11/8/03
Jeez two months? That was quick, sorry about that this is just a quick post to try to solve the picture dilemma over at Warpig. I keep getting sidetracked and just haven't been able to get any work done on the site here. Hopefully sometime this weekend I'll have a real update.
9/4/03
I finally added the few pictures I have from the 3rd Cousins Big Game. This one was a bit smaller than we had hoped but I think if it's giving time to grow and promoted well it could easily become a 1000+ player event.
9/2/03 8:45 p.m.
Well it's 8:45 and I'm pretty sure that I'm finished with the Spplat 2 pictures. Thanks out to Amy the Girl for keying me in on the proper spelling of Jokers daughters name, for the record it's spelled Kayleigh. I added pictures seemingly at random on that page and put all the tank pictures on the bottom. The pictures of Bill Shatner putting the Ladybug tattoo on Mancows butt are hilarious, especially with my commentary.
9/1/03
My apologies for seemingly not updating. I have been putting stuff up over on the AFX page but between that and getting married on August 8th I've been neglecting some stuff. The big news here is that we weren't able to bring any tanks at all to Spplat Attack 2 over at EMR. My truck tossed a rod in South Carolina 2 weeks ago and is either still there or somewhere between here and there on a car transporter. I should know more on that later today. George's dad was on vacation and needed his van for that and everyone else we know with anything large enough to tow the tank was busy. I almost rented a U-haul or something similar but between the money and the fact that the only other member of the team that was willing to go other than me and Dawn was George. Even then he had to work a 24 hour shift at the firehouse on Saturday before the Sunday game so that wouldn't have worked out very well for him.
We did manage to get the Tiger to the 3rd Cousins Big Game on the 24th since we were able to abduct George's dad and his van before he left for his vacation. That was a rough game for us and the Tiger. The field is really awesome for playing but it's very tight for something as big as our Tiger and we really needed four wheel drive there.
I'm pretty beat right now. We left EMR around 8:30 and stopped at a McDonalds on 81 shortly after for dinner. It was 10:00 by the time we got to route 80 and I was starting to fade so we pulled into a rest stop and took a 2 hour nap. I think we got home around 2:30 or so but I was up until 4:00 messing with pictures from Spplat 2. I started the page for that here and I also started the page for the 2nd Cousins Big Game. They can be found here
Right now I'm going to post what I've got and go take a nap since I've been up since 7:30
7/27/03
I received an e-mail from Gene Wood about the new 6x6 tank. It belongs to Damage Inc, Detroit, it's equipped with twin AGD E-Mags on top and goes by the name AUTOMAGNUS. Seems to be somewhat similar to Jim Bergles old tank the 'Freak' in that regard. I must say it has an excellent paint job on it and it's got a fitting name. I've also added Automagnus to the tank names section.
Bret had some interesting comments over on Warpig tank talk. It was somewhat reassuring to hear that other tank crews also have problems. Not that I want anyone else to but we seem to be having trouble every other game. I must say though that we are getting pretty good at filed repairs.
I was over at Spudtech.com and discovered that Joel has been working on an even larger version of the Supah! valve. He calls it the Megah-Valve! I don't think it's available at this time but it certainly look damn impressive. Since the Supah valve is pretty much overkill in the paintball world (unless you want a really small pressure chamber that is ;) ), I don't think we'll be seeing the Megah! in any tanks. Unless someone decides to start using the full size Nerf rockets that is hahaha. Any way you can see it on the Supah! Valve page over at Spudtech.com, it's about half way down.
7/20/03
I just haven't had the time to post the rest of the pictures from the 2nd Cousins Big Game or finish the tank crews for that matter. I'm not very happy about missing the IAO Invasion event but hopefully next year. Right now most of my paintball time is devoted to Spplat Attack 2, everthing else is wedding stuff. There are some tank pictures up over at Force of Nature.
Buzzkill Automagnus Sherman Turtle Suzuki Rollover
There may have been a sixth tank but FoN didn't seem to have a picture of it. It looks like they had a tank parade there too.
Bret also sent in some corrections in for the Action Creek Tanks on the Tank Names page.
I also read something interesting over on the Tippmann forum that I had suspected. It was a post about the recent D-Day event over at Skirmish. Apparently the new tanks they have there are nothing more than wooden models, not drivable and not armed. At least they looked pretty good.
7/15/03 afternoon
I haven't got many pictures but I haven't gone through all of them yet either. I did add some links over in the Tank Crews page for some other tank crews. Those new pages are still in development. I also added some new pictures over in the Tiger Crew page. This is something I had really wanted to do at last years Spplat Attack and not getting pictures of all the tank crews there is pretty much my biggest disappointment from that event.
7/15/03 morning
I actually fell asleep in my chair yesterday trying to upload the correct date on yesterdays update. I should have more posted this afternoon.
