SALT LAKE CITY — A team that specializes in shooting pumpkins from a giant air cannon is coming to southern Utah, hoping the high elevation and thin air will help them set a world record.
The team’s 90-foot, compressed-air cannon arrived by truck in Moab on Tuesday. Later this week, they’re hoping to launch a 10-pound pumpkin more than 5,000 feet using a cannon barrel made out of aluminum irrigation pipe, a powerful air compression system and calculations based on computer modeling.
“Yeah, we’re nerds, but we’re kinda junkyard nerds,” said Ralph Eschborn, a 62-year-old wastewater engineer from Chadds Ford, Pa., who serves as the team’s co-captain.
The Guinness world record for “punkin chunkin,” as the sport is often called, is 4,491 feet, set in Illinois in 1998.
The “Big 10 Inch Team” from Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey is banking on some extra distance firing pumpkins at an elevation of 4,000 to 5,000 feet above sea level.
“The model says that’s a world record,” Eschborn said. “We’ll know in a couple of days.”
They’re setting up the cannon at an old airplane landing strip south of Moab. The shots will be part of the local Youth Garden Project’s annual Pumpkin Chunkin Festival on Halloween.
The seven-member team, which predictably includes several engineers, was world champs in 1999 and 2007.
