Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Down the home stretch to VTPC #2

There are now 4 days and some odd hours until the 2nd Annual Vermont Pumpkin Chuckin' Festival at The Boyden Family Farm.

We hope for the competitors that all your work is going well and your trebuchets are taking their vitamins.

First, a reminder on the times for the VTPC festival. The gates to the festival will open at 11am for spectators. Admission to the festival will cost $5 for adults and $3 for ages 12 and under. Money raised goes to support the Lamoille Family Center and Cambridge Area Rotary.

Competitors may come early, before 11 am, and set up if they want to. Please give yourself adequate time to set up and get everything ready prior to the 1 pm start.

The first round of competitive trebuchet hurling will begin at 1 pm, the 2nd round at 2 pm, and the 3rd (final round) will be at 3 pm. The prizes will be awarded immediately following the 3rd round.

The American Chunker Air Cannon team from Merrimack, NH will be there early to set up. They report that they "should be up and operational by 10-11 am." So we expect they will do some shooting between 11 am and 1 pm. They posted these thoughts about their Vermont shoot:
THE FARM DOSEN'T QUITE HAVE A MILE OF OPEN FIELD SO WE WILL BE WORKING WITH 4000FT OR SO, WHICH IS PERFECT FOR OUR FIRST EXHIBITION EVENT. FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE ATTENDING THE EVENT, WE SHOULD BE UP AND OPERATIONAL BY 10-11 AM ON SUNDAY. TEAM AMERICAN CHUNKER IS LOOKING TO BREAK INTO THE 4000FT NEIGHBORHOOD WITH EASE ON SUNDAY. I'M SURE THERE WILL BE REAL SPOTTERS AND ACCURATE MEASURING ON SUNDAY TO GIVE THE CREW A REAL FEEL FOR TRUE DISTANCES. THIS IS A BIG TEST FOR THE ALL NEW CHUNKER - WILL SHE DELIVER..............?
Prepare yourself to be amazed at the latest and greatest in pumpkin smashing technology.


The music courtesy of Wilbur's Dog will begin about 12 noon.

A general reminder: the event is alcohol free and dogs are not allowed, Wilbur's Dog being the exception.

We will also be selling "official" Vermont Pumpkin Chunkin Festival t-shirts, for $15. We will have about 100 shirts.

Please stay tuned for any updates.

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For more details please see the press release and the competition rules.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Pumpkin Tossing

If you want a glimpse of last year's Vermont Pumpkin Chuckin' Festival, check out this very well done audio slide show by Joshua Lambert of the Burlington Free Press. You might even see yourself if you were there last year.

Joshua Lambert / Burlington Free Press:
Pumkpin Toss -- Pumpkins were sent flying by trebuchets at the Boyden Family Farm in Cambridge on Sunday, October 4, 2009. This multimedia project from the event was created by Free Press Photo Intern Joshua Lambert. Music in the project is from the band Hub Cats, performing during the event.

Burlington Free Press reports on the 1st Vermont Pumpkin Chuckin' Festival

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Getting Medieval

Reminder: There are only 18 days until the 2nd Annual Vermont Pumpkin Chuckin' Festival.

Here are some interesting views from the European Kampioenschap Pompoenschieten (Pumpkin Shooting Championship) held at Bikschote, Belgium on September 5th.

This is USA Team Carbo with their Onager. 

An Onager is a "Wild Asian Ass." It is also the name of a Roman siege engine, which derived its name from the kicking action of the machine, similar to that of an onager (wild ass). Team Carbo was the Delaware Punkin Chunkin World Champions in the Unlimited Torsion Class 2003, 2004, 2005. It took 4 weeks to get their machine shipped to Europe. Reportedly over 7000 spectators attended the Belgian event.

Results from the large torsion machine category:
  1. Team Bisschop met een schot van 726.4 meter (2383 feet)
  2. Team Carbo: 648 meter (2125 feet)
  3. Ypes: 625.3 meter
  4. L.G. Bikschote: 442.7 meter
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Links:
Belgian Video News Report: kampioenschap-pompoenschieten
renews.be: Pompoenschieten Bikschote photos
Team Carbo/Onager Online
Pompoenschieten.be
Spudfiles / EuroForum: Chunkin Europe!
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Paul Carbo of USA Team Carbo at the Kampioenschap pompoenschieten, Bikschote, Belgium

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Press Release for Second Annual Vermont Pumpkin Chuckin' Festival

Second Annual Vermont Pumpkin Chuckin' Festival hurls off at The Boyden Family Farm on Sunday, October 3rd, 2010

CAMBRIDGE, Vermont, Sept. 8th — With a love for all things pumpkin, the Boyden Family Farm in Cambridge, VT and the Cambridge Area Rotary are hosting the state of Vermont's second annual official Pumpkin Chuckin' Festival to raise money for the Lamoille Family Center and Cambridge Rotary.

