Ontopic Drops was OT: The Drop Squad

From: Innfogra_at_aol.com <(Innfogra_at_aol.com)>
Date: Sun Apr 30 14:22:28 2000

When we had to move from my original warehouse in Portland we brought in a 30
Yard dumpster. Now there was stuff on the seventh and the third floors. It
was just too much of a temptation. On a quiet Sunday a television jumped out
a window on the 7th floor, dead center into the dumpster. A huge crash echoed
between the tall buildings of the street. We discovered that plastic likes to
shatter into lots of pieces when dropped from great heights. Aiming from the
seventh floor proved difficult, however. The next item, an old stereo split
the far edge of the steel wall of the dumpster. While the motor and heavy
parts ended in the dumpster much of the plastic littered the street. We went
down and removed the plastic before we could get into trouble.

We relocated to the third floor which had a lot of Wang 22XX terminals. Now
this was much easier. The dumpster was not the small target that it seemed
from the seventh floor. The heavy weight of the Wangs made for a more
predictable trajectory, not to mention a very satisfactory racket when they
landed in the dumpster. They possessed considerably less kinetic energy and
generally stayed in one piece with pops when the tube blew. Crash, pop,
crash, pop, crash, pop... After all, these terminals were scheduled to be in
the dumpster anyway, what better way to do it, and let gravity help.

In the next warehouse we got in two pallets of copper wire on steel spools.
It proved to be very difficult to destroy the spool yet keep the wire in a
coil. Finally we took all the wire to the roof of our 6 story warehouse.
Since we didn't want the wire to lose form we just pushed the spools off with
little horizontal acceleration. We were right. When the spool hit the
pavement of the parking lot. the ends jumped off the spool. The wire might
expand in an elongated coil but was easy to gather together. The best
solution was to hold the spool out and just drop it. The goal was to get the
spool to land flat on one side. The opposite side would pop off and the coil
would bounce up and down, staying tight. This was lots of fun on another
Sunday in Portland. I have some video.

I believe in using gravity as a tool. However most of these fun ways are
illegal now in Portland. We did most of this 10 years ago. For those that are
worried no collectable computers were sacrificed this way except the Wangs.

Thanks for the URL on the Drop Squad. I enjoyed it.
Paxton
Received on Sun Apr 30 2000 - 14:22:28 BST