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Potato Bazookas
Zog The Undeniable writes "The latest craze in Germany is "Kartoffelkanone" or potato bazookas. These use hairspray ignited by a spark to fire potatoes at colossal speeds. The authorities are not amused." Everyone needs a hobby I guess.
Bet you can't shoot just one!
g
We made one in our Physics class in high school. I'm due to go to my 10 year high school reunion in a little more than a year.
The germans JUST NOW discovered potato guns? Damn, get with the program people!
Just wait until they figure that if you fill a tin can with cement you can put a hole through a car, not just a big dent in the side.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
That doesn't make them any less fun, though. For Xmas I got Backyard Ballistics which documents how to create a potato gun as well as many other loud and violent ballistic weaponry for children of all ages. Highly recommended.
Potato's as weapons. You could supply an army and feed them at the same time. Kill two birds with one stone.
About 20 years ago, as a kid in Denver, we used to shoot tennis balls out of guns made from soda cans and fuled with ligher fluid. At least we did until I had the great idea to soak the ball with lighter fluid before we fired it. The first few times were great, but soon one of our flaming balls set the neighbor's yard on fire.
"We have nothing in common, your attitude annoys me, and your political views are appalling."
I'm sort of surprised to see this posted here, as potato cannon are made by almost every young boy when growing up. Especially engineery types who end up reading Slashdot, I'd think.
Funny also to see the authorities upset about it. In the US, our relative comfort with weapons of all sorts probably allows us to more easily accept that "boys will be boys."
While the danger of such a device is frightening, I cannot but believe that in the right hands, a potato cannon could be used as a weapon for good.
Boromir, son of Faramir, King of Gondor and Minas Tirith
A guy who worked at home depot actually helped my friends create a potato gun.. Needless to say the advice he gave was great.
For anyone interested in doing this too, building instructions can be found here
giel.y contains 2 shift/reduce conflicts
I had one in high school. WE used to steal the electronic ignighters off of our neighbor's bar-b-que grills to create the spark. After testing every product, we found that starting fluid (basically ether) gave the best launches. The next best is that aqua net hair spray crap that everyone's grandma uses to make their helmet hair. Once, we even made a double-barreled one, which actually worked pretty well (seperate chambers and ignighters). I wish i still had pictures!
today is spelling optional day.
Not like no one else has done this on the net. Here are detailed instructions (at least enough to build) if you are so inclined... http://blizzard.rwic.und.edu/~nordlie/cannon/
Old, but very sweet!
GotSpud?
Tony's page
Spudweizer
Simple Spudgun
My mom would never let me build one when I lived at home, so now's my chance. AND, I'll be prosecuted as an adult, and possibly an 'American Terrorist'
the story calling it "craze" is somewhat overrated. At every time in the last 50 years, kids have built something that goes boom. I think that is the same in every other country.
I live here and i haven't seen or heard of a single "Kartoffelkanone" prior to the article and the photos of the SPIEGEL magazine.
At least it's an interesting method of delivering mashed potatoes.
Yours, Martin
It just so happens I had this same hobby a few years back. Except we used propane as the fuel and golf balls as the projectiles. Tiger Woods beware! It was truly amazing to see a golf ball launched several hundred yards, almost out of sight. For those interested, www.spudtech.com has a load of information on these fun toys.
Scott
My friends and I built a potato canon and regularly fired it over the skies over Tucson. It was fun to a potato hang in the air for up to 10 seconds at a time, and a bit of basic math estimated it to travel over 1/3 a mile. Beware though that the potato emerges at about 100 miles per hour (but slows down alomost immediately due to air resistance).
We stopped fiting it after we stuck a 1/4 inch thick board of plywood about 3 feet in front of the canon and fired away.
Damned if that potato didn't punch a perfect 4 inch hole through that board. As the potato emerged on the far side though, it almost completely stripped off the last ply layer from the board.
We gained a new respect for tuber-based weaponry that day....
Dr Fish
Reminds me of the time a couple of Iowa State students got out of trouble for having a spud gun by claiming it was an internal combustion engine. When the officer asked where the piston was, they replied "About 5 blocks that a way.."
