Team Chucky’s Road to “The Chunk”
In 2001, my friends, brothers Adam and Marc Gussen, and I, drove in the early morning hours to go spend a day at the
Annual World Championship Punkin’ Chunkin’, in Sussex County (part of “Lower, Slower” aka Southern) Delaware. We had a blast. Seeing that we had brought a 2 foot model of a catapult and sensing our enthusiasm, a fellow spectator introduced us to several team members from one of the machines, who kindly got us some passes so we could see the catapults, cannons and other flinging machines close up. Driving home later that day, all three of us agreed that this was something that we could get involved in and hopefully even do well at. And with that discussion, Team Chucky was born.
In December of 2001, Adam and I built our first reasonably sized model of a torsion catapult, aka a Mangonel or Onager, which was the type of machine we felt had the best chances of doing well, in terms pure shooting distance. We learned a lot from the project, mostly what not to do, and spent that winter, spring and summer practicing with this new machine, dubbed “Chucky”.
The design is Roman, from about 2000 years ago, borrowing heavily from Greek siege machines, which tended to be more complex. Invading Roman armies would build many of these machines in situ, sometimes over 100. They would be used to throw incendiaries, rocks, and other objects over the walls of the city or fort they were attacking for days or weeks, until the people of the besieged town surrendered. Once the battle was over, the catapults would be left to decay where they stood, as wheels were likely considered an unnecessary feature and the machines were too cumbersome to transport easily anyway.
An Onager is fairly simple in concept but can be tricky to build in practice. It consists, mainly, of a frame, a rope bundle and a throwing arm. The throwing arm (TA) is placed in the center of the bundle. The bundle is then cranked forward, from both sides of the machine, to create twist, or torsion, which is energy in the system. Once enough twist has been introduced, the arm, which now wants to rotate forward badly, is winched down to the back of the machine and held in place by means of some sort of trigger system. There are sling ropes coming from the end of the TA, some of which are fastened to the arm, at least one of which is designed to release upon firing the catapult. This allows the projectile (kept in a pouch at the end of the sling) to leave the machine at a desirable angle. This angle can be adjusted by altering the sling length, changing the angle of the release pin (a finger, usually made of steel, at the very end of the TA, which the sling rope that releases from the arm is looped over, or changing the amount of twist in the rope bundle (changing the firepower). Chucky was chosen for an NFL Films shoot, sometime in 2002.
Although it was a valuable teaching tool for us, the original Chucky was not big enough to compete seriously with the big boys of the sport, and that’s what we wanted to do. So, in mid-September of 2002, I ordered a custom set of 10″ oak timbers from a local saw mill and we began to build “Chucky II”. It was much bigger than Chucky, and used steel to stiffen the frame. It is at this point that we found the hardware we needed was almost never to be found in the local Home Depot. We needed heavy duty stuff. Below is a picture of Chucky II during the early years, at our practice field in Western New Jersey, probably around 2003.
Chucky II was built in seven weeks, and test fired successfully in the wee morning hours of the night we planned to head down to the event! I remember, we heard the pumpkin smack into a tree somewhere in the dark rainy woods and decided we were ready. That first year, 2002, we were able to throw a pumpkin 465 feet and learned a lot from watching the successes and failures of the other machines. It was on.
Over the next 6 years, we improved Chucky II constantly, putting in unreasonable hours to make the machine perform better and better. In 2007 we threw a 10lb pumpkin over 3,000 feet in competition, but the throw was disqualified because a piece came off the pumpkin about 2,000 feet downrange. We returned the following year and threw 3091 feet, proving it wasn’t a fluke. Chucky is arguably the most powerful torsion catapult ever built.
We began to feel that improvements to Chucky II were providing diminishing returns and, the deep holes we liked to dig behind the machine as a place to lower the sling ropes had recently been outlawed during the off season after 2008. Marc Gussen, who is a fantastic siege engineer, had a new design, and in May of 2009, we began to build Chucky III.
Apparently, as it turns out, six months is not long enough to build a catapult designed to throw pumpkin over 1 mile. We decided to bring the machine to the “Chunk” even though it had never been successfully fired. We worked on it for 5 days and nights, in the cornfield in Southern Delaware and finally, got it to work on Sunday, the last day of the competition. The first time we successfully pulled the trigger, the machine threw almost 1,100 feet. We did not win our division, but felt we had proven that the concept of the new machine, a “compound torsion catapult” was sound. Here is a picture of Chucky III in 2009 at the Chunk.
This year, we again put six months into the project, making radical changes and improvements. We did get to test for a few weeks prior to the Chunk and felt confident we could do well. We even brought both Chucky II and Chucky III to the competition.
I won’t say how we made out, but you can watch the story unfold on the Science Channel and the Discovery Channel. A show about preparing for the event, called “The Road to Punkin Chunkin 2010″, will be broadcast tonight, Wednesday 11/24 on the Science Channel at 10pm and re-broadcast tomorrow, Thanksgiving, at 7p.m.. This second airing will be immediately followed by a 2 hour special, simulcast on both the Discovery and the Science Channels, about the 3 day event itself, which took place on Nov 5-7 in Delaware. The show, called “Punkin Chunkin 2010″, will be hosted by the Mythbusters, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman. Team Chucky will be heavily featured, from what I hear.
To give you a little bit of background information on the event, as it is a bit unconventional. It originated in 1986 at an annual barbecue, when attendees wrote down some basic rules and threw the pumpkins by hand. After a year or two, one clever guy brought a homemade machine and out-hurled all the “hand slingers”. After some commotion, it was grudgingly acknowledged that there was no rule preventing machine throwing, and an arms race ensued, culminating (so far) in the 25th Annual event featuring 110 machines of all sorts, Trebuchets, Centripetals, Air cannons and various slingshots and catapults of all types and descriptions. Spectator attendance has been growing consistently, with this year’s gate estimated at 100,000 people over the course of the 3 day event. “The Chunk” as it is known to regular attendees, always occurs on the first full weekend in November, at a huge farm in Sussex County, Delaware. Besides the competition, there is a carnival, shopping, live music all day, fireworks and more to keep the crowds busy. Throwing a pumpkin one mile (5280ft) has not yet been achieved by any machine or cannon at the Chunk, and remains the “Holy Grail” of the sport.
Over the past 9 years or so, many people have joined Team Chucky and we have gotten help from multiple sponsors, providing critical materials we need to keep moving forward. Our experiences at the event itself have always been extremely positive. We like to help out the other machines if they have problems, and socialize with the other teams, the crowds, and especially Team Chucky fans! After the first few years, we also began to win our division (Torsion). Our long term goals are to; a) beat all the air cannons and b) throw a pumpkin 1 mile. We do not mind if we achieve both goals simultaneously. Stay tuned tonight and tomorrow to see how we do this year!
