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With the trebuchet all loaded up on the truck
and in the trailer it is time to head out to school to show
my professor and fellow classmates my monstrous creation.
And just to make sure that everyone on the road knew that
something big was going down I whipped up this nifty warning
sign for the back of my trailer. If the 16' pieces sticking
up over the cab of the truck didn't get their attention this
sure did :-) |
Here I am standing way off to the side
getting ready to fire it for the very first time. There
is no weight in the counterweight bucket at this time. |
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FIRE! |
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Assi, another student of Dr. Brooks looks up in disbelief
at how high the end of the arm is. |
Assi built this gorgeous Floating Arm
Trebuchet |
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With almost 300 pounds of weights falling straight down
his trebuchet had a very visceral sound as it fired. He was
hurling the 5 pound melons with ease. |
With me looking on Assi fires his trebuchet |
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This is was we were aiming for; Castle Aaugh (a throwback
to Monty Python) which was 245 feet away. It was two feet
wide and about three feet tall. This may sound big but at
almost a football field away it is really small. |
Here Dr. Brooks, Assi, and myself pull
the trebuchet arm down into position to lock and cock it
and then I load it with another melon ready to take majestic
flight. Originally I had planned to make a winch mechanism
but I ran out of time so I have to rely on pulling the lever
arm down by hand. |
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While neither of us actually hit the target we both hit
close enough to splatter the castle wall with bits of melon
shrapnel. We were both going strong and getting closer and
closer until we ran out of melons. I overshot the castle
by over 50 feet on several occasions while trying to tune
the trebuchet. Here we all are, Assi Shalom on the left,
me (Brett "Buzz" Dawson in case you have no idea
who I am) in the middle, and our professor, Dr. George Brooks
on the right.
It was an amazing day and we plan on doing it again in
the near future. |
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Videos |
Videos |
Here is a short video of both our our
trebuchets firing. (1 meg) |
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Here are three shots getting dialed into the castle. (2
Megs) |
And here is a music video of the trebuchets
in action. The video is lower quality to keep the file size
down but you can get the feel of how much fun it was. (4.2
Megs) |
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Here is a short video of the trebuchet out in a field
by my place. We were launching cantaloupes and small watermelons
and a few heads of lettuce. We still had a lot of ammo left
over when the thunderstorm started rolling in. The same
thing happened when we originally tried to bring it back
out two weeks ago. Every other day has been absolutely beautiful.
So, if we are ever in the midst of a drought I just need
to bring out the trebuchet and we will get a torrential
downpour.
Unfortunately, we were just starting to get the trebuchet
dialed in when we had to stop for fear of drawing a bolt
of lightning to us. The castle was set up 300 feet out and
our farthest overshot was 50 beyond the castle wall. One
of these days we will be able to get some good launches
in without worrying about the rain.
By the way: This trebuchet is for sale. Make
me an offer
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