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
My favorite part of the article:
German police fear that the youths will turn to more lethal ammunition than potatoes. Tests have shown that such a bazooka firing an empty film canister filled with sand and the cardboard centres of toilet rolls filled with cement could penetrate brickwork.
I can just picture these "experts" in a lab doing "testing".
It probably went something like "Whoa, that was way cool, lets see what else we can use. Hey, if we use something really heavy it'll be just like those cannons on junkyard wars!"
Those guys must have a cool job.
"...At the end of the day"..."when everyone goes home, you're stuck with yourself." RIP Layne Staley
I love that... "hey kids, those potato gun things are WAY too dangerous for you! Don't try it, but THESE things are WAY more destructive!"
Ya gotta wonder.
$0.02 (CDN)
Hairspray is for wimps...real men use compressed air. Compressed air is much more powerful, you don't have the legal ramifications of using an explosive, and it's cheaper than hairspray. It takes a little more work to get it air-tight, and you have to buy a thicker PVC pipe, but the results are worth the extra effort.
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
I am currently growing a potato in my basement, and am documenting it online at
:)
http://www.projectpotato.com
when I was a kid. We took a used model rocket motor and duct-taped it to the top of a wooden gun, with the nozzle to the rear. We'd put a firecracker in the motor casing, with the fuse sticking back through the nozzle. We were fortunate enough to have an olive tree in our yard...fresh olives are about as hard as avacados. We put an olive down the tube, in front of the firecracker, and light the fuse. It could cause welts at 15 yards. Later improvements included a mounted lighter for ignition. Not one eye was put out that summer.
Evil is the money of root.
Check out this story we ran over on Sci-Fi Today which included some relevant links. You can get Sci-Fi Today daily headlines on your Slashdot home page by clicking here and putting a checkmark in the Sci-Fi Today box. Or heck, just join us as a member and help us build a science-oriented discussion community!
The most "impressive" one was a 6ft long black barreled cannon known as "black beauty". It had an ignition switch from a grill, eliminating more clumsy homemade solutions for ignition and could put a potato through a wooden fence from about 20 yards. It could fire them @150 yards on a good day. It was tremendously dangerous, with a 3 foot flame shooting out of the barrel each time you fired it. The heat and pressure on the piping caused it to crack and need replacement, a function often ignored by my more idiotic friends. Here in texas some younger kids at my church got caught firing one in a golf course not too long ago and recieved some fines from the local police. These things are not safe...
My last memory of that cannon involved modification to shoot sprays of water. Ignition, upon filling the barrel with water after placing a "separator" in the piping caused a huge spray of water and steam to eject in every direction. Took the bark right off of trees...
STUPID
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
I went back to my parents house to build one (and test fire, since the apartment complex I was living in presented an environment a little too target-rich). After the PVC cement dried and I completed some test firing with a rag stuffed into the barrel, I managed to put a potato into the air, across the street, over the house across the street and smack into a humongous water tower that has loomed over my childhood memories for 20 years.
Talk about a thrill. It was early evening, and a little dark, so you could see the long tongue of orange flaming Aqua-net.
First a click (of the grill igniter in the trigger)...then a sort of "thomp" sound...then a long silence...then a huge, resounding GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG sound.
It was awesome. A childhood dream come true.
I need to build another.
So, if you put a bunch of these tubes together in a sphere with the barrels all pointed inwards and use Estes rocket motor ignitors so they all go off at the same time can you cause the oranges to fuse?
OJ, with lots of pulp!
Tisha Hayes
We have done this for physics often... no explosives or flammables involved. (I know... where's the fun then :} )
:}
:}
All you need is a length of pipe that just barely fits a pingpong (table tennis whatever) ball through it. Fit a connector into one end of it that can hook to a vacuum pump.
Ok.. now here is the operation.
*WARNING do not have anything in line with EITHER end of this device!!! It is VERY unlikely but either end can give way and it fire either direction!*
Place the pingpong ball in the pipe. Place a single piece of plastic packing tape over each end. (Clear or brown... not filament!)
Use your pump and lower the pressure as far as you can. (You will have to expirement to make sure you can get it that low without imploding the tape on the ends)
When ready to fire.. put end with fitting slightly lower. Wait for pingpong ball to settle at that end of the tube. Aim. Using something sharp or pointed pierce the tape on that end of the pipe.
