It seems like - except for the instability (flipping over) of the displacement vessel, it was actually a better functioning machine than the pontoon boat (it didn't leak, and as a team member said, it still floated even after flipping). The same goes for the air cannon last week. It was a more stable structure than the trebuchet IMO.

I guess that's another little element that makes the show so good - hard work and a little luck (good or bad) can make a huge difference in the outcome...

-- PJ (pjd711@yahoo.com), January 11, 2001

Answers

It seems that this show has two important parts. Building a good machine, and then the human element of actually driving these things. Lot's of variables out on the race courses. Remember the tortoise and the hare.

-- John Gap (mindthegap64@hotmail.com), January 11, 2001.

Seems to me that if they had gotten the "other side" of the race course, that is, that they had turned with the pontoon on the "inside" of the turn, they would have won easily... they were really flying till they flipped!

-- Rhonda (mxrs@zianet.com), January 11, 2001.

The race>>>> Before the boat race, I told Ken, (our boat pilot) not to follow the triangle shaped course. Swing wide and make a giant circle out of the course instead of trying to cut the corner sharp. I had a feeling that the Metal Medics might flip if they turned too sharp. The outrigger that they used was made out of heavy PVC pipe and probably couldn't have held up a passenger without submerging below the water line. They were worried that the rotation of the engine would cause them to flip on the turn as they let off the gas. Hats off to that team. We've become great freinds. As an extra bonus we got to see Alex do a great rendition of Elvis at a pub in Hammersmith that we took over that evening.... I'll never forget that party with the production crew and the Metal medics!

-- Duane Flatmo, Team Art Attack (flatmo@humboldt1.com), January 11, 2001.

Again I'd like to say that their castaways should have been seated on their pontoon. It would've held them up; they were practically standing on it to get on the boat and it had no problem supporting his weight!

-- Tyson Fortowsky (biker_tyboy@hotmail.com), January 11, 2001.

Something else with respect to John Gap's response - the human element. It was great to hear how much fun Duane and the rest of the competitors had after the competition. Part of what makes this show so great is that there's no stupid big money pot (or if there is, it's not flashed around) and the people are in it for the love of getting greasy and sweaty and stretching their minds!!!

I only hope that I get to see ALL of the previous episodes (I only started watching during the wall demolishing show) - and oh yeah, George is beginning to grow on me - I think he'll be just fine!

-- PJ (pjd711@yahoo.com), January 11, 2001.

The displacement vessle did hav a few flaws (and the should have fixed i was rooting for them!) for one they NEEDED a second outrigger to prevent the roll, if they were going to use one (which they did) they should have used a fin and then a makeshift dive plane to keep the outrigger in the water, but besides that, they should have one

-- Robert (Robo_man80@hotmail.com), January 11, 2001.

The displacement boat was theoreticaly a very sea worthy vessel. It had good power & the right prop for the job. Where they made their mistake was not keeping their weight inbetween the two pontoons. They moved to the outside of the barrels away from their outrigger causing it to flip. If they had used a bit of common sence they would have won hands down.

-- Rick Lawrence (Hoodoo2@povn.com), January 11, 2001.

PJ makes a good point!...part of the purity of this show is that the competetion is just that.....competetors working to win BRAGGING RIGHTS! ..take the greed portion out of it , and your beginning to take television production back to its roots! when shows were clean in content and mind....and competetion was just for the fun of it....congrats JYW producers....i think youve got a great formula in this show! from one of your neighbors "over the big pond"

-- tim (milehiharley@hotmail.com), January 11, 2001.

LUCK is a major factor in the outcome of every episode of the show.

JustJay

-- JustJay-Captain-Three Rusty Juveniles (justjay@neo.rr.com), January 12, 2001.

Luck is luck. But the problem I have with the recent episodes (especially the punkin chunkin) is that the design goals are clear as mud! Pumpkin throwing elsewhere is for distance; here it was for accuracy (at short range). Racing boats are typically for speed; here it was for maneuverability. The fire boats were much less about dousing fires than hull racing!

C'mon, Cathy. Tell the teams up front what the race will be like so they can make intelligent design decisions.

-- Dennis Forcier (dennis.forcier@transcore.com), January 12, 2001.

Come on that's the beauty of the show. Bodge something together and be smart enough to use what u built.

-- Stephen A. Binion (Stephenbinion@hotmail.com), January 12, 2001.

...Of course, what surprised me was that when the seats appeared on the barrel boat, nobody made the obvious crack about using the seat cushion as a floatation device....

-- Dave Althoff, Jr. (dalthoff@capital.edu), January 12, 2001.

Dave that was a good one the seats for life perservers! hahaha. but to bring up the mater on seats they should have been more to the ? right side? to provide better balance

-- Robert (robo_man80@hotmail.com), January 12, 2001.

Ok, I wasn't there...

However, from my view, the major problem with the Metal Medic's torpedo boat was a high center of gravity...the engine was set high and the people were sitting high. When the COG was shifted just a little bit, it became unbalanced. Think of a stick with two balls on it and an axis in the middle; the top one is heavy, the bottom is light. Objects like this will tend to rotate so the heavier ball is on the bottom.

Anyway - this wasn't so much bad luck or bad driving as it was just being spanked by the laws of physics. With a 3" freeboard, adding ballast wasn't an option. They had to have the second pontoon. Hindsight is 20-20....

Brian

-- Brian (bflynn@nc.rr.com), February 05, 2001.

Back to the original question about the air cannon and "punkin chunkin"; The scoring was set up so that a dunk shot would be worth more than three totally destroying side wall shots (100 pts. per dunk vs 30 pts. for each side shot.) The pumpkins were weighed to be of equal weight, and the trebuchet was lined up and working well, with one shot long, one short, and so, with our last shot we were forced to go for the glory shot. Looking back we would likely have done it differently, but it turned out to be a great contest anyway. We all had a big time building and playing with the machines. A lot of the excitment of the contest portion of each show is that the underdog machine sometimes wins, just like in the real world.

-- Waddy Thompson (cthomp3851@aol.com), February 05, 2001.