On a snowy Wednesday afternoon the staff and students of Mechanical Engineering found themselves in the midst of an airfield, the Mechanical Engineering foyer was being used for the annual City & Guilds Egg race. This years' organiser Mr. Sanjeev Sarda, CGCU Welfare Officer had been able to acquire some sponsorship from Arthur D. Little, which meant that the prize for the winning team was £100.
The participants were given around 2 hours of free reign to design and build their flying machines, the task was simple: Make a flying machine which will carry an egg from the Queen's Tower to Earth, and the one which without breaking the egg, gets farthest, wins. Simple enough, yet what about the altitude, wind, snow and sleet?
With 18 teams and lots of wood, plastic, string, tape and 'creme eggs' the stage was set for IC students to show off their ingenuity. The Aero teams had CAD diagrams whilst the Mechanical engineers changed the rules a little, to a "throwing" and not "flying" machine. With food provided for all participants the show attracted a lot more interest by those passing through.
Once the planes were ready, the teams moved to the Queen's Lawn and fixed their eggs to their flying machines. With the City & Guilds banner glistening in the evening sun, the stage was set for the great feat. Most participants had never been up the tower and it took slightly longer than normal for them to launch their planes, taking their time up the stairs and getting accustomed to the altitude.
With a cleared Queen's Lawn, the planes were launched one-by-one from the 1st floor balcony. The cameras flashed and the crowds swooned as the planes swept through the cold evening air. Some planes fell straight down, the others went around in circle and a few reached distances never seen before. And as the snow grew fiercer and the fingers succumbed to the bitter cold a second round involved launching all planes who had survived the first fall (along with their eggs) together. This was a sight to see and in this round we found the team from Mechanical Engineering, "Team Pump Sucks" as winners, 2nd were the "FFK" team and "APB" who would have won, had the egg not broken.
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