Bye-bye pingpong ball
Basically the inrush of air propels the ball through the tube and straight through the tape on the other end. We have clocked these pingpong balls in excess of 150mph
Please only do this under carefully controlled circumstances... It makes a great science expirement and is relatively safe. But as always be careful, wear protection and DON'T BE STUPID.
BTW You can pick up used vacuum pumps for cheap on Ebay... cheaper than 20 or 30 cans of hairspray so...
Telcos have alot of dark fibre in the States. Most people assume that's optical fibre...but it's actually moral fibre.
Since potatoes are a munition, all potato sales must be strictly regulated. Henceforth, no potato shall be sold to the public unless it has been chipped, julienned or mashed at an approved and licensed facility so as to render it harmless.
In a crazy incident, American soldiers came under heavy potato fire while during a training mission in the Middle East. The American soldiers managed to escape unharmed, except for one who was turned into a human mashed potato. The attackers were captured and taken to Guantanomo Bay, Cuba, where they are being held indefinitely and treated poorly. After ten hours of being asked where the odd weapons came from, one Arab replied, "We got the guns from Germany, but Habeeb the potato farmer in Idaho supplied the ammunition!"
And also in related news, Iraq has begun importing more and more potatos, under the cover of "food for humanitarian aid."
Great... just what we need. Instead of firing SCUDS, Iraq will just fire SPUDS at us. :)
Ah am not a crook! (\(-__-)/)
www.kartoffelkanone-forum.de
bius sig file. This is a moebius sig file. This is a moe
Here's a letter from the ATF regarding the legality of the "spud gun". Note the date - September 12, 1995.
Definitely old news...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
I built one years ago, and I must say that they're a blast. Make the barrel from 1-1/4" Schedule 40, as it's easier to find potatoes that'll fit snug. If you build a breech-loader with a threaded cleanout plug, make sure to keep the threads clean. Burnt hairspray and potato juice gets amazingly sticky.
...
I took the Mark-1 Potato Gun up to a local SCCA event for the weekend. Saturday evening we found an open spot and used a large billboard for target practice. The men all pounced on the opportunity to fire the thing, but the ladies were a bit hesitant. Given a little coaxing, they came around nicely (guys - this is your chance to put your arm around her and "help". Don't pass on the opportunity.) In the end, the ladies were more enthusiastic than the guys. That was okay by me.
Incidentally, go read the ingredients on a can of hairspray. SD Alcohol 40, Propane, Isobutane, and other combustibles usually top the list. Makes nice propellant. At sunset, you'll get a really nice light-blue alcohol muzzle flash coming out the end.
Ensuring peace through superior firepower
"We will not tolerate this kind of terrorism! While we continue to hunt down the perpetrators, we are looking into a variety of defense options including but not limted to:
The Spud Missle Defense System.
The Total Tuber Alert Network.
The PATRIOT Act 2 or Potato Anti Threat Response Initiative On Terrorism.
Collectively these efforts will be part of Operation Potato Sack.
If you suspect terrorist activity, which could range from unusually large potato purchases to bioweapon threats like Suspicious Potato Salad, please alert the authorities immediately.
In light of this new information we are raising the National Alert Level to Golden Brown "
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Now if only RMS had seen us launching little penguins... he would have made us call it a GNU/Gun.
Lasers Controlled Games!
It sounds like these have gone from "geek hobby" to "mainstream danger"
Good thing most of these kids are probably too stupid to make a pneumatic spudgun. Far safer for the operator, but FAR more dangerous for people at the wrong end of the cannon. (Pneumatic spudguns use a constant pressure for most of the firing cycle, rather than the quick spike of pressure from combustion. As a result, pneumatics can pack a LOT more power into a gun while stressing the components less.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Nay, it is the fact that they are German boys that makes this a newsworthy story.
In the late 80s, Ronald Reagan issued a challenge to then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. During his famous speech in Berlin, he said:
Shortly therafter, the Berlin wall was no more, paving the way for German unification.
People with no sense of history thought this to be a good thing, but myself, I saw these occurrances for their true nature. A unified Germany can mean only one thing... It's only a matter of time before massive, well equipped, well trained German armies are marching all over Europe.
