USS Clueless              Voyages of a restless mind

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Stardate 20011127.0626 (On Screen): (Warning: spoilers) The latest season of Junkyard Wars has now finished broadcasting here in the states, and I must say that I think that the winners absolutely deserved it. Neither team's devices in the finals worked as designed but they improvised on the spot and came up wth a new way to win; the Gearheads actually had their machine break down twice during the contest and they did emergency repairs on the spot and still won. But their other two entries were much better. Their bridging machine was a superb design; it was simple and straightforward and easy to operate. This is the third time that challenge has been used in this series and the Gearhead's design was easily the best of the six and would easily have beaten any of the other five. Of course it didn't help that their expert cut his hand badly and had to go to the hospital for stitches. He came back before they were finished but wasn't a lot of help with one of his hands bandaged up. So they finished construction short handed (ahem).

But it's for their second challenge that I think they earned that win. The challenge was to make gliders, which would be rolled down a grassy slope; the score was how long it stayed in the air before it landed. When I saw their plan their own biplane by constructing two wings out of wood and plastic and wire, I muttered "They're never going to finish that in time." I thought it was much too ambitious. But they did, which was amazing enough.

Most of what gets produced in this show looks like what it is: something cobbled together out of junk, intended to last just long enough to win. Not this bird; it was beautiful and I mean that literally. It had fabulous lines; at least on TV it looked like something that someone had spent a month building. It even had a slight wing dihedral to lend stability to the design. And it really flew nicely; that thing really wanted to be in the air. It was easily the best single design ever built by anyone on any of the episodes of the show I've seen. After they built that glider, it just wouldn't have been right for them to lose. (discuss)

And the best part of all? They're all immigrants. America has always done well by its immigrants.