7/14/03
We had an excellent time at the 2nd 2003 Cousins Big Game yesterday. I should have some more pictures up later tonight but for starters here are the four paintball vehicles that were there. *Edit I moved the pictures to a Cousins Big Game 2003 Part 2 page
7/10/03
Mark Miles of Smak Zone Paintball sent in this picture of a new tank. I may be somewhat prejudiced but I just love seeing tanks that actually look tank-like ;)
Looks like I'll be at George's tomorrow afternoon prepping the Tiger. Second Cousins Big Game this weekend over at Pinelands Paintball in Manchester NJ!
7/6/03
I'm having trouble believing that the first week of July is over. In less than a week we'll be at the second Cousins Big Game. Things in my life have been getting somewhat time consuming to say the least. For the first time in several years I was wishing for a 30 hour day earlier today. The way I figure it a 30 hour day would allow me to get enough done and still sleep 8 hours. Anyway'z on to some tank news.
Here's something I can't believe that I overlooked. Todd of the Gryphonians (who gave me the excellent fiberglass write up below) sent this in ages ago. Here's a picture of the PUG along with their other HumanPowered Paintball Assault Vehicle the Sledgehammer. Hopefully one of these days soon I'll get around to updating all the pictures that are currently in the News Archives into their appropriate galleries.
I'm also finally able to put up the other pictures from Luke Cameron Captain of Volunteer Paintball, here's two shots of their howitzer and one of their mortar. The second picture of their howitzer came out really well.
We've had some sort of a mix up with the banners for the next cousins event and I wasn't able to take the Tiger out to promote that this weekend like I had wanted to. I was really hoping to take it over to Manhattan too. It's probably just as well since I found myself up in the Albany area yesterday.
Josh Larson sent in some pictures of his new launcher. He's using a sprinkler valve for this, not a ball valve and going by it's appearance the valve is in the cent of the launcher and is very well integrated into the launcher body.
I do have a request for all of the regulars, like I mentioned above I'm pretty behind in putting stuff in the galleries and losing track of the one e-mail from Todd is bothering me. So if there's anything that anyone has sent in that I haven't posted or is not currently in every place it belongs, please drop me an e-mail and I'm make sure that it gets done. Thanks!
I've also been planning on revamping the Tank busters section along with stuff like adding Josh's pictures above I've wanted for a long time to do some valve comparisons. I've had a whole mess of different valves lying around for over a year now and I've gotten as far as repairing the core components to the x-cannon so all the valves can be swapped in and out. Unfortunately something or another keeps coming up that puts that particular project off and I'm pretty sure that I've lost my target range so I have to come up with something to get around that.
I was also asked a few months ago what it takes for people to get pictures of their tanks on the site. It's pretty easy all you have to do is e-mail them to me. I do convert most stuff over to JPEG format and will adjust the size in an attempt to keep all the pictures between 50 and 100 kb. I do ask that everyone that does send in pictures to make sure that either they're your own pictures or you have permission from the owner of the pictures. Thanks again.
6/26/03
I've set up a new page off of the Tank Tips page for this. It's something many of you should find interesting.
I also received some pictures from Luke Cameron Captain of Volunteer Paintball. Luke also sent in some pictures of some of their other equipment but I have to crop them a little and convert them over to jpg. I had wanted to be asleep about an hour ago so that'll have to wait until tomorrow night.
One last thing. I set up another easter egg. Unless you know it's exact address the only way to find it is to find the other one hahaha. Trust me though it's an item of extreme interest to many of the regulars here. I really think I've got something very promising with the subject of that particular page.
6/22/03
I broke down the other day and ordered that pallet carousel from Northern Tool. In some new research on that particular item I discovered that it's actually made by a company called Vestil and that they make several different versions of this little darling in addition to the 40" series that Northern sells they also make 30", 36", 48", 60" and finally 72" diameters. Looks like good news for those frustrated with trying to perfect a spinning turret. Although they're a bit on the expensive side. I called Vestil and they put me through to a reseller of theirs not to far from me and the 48" version sells for $429 plus shipping. I still think it's worth while and with the 40" - 4,000 lb one going for $279 plus shipping, I'm sure that the 30" and 36" ones are cheaper.
6/15/03
I picked up some stuff over at George's like my small compressor, the SCUBA tanks and Supah! valve. Then bought a few things at Lowes so I'll be able to re-assemble the x-cannon for further rocket testing. Unfortunately due to other obligations I didn't get a chance to actually rebuild the x-cannon but hopefully within the next few days that'll get done. I've got five valves here and I'm hoping to do some comparison testing soon. George is getting his garage door replaced so I have to pick up the tank tomorrow and hold onto it for a day while that is being done since nothing can be in the garage or driveway when that's being done.
6/14/03
I know I've seen this from either somewhere else or someone else told me but I received word from Bret Golihew about an extremely interesting event for all you tankers in the North East. You can find the details here: http://www.teameffortevents.com/iao/ click on the 'launch website' button and then click the 'Scenario Game' button in the upper right corner. There's going to be a Scenario Game at this years IAO including a tank battle. I don't think that we'll be able to make this ourselves but in addition to Bret and the Action Creek Tankers crew with their three machines there will be quite a number of tanks there from what I've gathered.
