Why can cool stuff like this never happen in America?   
Make sure you guys take some good video and pics!

I'll start a new thread for march - weekend definitely.

<Sigh> Someone please tell me how to get a photo to come out at a reasonable size here, so you don't have to scroll around it.

Thanks for the advice. Here's my fifth attempt: at last, it worked! (Not sure why.) I was making the picture smaller (I thought) in Photoshop, but it appears I have to alter all three parameters to make it work.

Anyway, what it shows is the Hod Hill ramparts, very near where we'll be slinging. It's taken from the top of the outer rampart and the figure in red is on the inner rampart. It's a little steeper where we'll be.

There was likely a parapet on the inner rampart; C_A and I have been considering whether we could simulate that (elsewhere). Don't forget, also, that the ramparts would have been a bit steeper and the ditch deeper. (On the earlier Iron Age forts, the ramparts were lower but often faced with wood and stone, i.e. effectively a wall.) I think, though, the parapet could be more for standing behind than on top of. Some reconstruction illustrations do show a pallisade with a "firing step" but I don't know what evidence they have for it.

When we went to Barbury Castle, C_A could stand behind (inside and lower than) the inner rampart and drop shots (tennis balls, I'm pleased to say) on me in the outer ditch, i.e. past two ramparts blocking his view of me.

Current plan for the measured part of it is to simulate a direct frontal assault, but that doesn't mean we can't experiment with variations.  The influence of and reasons for the specific shape of the rampart are, after all, the point of the investigatione. Half the time, also, we will be "attacking" - slinging from the outside at the target on the ramparts.

I cant wait! 

We tried, there are slingers in the south of england - even one notable one in oxford who definitely has a car who could have easily made the trip.

It's not like the threads have been hidden. Not sure what else we could have done, just have to face it - english slingers don't like getting involved.

Anyway I'm picking david up from the station at 9:37 and then setting out for the bottom of the country (ye gods). Which anyone who knows me will realise is bloody early for me to get anywhere.

Next job, fix the cigarette lighter socket in the car - the charger for my cell phone decided to fall to bits last week and I think there are still bits in there that need digging out.
Without the satnav plugged in tomorrow it'll be a very long journey (although davids phone probably has one as well.).

Pics and reports as and when we're back at computers.   

It'll be fun regardless of the weather

Will you guys be bringing a video camera? And slinging against the fort?