2007: Tank Goodness

"Tank Goodness" was our first Pinewood Derby car. It took the prize for fastest car in Pack 140 for 2007.

Here's the video of the four heats it raced in, in DV format (68MB). This seems to open OK with QuickTime, which is free to download, but definitely doesn't open with Microsoft Media Player. The video takes about 10 minutes to download over broadband, mainly due to our server and uplink.

The still image below is from the fourth heat:


Alas, we didn't fare so well at the Viking District competition: we had better times than average, but not good enough for a trophy. Several of the cars had modified wheels, a length to which we hadn't gone this year. (Lighter wheels, and wheels that have a smaller contact area with the track, offer a significant speed advantage.) Here are the heats we were in.

Here's a brief summary of some of the construction techniques we used.

After our not-so-great showing in the District races, we tried some experiments in wheel modification. These turned out to be moot, as the District rules for 2008 prohibit wheel modification.