Others deny this conclusion, and some have actually made statements to the effect of:
Be wary, my Slashdotting friends. It's only a matter of time before the people of Germany grow restless, pretending to be friends with the rest of their European neighbors. Already, German youth have turned their attentions to the design and manufacure of inexpensive, abundant, starch weapons.
Heed my warning... It's only a matter of time...
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
When I was at Penn State, I remember reading a newspaper story about the prestigous Atherton Hotel. Apparently it had been under mortar fire from a potato gun for several weeks straight! I wish I had known who did it. I think the idea of urban potato warfare in State College would have been a blast =)
THis looks like the perfect gift for my neice. Im trying to be a bad influence on her.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Seems like a lot of people on here are reminiscing about their childhood so here goes: Coming from a farming village there were many things to play with on the farms in my area. One of the coolest things was a crow-scarer. It was a tube about 1.5 meters long that was connected at a 45 degree angle to its frame and storage box. Every 10 minutes the pressure would build up inside the tube and the propane gas would be released making a loud bang, scaring the crows. I don't think that the gas was ignited though. We stuffed all manner of things down the tube; turnips, cow pats, people's socks and shoes, gravel. Nothing really worked; it all got jammed about halfway down... until we found some empty paint tins. Putting these over the end of the tube kept the pressure in for longer, and boy would they fly. Using people's bikes as target practice was great fun The only problem was that we couldn't adjust the timing so waiting 10 minutes for each bang got boring after a while.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
I guess it's different over in the US.
Don't you guys over there in the States have a constitutional right to keep and bear potatoes?
And I seem to recall Charlton Heston saying that "Potatoes don't kill people, people kill people" (only sometimes with potatoes). And "A society with potatoes is a polite society. Pass the fries, please."
Or something like that, anyway.
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
Building the things was pretty simple -- all you need is a strong tube, a projectile, propellant, and an ignition system. As others in this thread have mentioned, my friends' ignition of choice was the ignitor from old BBG grills. This worked fairly well -- you actually get a trigger to work with -- but they always seemed to break down after a while, so the design had to be built such that you could swap out the ignitition every now and then.
That is how Jeff burned his damn face off :-)
See, like I say, everyone would just sit around in their dorm, building these guns and preparing their next shots. Jeff was about to shoot his when, wouldn't you know it, the ignition jammed. Bummer. So as usual, he unscrewed the back to get at the ignition to check on it. Unwisely, this involved taking a look into the ignition chamber to see -- well, the back end of a potato & some invisible ether.
Did I mention that? I guess not -- their propellant of choice was ether. I have no idea where they got the stuff, but damn it was good for making a nice little controlled explosion. Or in this case, uncontrolled explosion.
So anyway, there Jeff was staring into the back end of the gun, when somehow he bumped the trigger.
And it went off.
And the ether exploded.
Remember how when you were a little kid, and you liked playing with the garden hose in the summer, but your evil older brother (that would be me :-) would hide around the corner pinching off the flow, and you'd get confused and look into the hose trying to find the water -- and just at that very moment that bastard of an older brother would uncrimp the hose and blast you in the face?
This was a lot like that, but with fire instead of water.
So anyway, there Jeff sits, with a ball of fire around his head, and well you get the idea. I wasn't actually there when this happened -- I was back at my dorm, probably cowering under the bed from my psycho buddies (or reading email more likely...). But Jeff was my roommate and, about five minutes after the incident, Jeff comes staggering back to the room. He has no eyebrows -- just white molten lumps where they used to be. He has no eyelashes. Or rather, he does have some remnants of eyelashes, but they are half an inch long each and there is is a six inch line across the front of his hairless brow. And exactly in the middle of his (now apparently sunburned) forehead is a bright red circle -- as if someone had thrown a tennis ball, dripping with paint, really hard at the middle of his forehead.
Jeff took a little nap at that point. He woke up a day or two later, ordered some pizza, ate, and went back to sleep. He slept for most of the next several days, it took a couple of weeks for the tennis ball spot to fade away, and it took a month or more for the hair to grow back. He wore a hat a lot those days, IIRC :-)
So, let this be a lesson to you spud projectionists -- the back end of the gun is just as dangerous as the front!
