UT Student Branch of ASAE
Competes once Again
in the Quarter-Scale
Tractor Design Competition.

The UT Agricultural & Biosystems Engineering Department did not have a Senior Design 1/4 Scale Tractor A-Team entry this Year, but we did field an X-Team. X-Team competition is for Junior Teams competing with a tractor modified from the 1999 A-Team Competition. This year's team was led by Carl Hudson and Will Pinson, Juniors in Biosystems Enginering, Senior Biosystems Engineering student Rob Reel, along with Freshman Biosystems Engineering students Trey Cavin, Russell Goodman, and Josh Smith. The team traveled to East Moline, IL for the May 20-22 event.

In the 2000 X-Team ASAE Competition, judging was based on team presentation of their design and the average of two pulls with the team tractor in the 1050 pound weight class. The University of Tennessee Team tractor won BOTH pulls by a substantial distance (at least 20 ft.) over the other nine team tractors competing this year. In the overall competition (presentation plus pull results), The UT Team placed third. Kansas State was first and University of Wisconsin-Madison was second.

The team advisors (Drs. Bobby Bledsoe and William Hart) were especially proud of the team pull performance, since that was the team weakness in the A-Team Competitions of 1998 and 1999.