Yankee Siege Trebuchet

This morning, Sunday 15 October 2006, I received an email from the NEMES Yahoo mail list sent out  by Dick Boucher.  Dick is the current president of NEMES and was letting members know about his visit to Greenfield NH.  The text which follows is the content of Dick's email:

Did you ever see an 8-10 pound pumpkin whirled through the air a distance of 2000 feet going fast enough that it whistles?

The Yankee Farmer in Greenfield NH is giving demonstrations of their record holding (1702 feet) Trebuchet "Yankee Siege" today, Sunday October 15 and next Saturday and Sunday, 21st 22nd at their farm stand in Greenfield NH. Take NH Rt 101A west out of Nashua to NH 101 west. Follow that road to Wilton NH and find route 31 north. Follow 31 north about 6
miles to the farm stand.

The machine stands 56 feet to the tip of the arm and has a counter weight that can be loaded with 20,000 pounds of railroad track. The total machine weighs in at 52,000 pounds. They do the demonstrations every 30 minutes from 1:00 to 5:00 PM. Bea and I got to see six shots yesterday.  The demonstrations are part of the fine tuning in preparation for the
"Pumpkin Chunking" championships in Delaware.

These fellows have a lot of fun with welding and cutting torches and it is interesting to see what they have around the site.

The Trebuchet will be disassembled and carted to Delaware the last weekend of the month.

WWW.YankeeSiege. com

Dick Boucher

I would have jumped in the car and headed up to NH but was waiting for my son to visit.  He never showed and the day was lost.  Darn!

At five PM I received and email from Bill Brackett with pictures attached.  He and his wife Sue had gone to see the machine and he has sent along the following pictures and comments.  Thank you Bill!!!

Errol;

 Sue and I went to see the Yankee Siege trebuchet today (sun) and it was awesome.   To give you an idea of how big this thing is I took a picture 758 of Sue 5’-3”  standing next to it.  763 is start of ascent to attach the down haul rope is cock the machine.  765 and 766 show untangling the sling and attaching the down haul rope,

 More in next mail

 Bill                       

   758     Sue Brackett next to the Yankee Siege machine 

  756     Setting the sling

  757  Loading the pumpkin

  759  Gears that turn the drum for the down haul rope.  The rope is laying on the ground in this picture    

  760    The arm latch is on the right and has a long rope attached to it,  the rope is pulled to release the arm.

  763  Ascending the boom to attach the haul down rope

  765        766    Untangling the sling and attaching the haul down rope

  767  Arm is part way down

  769   Almost set

   770  The arm is set and the safety changes in place

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