There seemed to be 2 categories, direct shot and over the top.
Ogre clearly won the direct shot group with a suspended launch
approach, and some people used rockets to suspend the catcher.
Peter T. and Bob tied in the over the top group, winning the
competition.
The second contest was a great success with 18 different solutions submitted by 15 participants. You can get all the solutions here:
http://armadillo.metaclassofnil.com/lev ... utions.zip
And I strongly suggest that you do, there are some very interesting approaches in there!
Sadly I can't take a screenshot and describe every solution because of time constraints, so here's a small selection:
Here we have scips' solution for 3210 points. the shooting mechanism is a design that's seen quite often. I also used it until I found a slightly cheaper way. Like many other solutions, this one tries to build the catching part like with other materials, i.e. from triangular "stable" structures.
Ogre's solution is interesting for 2 reasons: His shooting mechanism is very unique - it uses the extension of the rubber to get further tension on the elastic. Also, his catcher uses compressed rubber, a pattern that many of the top solutions followed.
BFC came closest to the winning score with this solution. ($3730) He uses the same shooting mechanism as the top two solutions, but his catch is still of the triangular style employed by many - but very optimized. (I was stuck at this exact score for quite some time with a very different solution )
This is my solution, scoring $3850. This picture doesn't really show much, so here's one in "unfolded" state:
The most interesting part is probably the "hook" that keeps the elongated rubber in place.
Bob reached the exact same score with a slightly more volatile approach, which still shows many similarities. Congratulations! As I can't award a medal to myself (the forum software actually prevents me from doing so ) I declare Bob the official winner and hopefully, host of the next contest.
Thanks to everyone who participated, and special thanks to kingofthespill for hosting the contest. If you want to comment on your own or other peoples solution, feel free to do so here.