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Are the police really conducting tests to determine how deadly these things can be, or how much fun?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Down in Dunedin FL, there is a local museum dedicated to Police and the Military. http://www.naslemm.com On display is a spud gun manufactured by the engineering department of Smith & Wesson over 20 years ago. Big, Blue and with the S&W Logo, a bit more impressive then the tennis ball cannons, I used to build back in the 70's.
Me and some friends built a few of these back in high school. We even had a takedown model that screwed apart, and when assembled, measured over 6 feet long. Hairspray is for wussies though, try ether (starting fluid). I put an apple through a sheet of 1/2" plywood with ether. It kicks like a 20 gauge shotgun, and is just as loud.
I think it's spudtech.com that has an excel spreadsheet for calculating speeds and stuff for particular setups. The setup I had came out to 380mph muzzle velocity. Using that spreadsheet, I came up with a new design that hit's 720mph, over the speed of sound. Someday when I get bored, I'm going to try to accelerate an apple past the speed of sound. It will probably desintegrate before it even leaves the barrel, but it will scare my neighbors, and that's all I really want to do.
BTW, apples make better ammo. The fit better in the barrel, and if you can find a tree, they are free.
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Imagine Dirty Harry working in a fast food restaurant...
"You want fries with that?"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I spent more than one evening on the run-up to Guy Fawkes Night (Nov 5th) sitting in an attic, crushing match-heads between two 10p pieces (a bit larger than a quarter, I think), nerves stretched by the imminent possibility of a flare-up. Between four of five of us, we collected the crushed heads of about 4,000 matches.
On the big night, we rammed a 6 foot steel pipe about two feet into the ground, rammed paper into it until the paper reached ground level, then poured in the match-heads, jammed a potato in the top of the pipe, and lit a fire around the base.
Then we just got on with the business of lighting a proper bonfire, making punch, roasting potatoes, setting off fireworks, and drinking. Every time anyone walked past the pipe, they would glance nervously at it. A couple of hours later, there was a tremendous thundering BOOM, and the potato went up into the stratosphere.
How come Palestinians didn't discover this yet? They are in dire need of cheap weapons!
Oh well, probably there is no hairspray in a place where all women wear their hair covered.
Strength, balance, courage and reason. If you know what's this about, contact me!
We played with these a lot as kids. Aqua-Net + potato + sober people, no problem. Firing them with ether is bad [weakens the PVC cement after a few firings and gun explodes], other non-squishy projectiles are bad [jam in the barrel and gun explodes], and impaired people of course don't mix well with firearms.
Get with the times PVC pipe connected with pvc cement removes the chances of flying metal shards Also: Deisel engine starter contains 90% ether which will over double the range of a hairspray fueled gun Lastly: a Grill ignitor works far better than a battery Silly Germans
in high school. Took a bunch of the smaller coffee cans and cut half moons in the bottom. I then duct taped about 5 togather alternating the half moons. Last I punched a nail hole in the bottom can. You poor about a half cup of alcohol in the top and shake the whole thing until all the surface area is covered then give it a minute so that the alcohol can evaoporate. Stick something in the top ( plastic gatorade bottles worked well ) and strike a match near the nail hole. It was very very loud and powerfull. The last time i ever used it I set everything up like I'd done a hundred times before but when I put the match next to the nail hole the whole thing went off like bomb ( I think it was a taping failure)! The detonation was so loud and violent that I was completely disoriented for about 30 seconds. Then the realization that I prolly have invisible burning alcohol all over me and I couldn't feel my hands brought me back to reality. A check for hands/fingers and burning sensations soon followed. I haven't touched it since ( about 8 years ago ).
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
HA! I love all the references to people losing eyes! It sounds somebody's mom wrote that story.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
How about launching a 10lb pumpkin 4000 feet? http://www.cannon-mania.com/pumpkin_chunkin.htm
Since, to my knowledge (IANAL), in the state of Texas these things are banned because they can be considered a firearm (some lame excuse of combustible material). So my brother built one using a sealed chamber with a ball valve. He uses a bike's tire pump to pressurize it, and even has a gauge built into it. The cool thing about this on, you can load anything including water. At about 70 psi, it could shoot a ping pong ball (filled with water) about 100-125 yards.
