Weekend of October 11, 12 & 13, 2008 --- Yankee Siege Breaks 2200 foot barrier!

The last of sixteen throws of the weekend turned out to be a whopper! With over 16 seconds of flight time, the orange pumpkin flew on a high trajectory and just kept on sailing upward before finally descending to earth after traveling over 2200 feet. We measure our distances from an observation tower located 1200 feet from the treb. The forward observer uses a range finder to measure how far the impact is from the tower and then adds 1200 feet to the total distance.

Several thousand onlookers witnessed Yankee Siege throw throughout the weekend. Weather was sunny and in the high sixties. It was almost a perfect weekend. We had one errant throw that came dangerously close to our nearest neighbor, hitting a tree and raining down pumpkin guts. Luckily, we have great neighbors who are very understanding and we promptly repositioned the treb.

We took seven more throws on Monday with some interesting results. We wanted to see what would happen if we put more slack in the sling. We wondered if more slack would give us more consistent distances. We suspect that the elastic recoil of the throwing arm may be producing a harmonic in the sling, leading to inconsistencies in the timing of release. We tried 12 inches of slack in a 25 foot sling. There were no very short throws. All throws were 1600 feet or above. The slack seems to work (we need more testing to verify).

Results of the 23 throws October 11, 12 & 13, 2008

Note: We added 500 pounds of counterweight (Sunday) for a total of 11,500 pounds.
Note: All pumpkins are orange and used a straighter release pin.

Saturday October 11, 2008

Throw One - 1200 feet - low trajectory
Throw Two - 1300 feet - low trajectory
Throw Three - 1400 feet - low trajectory
Throw Four - 1700 feet - change to straighter pin
Throw Five - 1500 feet
Throw Six - 1700 feet
Throw Seven - 1700 feet
Throw Eight - 1650 feet

Sunday October 12, 2008

Throw One - 1800 feet - good height
Throw Two - 1850 feet
Throw Three - pumpkin fell out of sling
Throw Four - 1650 feet - hard left
Throw Five - 1450 feet - low trajectory
Throw Six - 1600 feet
Throw Seven - 2000 feet - good height
Throw Eight - 2200 feet - in the stratosphere!!!

Monday October 13, 2008

Note: Put one foot of slack in the sling.

Throw One - 1650 feet - slightly low trajectory
Throw Two - 1850 feet - good height
Throw Three - 2100 feet - great height, long flight time
Throw Four - 1900 feet - slightly lower
Throw Five - 1700 feet
Throw Six - 1600 feet - tried underweight Lumina pumpkin
Throw Seven - 1850 feet - good height

PS Next weekend (weather permitting) we will try varying sling length and adding more weight to the counterweight.

Steve Seigars, YS