Roman drawings and pictures

[P. Clodius Secundus]

To be fair, IIRC the modern engineers had a big hand in the problems that plagued that project. It's very difficult to make old technology work with calculators. I'd like to have seen it done as an oversized Hatra. An inswinger of course :lol: My friend Eric is doing some good work on a modern inswinger Hatra he uses at the Punkin' Chunkin' event in Delaware. He's not restricted to using ancient techniques and materials but he has extensive experience with torsion machines and he sees lots of potential in the inswinger configuration. IMHO if someone can build a sucessful machine using an exact repilca (even in smaller scale) of the Hatra artifacts and the only thing they have to rationalize is the direction of the arms, then they have as much claim to being right as someone who builds an outswinger. Especially if the outswinger crew has to resort to reach to find excuses for not using the rear stanchion horn covers. If the inswinger ends up getting better performance, then that tips the scale in their favor, since that could justify the radical change in design. The field-of-view theory suggested by Dr. Baatz hardly applies to a stone thrower which operates as an indirect firing weapon. Moving the springs apart doesn't help aim at high angles so why do it? To make the bowstring longer? That only makes the case longer and requires that the base be taller and the whole machine heavier. On an inswinger the height of the required column is reduced.