Germany Reunited! Coming to a France near you!
so Germany ir reunited, and there is talk of arming Japan. And Mitsubishi has Zero down financing. Why am I the only one that see's a problem here?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Every year I venture down to the hills of Appalachia in southern Ohio for my brother-in-law's annual summer party (a.k.a. Redneck Fest). Invariably the one legged chicken from across the road ventures out to taunt the drunken fool with potato gun. I, er uh, we really hate that chicken. Do you know how hard it is shoot a one legged chicken with a potato gun when you're drunk off your ass?
Yup...and they had waterproof fuses. They used to sell them as normal fireworks. Last box of them I saw was back in HS in about 1980. We got a box of them, took them to our neighborhood pool during the winter, tied them to rocks, lit them and dropped them in...like depth chargers. Found out that summer we had cracked the bottom of the pool. But, the best thing to do with them in school, was to find someone who was sitting on the can in the bathroom on one of the lower floors...run upstairs, light an M-80, and flush it...thing would blow up, and shoot water out of the john's down below...hehehe...talk about a wet suprise..hehehe. Had to quit that when the pipes at Central High suddenly got blow out a few times....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Bear in mind that in some places, I think California and Britain, laws have been considered to ban spud guns. You can make a law to ban anything, but practice show here that it is *easy* to make a gun out of whatever is available.
Yet though it is easy and a lot of us here have made them, no one here shot anyone and killed them with it. No laws or punishment is necessary because there is already a law against killing someone. You only have to punish those who break the laws of nature, killing or maiming someone and the destruction of their property.
Likewise, we don't need any gun laws at all. We already have one in the US called the 2nd amendment, plus the various laws based on the 'natural law' above.
Like spud guns, which can indeed kill and maim, guns which shoot lead bullets (and spud technology could...) can easily be made in a workshop, and sophisticated guns can be made in a machine shop. It is so easy to do, that is cannot in reality, be controlled. Nor is is a bad thing to avoid controlling it. We just have to enforce the 'natural law'. And punish the perpetrator, not the inanimate object.
Spud Guns Do Not Kill.
Nor does a Smith and Wesson.
The bad guy kills.
. . .the Germans out of socialism and restore their war loving pride.
Look out, France.
More precisely, this article: Durchschlagende Wucht.
;-)
At the bottom there also is a link to the corresponding Spiegel TV video. It's called Die Rückkehr der Kartoffelkanone (Return of the potato gun / cannon), so that indicates already that this kind of weapon isn't exactly new. But that shall not keep everyone here from making fun of Germans!
The guy who got one in the eye was hit by an apple. So that was shot from an apfelkanone, right?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I just think it's interesting that the blunderbuss has been reinvented. But the fact that they're aiming them at people is real bad, I think.
That said, you are seeing the true meaning of the American 2nd Amendment: each amendment prohibits the government from trying to do something that is highly stupid, because it can't.
Governments that try to violate those principles get away with it for a time -- but either they learn, or they fall, or the country fails.
In the case of the 2nd Amendment, you can't prevent people from defending themselves; and arming themselves is part of that.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
One of my co-workers made an extreme potato howitzer when he was younger. This friggin monster runs on ether and has an automobile ignition system! Do NOT try this at home!
@sshatrack
Some idiots once put the lower part of a mop (the thing you clean your bathroom floor with that looks like your mother in law's hairstyle) into this special gun and fired at someone about 200 meters away. Broke him both legs. (Try to explain that to the ambulance ... "this here mop did it! Really!")
btw: British Airways (or was it the USA? don't remember) caught up to this and copied the idea (not the mop idea though). They loaded the gun with a dead chicken, measured the distance like Lufthansa did, and fired.
The chicken went through the windshield, through the pilot's seat, through the console behind the driver (or whatever was there) and into the wall behind it.
British Airways (or whoever) complained to Germany. Germany sent two engineers there, looked at the setup, and advised them to un-freeze the chicken before firing.
