Pumpkin Toss

This is a major event if The Charlie Daniels band is the headliner. The last time I saw these good ol' boys was in Utica, NY (circa 1991) when they played a gig at the local high school.

Catapulting students is a bad idea.

I was at a school where kids were working on competitive catapult designs. As any engineer knows, not allowing for wind resistance, the optimum angle to launch a projectile for the maximum distance is 45 degrees. I don't know if the high school students knew this, but they were trying to build a catapult that had the arm almost level when cocked. Ideally then the catapult arm would reach its maximum speed after only 45 degrees of travel. Instead, they were reaching the maximum speed after about 90 degrees of travel and launching the projectile almost horizontally. They did not go very far, but had a lot of impact when they hit.

Margaret Friedenauer
Skagit Valley Herald
October 01, 2007 - 07:40 AM


BURLINGTON — The burly, barrel chested men from Sedro-Woolley, decked out in medieval garb, did not feel threatened by their competition Saturday.

In the end, the team known as Trebarbaric would reign supreme with their monster trebuchet, a massive replica of the ancient siege machines used by medieval armies to hurl heavy objects at castle walls.

trebuchet-wise, they did have one worry.

"I do want to keep it out of the houses," said team captain Wes Frank, motioning to the neighborhood nearly 2,000 feet across the field where the nine trebuchets were set up to launch 8- to 10-pound pumpkins.

He wasn't joking.

Trebarbaric unofficially regained the world record in a pumpkin throwing trebuchet contest with a toss of 1,866 feet, breaking the previous record of 1,702 feet held by a team in Delaware.

They also nearly broke many other things on a blustery day that caused the wind to carry some of Trebarbaric's pumpkin tosses off course and perilously close to neighboring houses. After the team's third toss, they forfeited their last two tosses, satisfied with the world record and lack of property damage.

The Pumpkin Pitch, in it's fifth year as part of the annual Burlington Harvest Festival, had nine trebuchet teams participate Saturday, the most teams of any year. Organizers estimated as many as 4,000 spectators turned out to watch the spectacle.

Before the competition began, spectators were allowed into the pit area to meet the teams and get a close up look at the various kinds of launching machines that were originally used in medieval warfare. Several teams — like Ally-Oop from Langley, B.C., The Mixed Nuts from Everett, U.F.O from Burlington and Trebasaurus from Mount Vernon are veteran competitors in the event. But several new teams ventured into the world of pumpkin tossing this year. J-Buchet, a team from Janicki Industries Inc., had a slick new trebuchet. Team captain Fred Smethers explained that the steel launching mechanism was "beautifully engineered" and likely the most efficient machine in the competition, capable of tosses up more than 1,000 feet.

"We can beat everybody but the big guy," Smethers said, referring to the roughly hewn Trebarbaric machine made of Douglas fir, oak, maple and hemlock that towered over the shiny blue and black steel J-Buchet.

Most trebuchets are made from traditional designs using counterweights and axles. But J-Buchet had gotten the idea for their machine, a design dubbed a floating axle King Arthur, from information they found on http://www.thehurl.org, a Web site for trebuchet enthusiasts. The design, Smethers said, was the brainchild of Craig Macomber, a 17-year-old Seattle high school student.

Macomber was at Saturday's event with friend Matt Nichols and their Pumpkin on a Stick trebuchet powered by the teens' own weight. Macomber came up with the efficient design used by J-Buchet on a small model he made in his basement. But to see his design come to life on Saturday was exciting, he said.

"It is very cool," Macomber said. "Now I don't have to make one."

Macomber and Nichols have made several trebuchet models, a project that Macomber first used as a sixth-grade science project. The friends created a larger machine, for Saturday's event, but it was dwarfed by the other entries.

"We could go bigger but the basement kind of dictates the size," Nichols said.

They also brought several small models that they demonstrated, flinging Ping-Pong balls before the event.

"I never know what's going to be built in the basement," said Ellen Macomber, Craig's mother.

By the time the gourd smashing commenced, the thousands of spectators lined the field, warming their hands with hot cider and roasted corn on the cob. Several trebuchets launched pumpkins 200, 300 and up to 800 feet, producing a crowd pleasing thud and pumpkin explosion on the field. Pumpkin on a Stick was able to hurl their pumpkins up to 80 feet using their own weight.

J-Buchet and Siege Perilous, a team from Kingston, each threatened or surpassed the 1,000 feet mark. But Trebarbaric, having to use a crane to apply weight to their machine had to "de-tune" the machine at the organizer's request to scale back the length of their tosses.

"We got it together this year," Frank said.

* Margaret Friedenauer can be reached at 360-416-2146 or mfriedenauer@skagitvalleyherald.com.