They heavy machine always loses, except when they rigged it for the BIA to win the fireboat race. In the field of model airplanes, lightness is also a great virtue. The lighter a plane, the better it flies.

-- Richard Manahan (rjcyclesk8@hotmail.com), January 18, 2001

Answers

Not if you are tring to mve stuff. Tractor Pulls or earthmovers heavy will always win.

-- Stephen A. Binion (Stephenbinion@hotmail.com), January 18, 2001.

The heavy machine doesn't always lose, and it's not because of "rigging".

Remember the bridging machine challenge? Brothers-In-Arms v. Mothers Of Invention? The MOI went for the light machine concept of a walk-bridge mounted on bicycles (a clever invention), while the BIA, going right to their Army roots, essentially built a scrapheap version of a Vickers mobile bridge. Mechanical power and fast driving won the day for the Brothers.

-- Patrick Degan (pcd001@my-freenet.com), January 19, 2001.

The heavier dragster would certainly have won the British competition if the transmission hadn't packed in, and the heavier vehicle only lost by .004 seconds in the American one. While both of these were victories for the "light" alternatives, I really don't think the margin of victory was enought to say that in the future the lighter choice would always win.

The heavier machine won in the following shows: amphibious vehicles, walking machines, demolition, windmill, bridging machine, and ballistic missiles (with its weights attached, the trebuchet weighed far more than the air cannon). I don't have a list of the Series 1 or Series 2 shows handy, so they are not on this list.

What you have given us is a truism of engineering: lighter is (usually) better. While there is no question that you are generally right in principle, saying "the heavy machine always loses" is just wrong.

-- Rick Tyler (rick@raf.com), January 19, 2001.

In the demolition show the lighter machine won. Damn. I hate making mistakes when I am chastising someone else for making a mistake.

Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea culpa.

The demolition machine did demonstrate one of my working rules for JYW/SC. But I'm going to post that somewhere else.

-- Rick "Partly Mistaken" Tyler (rick@raf.com), January 19, 2001.