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My cousin just told me about the catastrophe at the Delaware chunk--that air cannon exploding and 2 hurt, 1 critical. I checked the news via Google. This has been a sucky year for the hurling community! (Not to mention my ongoing lack of access to a machine shop to work on MY projects.)
Except for Colossal Thunder. 2526', I gather.
I have long felt like the air cannons should have their own separate contest. It's not like trebs and onagers haven't done some damage to people, but still.
I hope that our pastime will not go extinct in its large-scale version, that some sort of better safety setup can be figured out.
Ideas?

I will just warn everyone to hold off believing everything written online about the incident until an official press release is issued. There are a lot of conflicting reports (though they are slowly converging on one story). I was nearby (but outside the safety zone) when the cannon blew off its breach (at least that is what it looked like), but that's all I am saying about the matter for the time being.

Once we (hopefully) learn more about what happened and why, perhaps some safety changes can be implemented to avoid such a situation again. Or perhaps it was 100% unavoidable and not something that could have been implemented. Time will hopefully tell. Pressure vessels are tricky beasts, and the air cannons already undergo a long list of regulations they have to meet before they can be operated. There have been a couple near-miss incidents with catapults/trebuchets over the years which have resulted in certain safety changes themselves.

The WCPC was going extremely well this weekend, with maybe 1 hour left to go. It was running very smoothly, the weather was fantastic (other than the wind on Friday and Sunday), and everyone was having a great time. Such a shame about what happened. Here's hoping all involved will be OK. And also, here's hoping this doesn't impact the future of this and other events.

Colossal Thunder indeed won the Adult Trebuchet division with a magnificent 2625' shot into extremely strong and gusty headwinds on Sunday, besting Yankee Siege II by 22'. We had a personal best with NASAW on Friday in similar wind conditions with a 2372' shot (which was the second-longest non-cannon shot all day!), but that shot by Colossal Thunder Sunday dropped us to 4th. We had a shot to still get back on the podium, but I over-corrected for the wind and the shot, while leaving extremely quick, came out too flat to stay up long and ended up being a meek 1299', our shortest competition shot on record. Oh well, we (speaking for my team here) are all quite happy for those guys, another (floating) whipper winning is excellent in our book!

Also, Chunk Norris finally put the old 2005 Catapult World Record to bed (2862'). They did top it in NH at the Extreme Chunkin event in 2015, and again in 2016, but they crushed their own personal best with a ridiculous 3508' shot on Saturday in calm conditions, and followed it up with another 3000'+ shot on Sunday in the massive winds. They now have the second-longest non-cannon shot in competition ever (Chucky III shot 3636' in 2011). Congratulations to those guys, I'll post some video of their shot later.

Y'right about not believing everything one reads justlikethat. Congratulations on your own new personal record. Especially with a headwind. Thanks also for fixing my mistake about Colossal Thunder's dx [Oops.]