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Erlkönig: pumpkins-in-flight.shtml| [Forwards deleted, contributed by Judy Reich] | | By MARK ROBICHAUX Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL | | MORTON, Ill. -- Ponder this: Will a pumpkin, as it nears the speed of | sound, turn into pie in the sky? | | In a machine shop in a sea of cornfields here in a place that calls itself | the Pumpkin Capital of the World, this is not a theoretical question. For | months now, a team of volunteers has worked earnestly on an effort to send | a gourd soaring at Mach I. | | Their invention is an 18-ton, 100-foot cannon made of 10-inch-diameter | plastic pipe, powered by compressed air and mounted on an old cement | mixer. Dubbed the Aludium Q36 Pumpkin Modulator, it has already set a | world distance record, flinging a pumpkin 2,710 feet -- at a velocity of | more than 600 miles per hour, literally faster than some speeding bullets. | | At the speed of sound, minimally about 750 mph, the distance record could | easily be shattered, assuming the pumpkin doesn't shatter first. For this | team of self-described "high-tech rednecks," this is a matter of some | urgency and pride, says Matt Parker, a Morton businessman and a team | leader. For the team is, at the moment, the undisputed champion of the | arcane sport known colloquially to its practitioners as "punkin' | chunkin'." | | On Nov. 1, all eyes will be on the Q36 when it defends its title as World | Champion Punkin' Chunker in Lewes, a small town on the Delaware coast. | | For the past 11 years, pumpkin tossers, dragging all manner of | contraptions, have converged there to vie for bragging rights in a variety | of pumpkin-tossing categories -- human powered, centrifugal, catapult and | air cannons. Sponsored by the Roadhouse Steak Joint, a Lewes restaurant, | the contest derives from an anvil-throwing game once played here; how the | anvil evolved into a pumpkin seems to be lost to history. | | The modern contest's rules are clear, however: Pumpkins must weigh 8 to | 10 pounds, leave the machine intact and not be propelled by explosives. | | Like the rapid advance in, say, computer technology, pumpkin-tossing | prowess has improved exponentially since the first contest in 1986 | produced a throw of 50 feet. By 1989, large-scale centrifugals, | essentially giant slings, were launching pumpkins more than 600 feet, a | mark that had doubled by 1993. In 1994, the first serious air cannon | appeared and shot a pumpkin more than 2,500 feet. A Delaware-made air | cannon named the "Mello Yello" beat that mark with a 2,655-foot shot in | 1995, only to be bested by the Q36 last year. | | Of course the cannons, though they have the longest range, don't attract | all the attention. Last year, a catapult competitor rigged up two | telephone poles planted in the ground, fitted huge rubber bands to them | and fired a pumpkin from this Paul Bunyanesque slingshot -- pulled taut | by a power winch -- 493 feet. | | Still, the serious pumpkin tossers gravitate to the cannons, and here in | this small Illinois town, pumpkins are serious business. Area farms supply | about 80% of the nation's canned pumpkin through Nestle SA's Libby's plant | here. When the chamber of commerce director, Scott Witzig, heard about | the Lewes contest in early 1996, he issued a call to arms at the chamber's | annual dinner: Build a gun to bring honor to Morton's pumpkin heritage. | | The challenge was taken up by Mr. Parker, a polite, 28-year-old vice | president at Parker Fabrication Inc., a family-owned company that builds | industrial-exhaust systems. Soon, he and some tinkering friends were | swapping sketches on napkins in coffee shops. "It sounded kind of dumb at | first," he says, "but pretty soon, that's all we talked about." | | In a month's time, a group formed and built a machine largely from scrap | parts, often working into the early morning at the shop of Rod Litwiller, | a crew member. Friends and neighbors stopped in to help. Only when a crude | version of the machine was unveiled at the Morton pumpkin festival in | September last year did the builders get an idea of the machine's power. | | The first shot flew out of sight into a cornfield. "We thought, 'This has | potential,' " says Chuck Heerde, a 32-year-old Parker employee and crew | member. | | High Expectations | | The Q36, when erected, resembles a crane. It is hand-loaded from the rear, | aimed using hydraulic cylinders and a turret that was once an old cement | mixer and fired with the push of a red button that releases a charge of | compressed air. Painted military green, the gun was named after a weapon | used by Marvin the Martian, a pint-sized alien in a Warner Bros. cartoon. | | Ferocious as the Q36 looked, the Morton pumpkin crew still wasn't sure | what made a pumpkin fly farthest. Too much pressure too fast, and the | pumpkin bursts apart in the barrel. Too slow, and velocity suffers. Pat | Parker, Matt Parker's father, contacted Max Teasdale, a friend who teaches | engineering mechanics at Bradley University in nearby Peoria. An avid | skeet shooter, Mr. Teasdale said he had just completed a ballistics | analysis of shotgun pellets. "I asked him: 'Can you modify that for a | 10-pound pumpkin?'" says the elder Mr. Parker. "He was silent for | second. Then he smiled." | | Mr. Teasdale modified the ballistics program to compensate for a pumpkin | flying through an 80-foot barrel in hopes of plotting the best trajectory. | The computer tabulates, among other things, the weight and number of | sections in a pumpkin (usually 10), the pressure and temperature of the air | in the tank, the barometric pressure, pumpkin spin and barrel inclination. | Still, Mr. Teasdale concedes that "pumpkins are an unreliable projectile." | | Undeterred, the Morton crew packed up the Q36 and hitched it to "The | Blackbird," a black and silver GMC bus fitted with a diesel engine and | front end welded together by Mr. Heerde. When the Q36 rumbled into the | fairgrounds in Lewes for last year's contest, however, more experienced | cannon makers were prepared to blow it off. But, after its first pumpkin | blew apart in the barrel, the Q36 blew the competition away. Its winning | shot of 2,710 feet broke the existing record by 55 feet. | | It also narrowly missed a Ford Mustang in the parking lot. This could have | been serious: In a demonstration earlier in the day, the Q36 had blown a | pumpkin-size hole in a half-inch thick sheet of plywood 500 feet away. | | Giving No Ground | | Word of the Q36 has spread like pumpkin butter. On the Punkin' Chunkin' | Web site, one reviewer called the debut of the Q36 "awe-inspiring." Harry | "Captain Speed" Lackhove, a Delaware competitor whose Mello Yello cannon | held the previous world record, has vowed to come out of retirement to | challenge the Q36 at this year's contest. Mr. Lackhove, 72, says he is | cooking up a high-tech firing device based upon the designs of a | California race-car mechanic and predicts, "We expect to set a record that | won't fall for years." Which is why the Q36 crew vows to send a pumpkin | flying at Mach I soon. But Mr. Teasdale, the physics professor, tempers | the crew's ambitions with reality. Compressed air and computer-aided | trajectories can send the pumpkin sailing just up to the sound barrier, | he says. But he doesn't think it can be broken without the boost of an | explosive charge. And no one quite knows if a pumpkin can stay intact at | the speed of sound. | | Still, practice makes perfect. On a recent fall afternoon, the Q36 crew | took the cannon to Goshen, Ind., for a rare public demonstration at the | grand opening of a subdivision called Clover Trails. A horn sounded across | the cornfields as the barrel of the Q36 rose ominously and, with a loud | "foop," fired a pumpkin. This was a low-power shot, and it sailed perhaps | 1,200 feet. Soon, cars pulled over and a crowd of about 100 materialized. | Loud applause and laughter erupted after every shot. | | Between shots, a farmer walked up and asked, "How far can she go?" "We | can put a hole in that silo over there," said Mr. Heerde. "Oh, don't do | that," the farmer said. "That's my silo." |