The first festival was a huge success with 10 teams competing and over 300 spectators enjoying the competition, music and picnic atmosphere. This year will have many more competitors and feature an air-cannon exhibition which was built by a team from New Hampshire that call themselves American Chunker. They plan to beat the world record (just 600 feet shy of a mile) at the world championship pumpkin chunkin contest in Delaware! They will also demonstrate the ability to fire a 10 round burst automatically (world's first).

Local inventor, J. J. Spanier (hit of the last year's festival) will also be back with an even bigger trebuchet, also an exhibition. Both these contraptions are not competing against the trebuchets which have 3 strict categories for height and weight. The "Thing" from a team in Morrisville will also be back to defend their title. They won last year with a toss of 135 feet. A Trebuchet is a huge, gravity-powered catapult that was employed in the Middle Ages as a siege engine to either to smash castle walls or to throw projectiles over them. These days they are built to hurl pumpkins for distance.

The world championship pumpkin-throwing contest is held the first weekend after Halloween in Sussex County, Delaware. Vermont's Pumpkin Chuckin Festival is an annual event, held on the first Sunday in October.

Dave Jordan, creator (and competitor) of the festival says, "This is a fun competition modeled after the Soap Box Derby. The height and weight are limited to make it fair for teams with limited resources. The team that throws a pumpkin the farthest FOR THEIR HEIGHT and will win best design prize and receive first pick of the prizes".

The festival will have four categories of competition, which also compete directly against each other:

· Lightweight Division: Open only to ages 10 and below
Max. total weight of trebuchet is 20 lbs.
Max. height is 41 inches
projectile = 3 ounces tomato

· Middleweight Junior Division: Open only to ages 17 and below:
Max. total weight of trebuchet is 100 lbs.
Max. height is 70 inches
projectile = 1 pound pumpkin

· Middleweight Open Division: Open to all ages
Max. total weight of trebuchet is 100 lbs.
Max. height is 70 inches
projectile = 1 pound pumpkin

· Heavyweight Division: Open to all ages
Max. total weight of trebuchet is 500 lbs.
Max. height is 10 feet
projectile = 5 pound pumpkin

Exciting prizes for the winners have been donated by some of the Festival sponsors. Prizes include:
To create the proper atmosphere for a day of pumpkin hurling, Burlington's progressive rock band Wilbur's Dog will be performing from noon to dusk.

Other family activities at the VT Pumpkin Chuckin' festival will include:
  • Volleyball
  • Croquet
  • Food provided by Boyden Farm (get a famous Boyden Beef Burger)
  • Corn maze: $4 for adults, $2 for ages 12 and under
Admission to the festival will cost $5 for adults and $3 for ages 12 and under. The festival goes from from 11am to dark, featuring 3 competitive firings at 1pm, 2pm and 3pm with awards shortly after. No dogs and no alcohol please. Parking is free.

For more information about the First Vermont Pumpkin Chuckin' Festival, guests can visit the vtpumpkinchuckin.blogspot.com or call the festival organizer Dave Jordan at (802) 888-2910. Or contact Dave, via email at: DJordan@gmavt.net.

SOURCE: Dave Jordan

Sunday, September 5, 2010

The American Chunker Backstory

A very nice write-up and video about the American Chunker team in Sunday's Nashua Telegraph.

Nashua Telegraph:
Nashua native aims to build best pumpkin cannon -- Lots of people dream of building fancy do-it-yourself projects, but they don’t generally weigh 10,000 pounds, cost close to $100,000 or require friends to fly overhead to keep track of your progress.

“I am pretty obsessed with this,” admitted Brian Labrie, whose dream to build a machine that can shoot pumpkins more than a mile has also consumed four friends and the occasional family member, not to mention the Science Channel, which sent a film crew to Brookline recently to record some bits of telegenic destruction.

It started last year when Labrie, a Nashua native and 1992 Bishop Guertin graduate, saw a TV show about the national Punkin Chunkin contest. That Delaware event started 25 years ago as a gathering of folks who built catapults to toss pumpkins a few hundred feet, and is now a weekend-long extravaganza that attracts global media attention with a half-dozen categories of pumpkin-hurtling devices – including what might be considered the heavyweight division, air cannons. These massive machines, powered by huge tanks of compressed air, can fire pumpkins 4,000 feet or more...



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Reminder: There are 28 days until the 2nd Annual Vermont Pumpkin Chuckin' Festival. There you will have a chance to see American Chunker up close.