Jay: When Junkyard Wars began, the entire series was shot in the UK, on the UK set. One challenge involved firing pumpkins at small castles. Who better to be an expert in pumkpin cannons than Waddy Thompson. Glad to have you with us Waddy. Tell us, how were you contacted for the show?
Waddy: I had seen the first couple of seasons of the reworked UK " Scrapheap Challenge" shows that made it "across the pond," and I really thought that it would be a great experience to be among the few that have been qualified and also lucky enough to be picked to get on the show. I had no idea that I would be chosen as an "expert" for and episode of the show. My pals and I had started experimenting with launching big vegetables with air cannons, and had won a state "chunkin" as it is called, in North Carolina in Oct. 1998. "Chunkin" is a sport where teams compete to see who can launch vegetables, usually pumpkins the longest distance. I think the record is around 4900 ft now, over 3/4 of a mile (over a kilometer.) The NC event is human power only, the world championship event has a human power division, as well as several other classes of chunkers. For the NC event, we used a prototype for a machine that we intended to modify for the world championship punkin chunkin the following year. We didn't want to go to the world championship event unless we knew that we would at least make a strong showing. We had no idea that we would win the human powered division, the only time ever with a human powered air cannon.
Since my team had won the NC event, by building the only competing human powered air chunker to ever win anything, the news of that win had traveled with the N.C. teams to the world championship chunkin in Delaware. The Junkyard Wars staff checked in with the "WCPC" association about having two very different types of machines to compete by launching pumpkins on the show My name somehow got into the talk, and they needed an "expert" with experience in building human powered air cannons, so they "bodged" me into one.
I got a call or email from Andrew Burgess, with the show staff, and he asked me to send in a tape and application, which I did. Much to my surprise, while anchored out overnight with my friends in the Florida Keys waiting for the sport lobster season to begin the next morning, my cell phone rang with the call to ask me if I wanted to be on the show. I didn't get much sleep that night.
J: Your team used an air cannon and the other had a trebuchet. Are there any advantages using an air cannon over a trebuchet?
W: A trebuchet is limited by the amount of energy that can be transferred from a falling weight into the projectile, and the trajectory must be a high arc in order to get effective range. Trebuchets and catapults have a nasty reputation for firing straight up, and sometimes backward, which does not happen with a cannon. Another feature of the trebuchet is that it is very simple to build one that will work, but complex to build one that will work well without some "tuning" time to adjust the working parts.
On the positive side, with a ball shaped object and no wind, a trebuchet can have very repeatable shots, which is a good thing. A trebuchet spins the projectile with a backspin when it launches, which tends to stabilize the shot, much like spinning a bullet, only in the other plane.
An air cannon is able to store much more energy, and to transfer it to the projectile very rapidly, which results in much higher velocity for the cannon. This allows the cannon to shoot almost level, and to better put the energy into a target at a lower angle, with much greater range and destruction with each hit. If you have ever used a straw for a pea shooter, the effect is the same, but on a much larger scale. Your lungs can only produce a small amount of pressure compared to a mechanical compressor. The pumpkins for ammo that we had to use for the show were quite flat, so we were a bit leary about launching them at high velocity, as they tend to act a lot like frizbees when they get flat to the direction of travel. Overall, the cannon is a much better weapon for combat, which is why trebuchets, which were like the atomic bomb of their time, are no longer used for war.
J: It seems like a bizarre hobby, compared to stamp collecting and the like...how did you ever becom interested in "punkin chunkin"?
W: My pals and I started by dropping watermelons from airplanes, since we don't have pumpkins here in S. Florida very often. We would have a big BBQ party, and do this for entertainment. We had heard rumors about "punkin chunkin," but had never seen anything about it in the media until one day in 1996 a small article appeared in the local newspaper about it. It said that chunkers had launched a pumpkin 2600 ft. with an air cannon called "Aludium Q 36 Pumpkin Modulator" ( A huge air cannon, over 100 ft long, named for the planet destroying hand gun wielded by "Marvin Martin" in "Looney Tunes" tm cartoons.)
We started drawing on napkins at lunch, and collecting junk irrigation parts from the local farms where we work, and within a couple of weeks, the first prototype was ready to test. By 1998, we were ready to do battle in Raleigh NC, which we easily won, almost doubling the distance of all the other chunkers there. That eventually led to my name getting on the list as a "Junkyard Wars" "expert," in 1999, since very few people have experience with human powered pumpkin cannons.
J: Hopefuly you won't get sued...or hear an earth-shattering kaboom. Anyway, there was some jest made at your expense over mayonnaise. Can yo utell us about the whats and whys of mayo?
W: The things that you work with on the JYW set get your hands really nasty and greasy. I use "GoJo" tm hand cleaner every day as I work, which many stores stock here. It's a creme mix of mostly lanolin, a oily substance that works great for getting grease off hands. When we got to London, there were no auto parts stores near the motel where we were staying while filming the show, but there was a big grocery store across the road. I tried shampoo, dish soap, shaving cream and a couple of other things, but finally while shopping for fresh fruit I passed the mayo display, and the little light came on in my head. I found that it works almost as well as the hand cleaner, except that you need to wash with soap after the mayo, or you smell like salad. I carried it with us when we went to the site where the shoot out was to be held, not expecting that we would actually use it in the cannon.