Home Page
It is fact they were/are trying to devolope a canapoy that will deform instead of break under a bird strike. It is an air cannon that they fired chickens at test caniopies to simulate landing speeds. As far as sucking one into an enjine (no as funney as it sounds if you are in the plain at the time) It mostly just trashes the engine. But with single enjine craft (Falcon) that is enough.
The real answer is to find out how to keep them from landing on runways. Or tring to nest near them.
I'll second the warning to be very careful with potato guns. A kid in my old neighborhood was badly injured when messing with a gun made from a chain-link fence post. Don't know exactly what he was doing with it, but he came very close to blowing half his arm off. I never heard what happened to him afterwards...hopefully the doctors were able to reattach it.
Moral: Be very careful when you're messing with stuff that explodes...
DennyK
Somewhere in Idaho, a potato farmer and his family are rejoicing.
Producer: NEXT!!
Ralph Wiggum: Chicken necks
The PIAA ( Potato (or Potatoe if you are Dan Quayle) Industry Association of America finds the current potato trend disturbing to say the least.
.38 spudspreader).
.34 spudspreader).
.34 sspudspreader).
Hilary "I love big bags (of chips)" Rosen has issued the following statement in this leaked memo...
To be brief we have laid out the terms of the infringements so please look over the document and give me your input.
Begin Doc....
1. Contributory Infringement
Liability for contributory infringement attaches to "one who, with knowledge of the infringing activity, induces, causes or materially contributes to the infringing conduct of another potato distributor. . . [L]iability exists if the defendant engages in personal conduct that encourages or assists the infringement." Lays, Inc. v. Spudster, Inc., 239 F.3d 1004, 1014 (9th Cir. 2001).
Knowledge
Bazooka Potato Bombs sought to obtain licensing from Lays and was referred to individual members of the National Potato Growers Organization.
NPGO wrote to Bazooka Potato Bombs and provided notice that its conduct was infringing and that it should obtain the necessary licensing.
PIAA wrote letter to Uzi Potato when it was an OpenPotato system and placed Uzi Potato on notice of infringing conduct. The same principals contacted by the PIAA are still in place at Uzi Potato.
In discussion with General Counsel of Potato Copyright.net, PotatoZaA CEO acknowledged exchange of copyrighted content and stated looking into filters, particularly for child potatos.
Press has raised issue of exchange of copyrighted content with company principals.
Widespread presence of copyrighted potato materials in supermarkets.
Message Boards discuss available Potatos, Genetically Engineered Spuds (Ges), and Potato Ordinance Delivery Systems (PODS).
Uzi Potato employees participate in message board discussions and CEO acknowledges Uzi Potato controls message boards.
[should we provide notice by letters and when?]
Material Contribution
PotatoZaA creates and licenses Potato Delivery Systems primarily used for the preparation and delivery of copyrighted potatos and weapon systems.
PotatoZaA created and controls boiling of said potatos that ensures that the potatos remain hardened and Potato Factory Fresh from outside influences.
Provides a dynamic list of available superspuds where potatos can be exchanged (possibly through the
Continually updates the list of available superspuds and communicates that information to users (likely through the
PotatoZaA, Uzi Potato and Potatokster maintain log-in spudspreaders.
Maintains the Potatokster.com spudspreader which acts as a superspud (and by definition maintains a spud index).
Resolves spudsplits and other spotato problems (likely through the
Vicarious Infringement
Vicarious liability arises when the defendant "has the right and ability to supervise the infringing activity and also has a direct financial interest in such activities." Ruffles, 239 F.3d at 1022.
Right and Ability to Supervise
PotatoZaA, Uzi Potato, and Potatokster all expressly reserve the right to limit the number of spuds that users make available or access and to terminate users who infringe intellectual potato rights or violate other laws.
Uzi Potato also reserves the right to remove or disable links to delicious potato recipe material.
Spudspreader limits Spuds to certain spudrate
Uzi Potato implemented a filter for child potatos.
Mr. Straight Pimpin' Spuds claims to have cooperated with police in limiting the exchange of child potatos.
Financial Benefit
Generate advertising revenue based on user base.
Mr. Straight Pimpin' Spuds expressed to head of Rock the Potato that he can't stop infringements so he intends to make money from it.
Spudstrom acknowledged to the press that PotatoZaA is making money.
