Snohomish 2015

[KerikM]

I was there for the first half of the Saturday competition. I didn't get all the numbers written down but it was an eventful one.
As before I had the privilege of being with Bob P. and his several machines, including an onager and the orange King Arthur, Mixed Nuts. The latter did nicely as I recall, but we fear the onager has met its end. Due to unprecedented tensioning, part of the frame broke, and while a friend worked valiantly to repair it, it might not be seen again. He had some friends and relatives helping with Mixed Nuts, so I got to relax and watch the others.
The onager was not the only casualty of the day. Logcraft was back, after being absent a couple years or so, and everything was going fine until it made an unusually high throw and its arm snapped like a dry twig. Someone caught this on their camera but I don't know if it will be uploaded. Unfazed, the crew hauled out a tree branch they happened to have handy and after the necessary drilling and so on, fitted this up with the prong assembly and bolted it into place. It looked kind of funny but it worked. When I left, they were shortening it and I suppose someone will provide news of the succeeding throws. Hurray for resourcefulness!
RTB's nifty "Balllisticraft" [not sure of spelling] was there doing its usual awesome job, but neither Squash-o'-fire nor the Gourdinator were visible. The crew of the former say it is just not feasible to maintain, transport and operate any more. I mourn this and TreBarbaric and T-Wrecks, and deplore whatever socioeconomic or other conditions deprive such fine machines of their function.
A 4-H group had a treb which was supposed to be like a King Arthur, with hanger pinned high, but its geometry was that of a 45-degree-cocked HCW. I don't have the stats for its performance. Squash-o'-fire's people had brought a peashooter I mean air cannon, and launched apples and potatoes. Whatever else happened, we got that field fertilized. And the weather was beautiful.
There were some smaller trebs which I did not see in action; someone else can tell of their performance. Sonthi, my desktop FAT, came along for the ride, but I accipurpodentally forgot to bring ammo. It probably wouldn't be a good idea to fill the ground with 1/4" ball-bearings anyway, but some people I showed it to seemed to think it looked nice. I then had to leave due to other obligations, but I had a fine time except for that food-truck being out of meat pies.
I was going to add pix of Logcraft but they were too big, and my photoedit programs are being fractious.
I hope that somewhere online we will find the statistics of each machine's performance. I would say the human beings did a fine job. One final note--if you approach that region from Seattle next year, don't do it on a Friday afternoon. The traffic was unutterable.

[BobP]

Hi Kerrick, glad to have seen you today. We actually did fire U-Name-It one more time, but it is officially called I-Broke-It now. We also broke the pin off the arm of JR late in the day, but found something to use and made one more toss for (officially) 475 feet. I'm fairly sure they measured the wrong pumpkin.

Pumpkins, by the way, were in short supply. I'm not sure what's up with that, normally they're in the stores by now.

Robert The Bruce says he'll bring Ballisticraft to Burlington in two weeks, some transport issues having been resolved. That'll set up a shoot-off between him and JR. I'm going to do better, just wait!

"Fling what you bring" tomorrow. I've already towed the broken U-N-I home and will concentrate on JR.

[KerikM]

Glad you kept JR in play. What-all happened with Logcraft? Did shortening the replacement arm help? I am curious about the effect of its springiness, how this could be made to be useful rather than counterproductive.
What distance did you get for the late lamented onager's swan song?

[BobP]

LogCraft just used the long log arm extension once, then shortened the original one that broke and went with that. They were hurling with great consistency and will be at Burlington. They tossed a 20 pounder on their final throw today -- almost straight up. Crowd loved it, of course. Don't know how the springiness affected the throw. I'm hoping RtB has good video.

Distance for the unfortunate onager, now known as I-Broke-It was less than 100 feet.

I only fired JR twice today. I was completely on my own, and managed to have plenty of help. The secret is walking out into the crowd with a couple of hard hats and saying "I need heads for these". No shortage of volunteers.

The last two hurling sessions I just used my mini-treb and mini-onager. They were bringing in little kids in hard hats to pull the trigger. I LOVE doing that. The 4-H team with the big one yesterday just had a mini as well today so we were both catering to the kiddies. I did wind up and fire the mini-onager several times. I love that thing.

[TeamPendragon]

Here's the video of Logcraft firing w/ the branch arm (regular and slo-mo). Sadly the camera went out of focus during the throw, but at least the slo-mo looks good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA_p7iafJgU

See you at Burlington- I'll bring Drill Sergeant along as well for fun.

[KerikM]

Thanks for the video. Does anyone know what distance they got with each configuration? It looks like the elastic action didn't detract much if any from the trajectory...

[BobP]

See you both at Burlington, I expect. Maybe good competition between Ballistikraft and Mixed Nuts Jr.

I've a good bit of work to do in the morning to unload my truck and fix up the onager so it's even save to trailer back to the alternate location so I can tear it apart.

[madmattd]

Bob, was I-Broke-It the onager you were building using hydraulic cylinders to spread the frame and thus provide the torsion?

Its too bad so many great PNW big trebs are no longer out competing Sounds like you guys are still having fun though!

[BobP]

It was trying to. But I wound it too tight without first extending the cylinders to get the load in the middle, so it was still reacting at the bottom, bending in, and pried itself apart. I've got ideas for next year. But the best idea might be simply to demolish it all!