The air cannon that we built for the show had a steel barrel, and I could see that with only human power, we would need all the help we could muster to get consistent good shots, so the idea to lube the barrel with mayo seemed logical. After Ron Toms and the "Young Guns" first two attempts to launch with their catapult failed because the sling would not slide off the hook on the arm to release the pumpkin, they slipped over and snitched the mayo to lube their machine as well. By the end of the day, they had dubbed me "Captain Mayo." My "on line" pals still call me that once in a while.
J: So, did you think the build and test days were fairly portrayed on TV? Did we see what really happened Captain Mayo?
W: My personal impression after watching the program on TV was that RDF had done a fair job in presenting a show with the challenge being the primary focus of the show, with an underlying theme of young energy against older experience and cunning. There was one major thing in the background which was not in the show that influenced the outcome. Near the end of the shootout day, we were under great pressure to not end in a stalemate or tie, as the whole crew had to be off the military base by 5 PM. We were told that we didn't have time for a shoot out, as that would involve setting up a second very expensive day of filming the shootout. That is what caused us to shoot for the "glory shot" at the end of the show. We could have easily tied the score with a level shot, but since the other team had scored contact shot with part of a pumpkin for 30 points, our only option was to try to dunk one for the 100 points if we were to win. By that time we had worked out our range using the same pressure and adjusting elevation for each shot, so we hoped that we could get the lucky shot. A strong gusting cross wind made our shot miss to one side, even though the range was right on target. We were launching at 22 psi, and getting about 400 ft elevation with each shot.
J: I always ask about the fair portrayal becuase they shoot so much stuff. I imagine it's a challenge to be fair to both sides. Do you have anythingelse in the works? TV related or otherwise?
W: Nothing on the radar about future TV for me at this time, but who knows what will happen. If I do get on TV, I hope that it isn't on the news about an accident, like landing a melon thru someone's car or something crazy. I guess that in the back of my mind, every time that my cell phone rings, I hope that it's one of the popular programs wanting me to do something for them.
I am currently working on building a machine to cut tops and seed pods off periwinkle plants, and collect them for a chemical used in a cancer medicine. The goal is to have it top at least an acre of plants per hour. So far it's like a big front cut lawn mowing machine jacked up about 4 ft off the ground and about 6' x 6' wheel pattern with front drive and rear steering. It looks a bit like a hungry spider. "Bubbaneering" and "Bodgeneering" is still alive and well on the farms here in the US. If I can't get it to do what it's designed to do, it will at least make a cool looking swamp buggy.
A personal project going on is to build a generator system for my son's cruising sail boat using a very small 2 cylinder diesel (433 cc) motor from a "Thermoking"tm truck refrig. unit to drive an alternator, an A/C generator, and possibly a pump for a reverse osmosis system.
J: I need to get serious for a moment. In 2004, "Just" Jay McKinney, captain of the Three Rusty Juveniles (whom I interviewed for this site), passed away. I only recently heard about it and was saddened. A real nice guy...do you have any thoughts you'd like to share?
W: In three words: I miss him. There are only a few people that you meet in your life that you just instantly connect with, and Jay was one for me. I knew within seconds that I had met someone that I would want to be my friend for life. I can easily see why the "Rusty Juveniles" had been pals since grade school. I am proud that he was my friend, and glad that we got to have some great times to remember. His passing in 2004 affected me greatly.
J: Thanks for your time in partaking in this interview. As I try to do, you have the last words Waddy.
W: First, thanks for asking me to share my experience with JYW on this website. I hope that I haven't bored everyone too much. I appreciate that someone takes the time and effort to host such an in depth and rich site about JYW history.
Being an "expert" for JYW was one of the most exciting things that has ever happened in my life. I had been in a country music band that had been on TV and radio once in a while for about 15 years, and knew what the pressure would be like to be on camera and be expected to "Make Show! " I had been seeing the show for a while, and felt that it would grow to be big, but had no idea that it would get so huge. I tried not to show on the build day that I was having a terrific headache, caused by torching a galvanized pipe fitting. I was also thrilled to actually meet "Broad Dog/ Bill Thompson" on the set, as he was sort of a hero to me, having being one of the first guys who started the "punkin chunkin" sport, and so was indirectly connected with my opportunity to go to London and be on JYW.
Build day was Friday, and we ran out of oxygen for the big torch set about 1/2 way thru the day after the suppliers were closed. Lucky for us, I had requested a small set of tanks for the tool kit, just in case we had to go out of the build area and cut parts off something in the yard. It lasted just exactly long enough to finish the build. Without it we would have been sunk.
Like Ron Toms said, I feel that they missed an opportunity by not putting the food fight over the divider between the build bays into the finished show, since the show was about food launchers.
The RDF TV staff and everyone connected with the show was very good to us, both on a professional and personal level. My thanks to all of you who see this.