The services have a rapidly growing user base and according to SPUDNET's spudload.com is the most popular potato ordinance delivery system blueprint software on the net.
Uzi Potato obtaining additional funding from Potato Venture Partners.
III. Recommendation
We have solid claims against PotatoZaA, Uzi Potato, and Potatokster of secondary liability for copyright infringement. The claims are not as strong as those against Spudster, but they are also not so remote as to be wishful.
Our claims would likely be strengthened by learning more about the designation of superspuds and the content of growing genetically engineered potatos within the system. However, the encryption of this communication precludes further learning absent cooperation from one of these companies or court ordered discovery. In that regard, we recently learned that PotatoZaA is very interested in exploring alternatives to litigation and its principals are willing to sit down with the potato companies to discuss ways of resolving any dispute. PotatoZaA is willing to sell the company and the technology, or enter into a licensing arrangement. PotatoZaA is also willing to implement filtering technologies to prevent potato infringements. We have also learned that PotatoZaA is looking for the litigation and would like for us to file suit.
Thus, we recommend (1) filing claims against PotatoZaA, Uzi Potato, and Potatokster, (2) immediately thereafter initiating discussions with PotatoZaA about resolving our claims in a way that will provide us with useful information and testimony against Uzi Potato, and if possible obtain PotatoZaA's cooperation in shutting down or converting Uzi Potato and Potatokster, and (3) continue forward with litigation against Uzi Potato, Potatokster, and potentially Potato Venture Partners.
We hope one day to have a world where people actually pay for their potato content and/or potato delivery systems. When users are using unlicensed potatos, spuds, and their delivery systems they are in a sense supporting potato terrorism of which the likes we haven't seen in a hundred years. We can't afford another Mashed Potato Eleven (MP11). Mr Potatohead was lost in that disaster as well as Mrs. Potatohead and that day will forever live in infamy. Please I ask everyone in our organization to help end this senseless crime.
Hilary "I love big bags (of chips)" Rosen
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
My semi-literate, tv-watching Playstation-playing lazy step-brother (who is no releation to me) has had one of these for years.
He liked to fire it around the neighbourhood. He used PVC pipes. Bright kid.
I wouldn't be overly concerned, unless they get into an SS uniform and say they are Panzerfaust.
My father worked at a coal mine. Every year they had to replace the CO2 cartridiges in the mining equipment. The CO2 cartridges were used as propellent in the fire extiguishers, so they where pretty powerfull. The old catridiges where perfectly good so what they would do is take a 2" metal pipe with a nail in the bottom and use that as a mortar. The cartridegs would regularly fly 500 feet over a mountain near the mine. Plus we built potato guns as kids. We had one kid hit a cat at a 100 yards with one. It didn't kill it, but the cat never came around his house again (it was a stray).
Inflammable means flammable. Nitrogen is inert, as is CO2.
And who's pushing the technology on these weapons of mashed destruction I ask??
German police fear that the youths will turn to more lethal ammunition than potatoes. Tests have shown that such a bazooka firing an empty film canister filled with sand and the cardboard centres of toilet rolls filled with cement could penetrate brickwork.
How do I get a job as Potatoe Launch Vehicle Tester? And not to be outdone, the toddlers are up to their old tricks:
A school in Weinstadt in Baden-Württemberg recently came under a potato barrage from children playing truant...
Ok, what exactly constitutes "a barrage"? More than one? Then how do we classify a handful of Julien frys? An arsenal? That would make McDonald's the biggest arms dealer on the planet.
A 16-year-old in the university city of Göttingen lost part of his ear when the firing chamber ripped open as he pulled the trigger.
I would say natural selection may play a part in thining the ranks.
An apple fired from one of the guns almost took out the eye of a middle-aged man...
Potato guns don't kill people - fruit salad kills people.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Ahh please. people in rural america have been doing this for as long as there hav been potatoes lying around an not being stewed. When I was working on a pipeline job this summer in Alaska, the welders and I had a plot to weld a chamber 12 inch 40 wall steel pipe and use compressed oxygen and sedeline (EXTREMELY explosive) to shoot rubber-sealed foam pipeline pigs _miles_ accross the wilderness.
I can't beleive ze germans are actually injuring people.
-P