any age. Very funny also. I think we are hard-wired to be fascinated by this stuff. Be careful though. A buddy of mine torched his hand pretty bad about six years ago when his spud cannon malfunctioned.

 

[Peter Atwood]

I have that book. Great read and thoroughly entertaining! I got mine from Lindsay Publications which, incidentally, has an extremely amusing and interesting catalog.

 

[java]

Thanks! I'll have to look into the book.

I've been using this site Backyard Ballistics for years for Spud-Tech info. Good resource for plans and other things I try to keep the kids from trying out without adult supervision. (Mrs J is of the opinion we need even more supervision when Junior and I are playi....er researching)

j