Meccano Society of Scotland Photos

The Meccano Society of Scotland

Menstrie Meeting 2019

In May 2019 we held our annual Menstrie Meeting and Challange.
This year the challenge was to carry a load over an obstacle course. See the Menstrie Challenge Rules page for more details.

Menstrie Challenge - Report

The challenge was to build a vehicle to carry 50 ball bearings in a boiler end over an obstacle course. There were 8 heats each with a different obstacle. The score for each heat was the number of balls left in the boiler end when the vehicle reached the finish line added to the number of seconds left from the 60 seconds allowed for completion of the heat. Seven members entered vehicles for the challenge.

There was no obstacle in the first heat. The next two heats featured first the ramp then the see saw. Two vehicles entered by Dave Stanford and Alan Bair had difficulty getting a grip on the ramp. They just slipped. These vehicles did not get any further in the contest and finished sixth and seventh.

The fourth heat featured the 5-hole high wall. This proved very difficult to get over. This saw the withdrawal of Douglas Carson’s vehicle, he came fifth. George Roy’s vehicle got stuck on the wall which meant he dropped behind the only three vehicles to get over the wall. These were entered by Brendan Harris, Andy Knox and Gordon Stewart.

The remaining four heats were the half cylinders, the cubes, the prisms and the rollers. The leading four vehicles all performed well in these heats. Georg Roy could not make up the points he lost on the wall and so finished fourth. Gordon Stewart’s vehicle got a bit stuck on the rollers in the last heat so lost time and finished third. Andy Knox’s and Brendan Harris’s vehicles were very close in performance. Andy’s was slightly better at getting more balls to the end of the heat, Brendan’s was slightly faster. Adding up the scores Andy came second and Brendan first.

The scores were:

Obstacle	Entrant	Brendan Harris	Andy Knox	Gordon Stewart	George Roy	Douglas Carson	Dave Stanford	Alan Blair
None	Balls Left	49	50	50	50	50	50	50
None	Time left Left	44	40	40	41	31	44	33
Ramp	Balls Left	46	50	50	46	50
Ramp	Time left Left	43	39	38	40	24
See Saw	Balls Left	39	49	45	42	46	39
See Saw	Time left Left	43	37	41	41	19	41
Wall	Balls Left	48	49	45
Wall	Time left Left	44	35	35
Half Cylinders	Balls Left	49	50	46	50
Half Cylinders	Time left Left	43	38	39	38
Cubes	Balls Left	48	49	49	49
Cubes	Time left Left	40	35	34	28
Prisms	Balls Left	46	50	50	45
Prisms	Time left Left	40	30	31	37
Rollers	Balls Left	47	46	48	50
Rollers	Time left Left	42	43	29	40
Total		711	690	670	597	220	174	83
Position		1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th