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| Anoraks
Scrapheap Diary |
| "Power Rowers" |
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| Arriving later than everyone else at the
hotel gave me only just enough time to meet the other team, Paul, Dennis
and Tricket formed “Team Maxiumus”, a group of fabricators from Bath, I
also managed to meet our expert, Rob Austin, an engineer from Oxford. |
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Team
Anorak, spot the clean face ! |
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| The rest of team Anorak had, rather worryingly,
been in the bar all afternoon and were on good form. Unfortunately Geoff
our captain could not make it this time so we have enlisted the help of
Andy Cross who is going to be a scavenger with Lyndon leaving me to assume
the role of temporary captain. |
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| Build
Day |
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| None of team Anorak are made for early
morning starts and this was no exception, we piled onto to the bus with
little enthusiasm for the day ahead. A decent onsite breakfast made an attempt
at pepping us up ready for the build. |
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Robert and Lisa made their announcement
which as usual was packed full of alliteration.
After a translation we discussed our build, an engine powered rowing boat
!! |
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| Rob Austin, our expert, had put a lot
of thought into the mechanism involved in powering the oars and by doing
so had eliminated most of the trial and error approach to the design. |
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|
Making
a cunning plan |
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| Andy and Lyndon set off to scavenge and
had soon found most of the materials we needed to complete the build including
the motive power behind our creation which was to be a Morris Minor. |
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| The major stumbling block was we had no
hull. Rob had thought that an old oil tank would be an ideal starting point
but there were none on the heap. |
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| Coming in a not even remotely close second
was the chassis from some sort of conveyor system. This had exactly the
right dimensions but was made from 5mm steel and was more hole than hull. |
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What
are we going to do with this ? |
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| With
most of the parts to hand we set about welding grinding and cutting in the
uncharacteristically hot May weather. |
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| A
quick look next door showed that Maximus had found themselves a rather large
boat as their starting point for their build, which put them way ahead in
build time as we had to build a hull from scratch. |
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| Rob
was getting to grips with the finer points of his design as the rest of
us worked on the hull. Andy was proving to be a valuable addition to the
team and as the time ticked by we made surprising progress. |
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| When
Robert called time we had only a couple of water proofing issues to be addressed
in "tinkering time". |
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|
Talking
with Robert about our cunning plan. |
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| We
were all extremely tired and glad to retire to the hotel and get some rest
before the test day. |
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| Test
Day |
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| The
quiet tranquility of the nature reserve was shattered by the Scrapheap teams
arriving with their creations. Tinkering time started with us trying to
get the boat into the lake. Then as soon as we got it in we were trying
to get it out to stop it from sinking! |
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Will
it float ? |
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| The
holes in the hull were welded up and a few voids filled with that wonderful
expanding foam. It was very satisfying for us all to find that once watertight
it floated exactly at the calculated level……well almost. |
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| Winning
the toss I decided to go first. Starting the engine and engaging drive was
a big step and showed up a few flaws with build. But it was time to go. |
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It
worked! It was a bumpy ride with all four of us having our own jobs to
do.
All I heard was Lyndon shouting that we had lost an oar. Then a few bangs
and we lost some more. |
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| With
half our vital parts on the bottom of the lake it was a dejected team that
was towed back to the start. |
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Can
you see what’s missing ? |
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| The
divers were dispatched to recover the oars and we set about beefing up our
now infamous rollocks. Lots of welding later we were ready for another go |
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This time it held together. It seemed to take an age to complete the course
and we had to stop from time to time to give the engine chance to clear
itself. Crossing the finish line with a cheer from the crew we all were
convinced that Maximus would complete the test in half the time. |
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And
the winner is………….. |
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| We were very wrong! Team Anorak return
with Captain Geoff for the semi finals. |
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| Marc
(Temporary captain) |
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