Power Rower

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Scrapheap Challenge
17th October 2004 Season 7 Episode 7

The Challenge Power Rowers Scrapheap goes back to the water for the latest challenge as The Anoraks take on Maximus. In honour of our Olympic oarsmen and women, the two teams have to assemble a mechanised galley with at least four oars to scull their way around our tricky aquatic course. The Anoraks The Anoraks In this year's first episode, The Anoraks poured cold water on The Hoselliers, a team of fire fighters from Blackburn, as they raced out of our sheer sand trap in Surrey. Deprived of their captain Geoff Turtell for their second challenge, The Anoraks are now led by Marc Draper. Lyndon Camidge joins him again along with Andy Cross an old school friend of Lyndon's who comes in as a substitute. Andy is a plant fitter and HGV mechanics expert. Named after their club of the same name, these three enthusiasts from Surrey can't get enough of off-roading. The lads spend their spare time in Marc's garage, building and restoring Land Rovers and other 4x4 vehicles. Lyndon claims he has broken, crashed and sunk more Land Rovers than he's had hot dinners and Marc likes to think he is the stabilising influence of the team. Lots of experience, slightly batty and a bit posh, these boys are determined to go all the way! Rob Austin is The Anoraks' expert this week. He's an engineer and teacher from Oxford who organises the Formula Schools engineering challenge. Rob worked as a professional fabricator and engineer in various fields before going into education and creating a successful engineering course for schools. He now runs Formula Schools, a scheme to get youngsters interested in automotive and maritime engineering. From his well-equipped workshop in Oxfordshire, he builds and fabricates pretty much anything and is currently rebuilding a classic Bugatti racing car. Top Maximus Maximus Our second set of challengers are the rickshaw-riding charioteers Maximus, who bowled over Irn Cru in the fourth challenge of series seven with their barmy bouncing bomb. Cycles and big barges float these Bath-based boys' boats. William Trickett, Paul McGarry and Dennis Mapp work at Cycles Maximus, which makes and supplies rickshaws. William, or Trickett as he likes to be known, is also a boat engineer and has a company which makes luxury Dutch barges. They are into all kinds of cycled contraptions from rickshaws and chariots to trikes and motorbikes. They also share an interest in canal boats – so are used to building things out of the ordinary. They are quirky, alternative, great fun and are phased by very little. Trickett is completely mad, Paul lives on a canal boat and is also a circus performer and Dennis is a Motor Cross rider who, in his own words, will have a go at anything! A great team. Maximus' expert Jim Bond is not an engineer but an expert fabricator and metal-work sculptor. His speciality is mechanised sculptures. He has worked on TV series like The Secret Life of Machines and can easily grasp the concepts behind automating a human movement mechanically. Cool and calm, Jim is used to getting kids motivated about engineering projects but confesses he is a bit laid-back. The judge The judge Richard Carless is a keen rower and has lived and worked on the water all his life. He owns a marine safety business for the film industry and recently worked on the BBC's Building the Impossible: Submarine episode. He is a Guinness Book of Records holder for several rowing endurance and distance records. He recently smashed the long-distance rowing record from the origin of the Thames to the Thames estuary. He knows what it takes to make a good rowing stroke and being a boatman all his life can tie this into both engineering and hull design.

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Season 7 · Episode 8

Spy Cars

The Challenge Spy Cars The last quarter-final mission, should our challengers choose to accept it, is to build a stealthy 'spy car' for use on a secretive information-gathering exercise. Their reconnaissance vehicle will have to carry the entire team both under and over obstacles which are just two feet from the floor, turn on a sixpence and then back out of trouble. They must avoid detection whilst infiltrating a sinister-looking base protected by guard posts, razor wire, security cameras, alarms and laser beams. Once inside, they must limbo, hurdle, twist and turn their way into (and out of) danger in order to steal a top-secret briefcase before making good their escape. Bakewell Puddings The last time we saw the Bakewell Puddings, they were pitting their wits against Rough Riders, three North Sea gas engineers from Hull, in Off Road Rescue. Nick Marriott, Mark Elliott (Smell) and his nephew Andrew Charlesworth (Charlie) are from Bakewell in Derbyshire. All are into bikes and racing (Motor Cross and Enduro). Mark and Nick have been friends for 20 years and have been in the same Motor Cross team as well as in a punk band together. Mark started to teach Charlie to ride at the age of nine, so it's fair to say bikes are this team's thing. Mark is an engineer, Nick is an architect and Andrew is a Rolls Royce engine inspector. These guys are also outdoorsy, sporty, rugby-loving, mountain-climbing kind of people who participate in the annual Bakewell raft race and the odd cross-town wheelbarrow race. They thrive on a challenge and have plenty of ingenuity and humour to keep us all entertained! John Ricketts (also known as Johnny Nitro) is a drag racer of the classical style à la American Graffiti. He owns, maintains and races his 8-litre 1965 Chevy and has been known to fit a nitrous oxide system to a Ford Anglia. When he's not being a petrolhead, John can be found catching tubes (that's surfing to you and me) off the Cornish coast. Up 'n Atoms Up 'n Atoms reached the quarter finals by bowling over the REME Rebels, three female soldiers from the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, in Bowling Bangers. Ali Day, David McFarlane and Jimmy Ridewood are expats living the life of Riley in Geneva. They work at CERN (Europe's largest centre for nuclear research) and explain their work as Star Trek-type stuff, experimenting with smashing particles together to see what happens. They're science boffins but not in the slightest bit geeky. They enjoy playing on the slopes of Switzerland, rugby, British sports cars and a good pint or 14. They have a background in off-shore work and have nuclear power station training – so there is an extremely solid engineering skills base here. They claim that James is the 'looks' of the team, Ali is the 'brawn' and David is the 'brains'. Up 'n Atoms' expert is Jim Chalmers, a creator of whacky vehicles. By day he runs a large workshop outside London but he's happiest when he's inventing – most recently he patented what could be the world's smallest commercial hovercraft. He's recently got in trouble with the police for strapping a jet engine to the top of an Escort. Future projects include building a McLaren F1 – for the road! The judge John Hetherington is a veteran of Scrapheap after judging the Minesweeper challenge back in series 4. John is a professor of engineering design at Cranfield University and head of the Engineering Systems Department at the Royal Military College of Science – he's the man who teaches potential Qs!

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