I also got this picture from STP showing his Panzer Hetzer T38 when it was at D-Day '03. So this answers my comment over on the Warpig tank talk forum about the lack of realistic looking tanks at D-Day.
Although the side plates remind me of the Panzer IV this is a pretty accurate version of a Hetzer. Actually if he paints the side plates like Bret's Sherman was originally painted there'd be no mistaking it for those familiar with German armor. One things for sure considering the trouble the Shermans had with the Tiger and Panthers these things must have been even harder to penetrate. For those of you who don't recognize this here's a site with a lot of info on the Hetzers.
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6/11/03
George and I transported the Cousins LAV (formerly the Scorpions LAV) from the Coram field on Long Island over to their Manchester New Jersey field. We made a rather disturbing discovery that is shown in the second picture along with a zoomed in one of the really bad area. Looks like they got a lemon with this machine. George and I are pretty sure that it'll be o.k. for the next two games since the trip to Manchester didn't seem to make anything worse although we have doubts about next year. This is something that you should look into if you have a machine that you want to turn into a PAV of some sort. My old S-10 pickup had some minor frame damage from the accident but that's just a 'wrinkle' in the frame that would have made doing body work tricky. We've also had a patch of steel welded over it just in case.
5/26/03
I was pointed to this from someone on the Tippmann forum and some of you might find it interesting Paintball Mini-gun just scroll to nearly the bottom of the page, although the whole page is a very interesting read if you're interested in paintball mini-guns. Tim Cruz has indicated that he's considering building a limited run on these things if there's enough serious interest in them. There's a lot of really interesting stuff on Monty's page if you are at all interested in mini-guns and other outrageous stuff (check his section of 'Other Hot links')
Now this is something that I've been meaning to put up for quite some time now and it just always seems to get forgotten. My apologies to Dave Hall for this continuous slipping of mine but for all the people interested in air cannons this is something to look into. Although it may take away from some of the fun of the whole 'Brute Force Massive Ignorance' way of building things it could very well save you the embarrassment of bringing a far too powerful cannon to an event.
I finally got around to straightening out the Links pages hopefully I didn't miss any thing. I also took the old news archive and split it into two separate archives and then cut a chunk out of the regular news page and put that into a third archive. There's really no rhyme or reason for the dates I choose to cut them off at, just went by what seemed to be a good size. I updated the site map to reflect those changes. I think that'll be all for today. Although I still have to go through the older news posts and copy some of the tank pictures there into their proper places in the galleries. I'll try to get that either later tonight or one of the upcoming weekends.
5/24/03 2:30 pm
I'm taking a break for now but all the pictures are up. I still have lots of work to do but for now in addition to the pictures I did some changes to the home page and I updated the Tiger Tank crew page. I'm pulling the pictures from the 5/17 entries since they're duplicated in the Big Game pictures.
5/24/03 10:15 am
I'm working on the update for last week big game right now. In the mean time in case you haven't seen these already here are some pictures that have already been posted on the internet of the Tiger that I know of. Force of Nature were the guys taking the professional type pictures and filming the event. They've got two good pictures of us. The first during the event and the second out in the parking lot afterwards. There's also a picture of us over at the Blue's Crew section of EMR's page. Finally I posted one over on my personal page last night.
Force of Nature 1 and Force of Nature 2
5/19/03
I'm still pretty exhausted and I almost hate to say it but I don't have very many pictures from the Big Game. I think (hope) that my camera bag is at George's somewhere since I don't have it. I do have my camera but I don't have the USB cable or floppy adapter to download the pictures to my computer. The main reason why I have so few pictures is because we were so busy with the tank that I simply did not have the time to take any. I should have a real update on the event in few days but to put it quickly, it was quite possibly our best event yet. Some of our surprises went over very well, at least for the team we were assigned to hahaha.
5/17/03
Well tomorrow is the big day. We've commandeered most of last years tank depot for ourselves this year. I was thinking that by cutting down some of the spare poles I had for the canopy we would be able to fit our tank and the Cousins tank under the canopy but after parking the Tiger in it we figured that there really wasn't enough room to service both tanks side by side. Thus the tank depot is now ours hahahaha. George has christened it 'Tankgrad'.
It's nearly midnight and I think I'm going to stay home and wake up at 4:30 am and head out to the field then. Right now I feel drained and I don't think it'd be a good idea to make the 35 minute drive, especially since Dawn is making a light dinner for us and I wouldn't be able to head out until after midnight anyway. I didn't take very many pictures but here are some of the ones I did take.
5/3/03
Behold the true power of the Armored Fist Tiger
Advertising! Hahaha. We finally got some banners to promote the Cousins/PBLI Big Game, this is something we've been working towards for a long time. Yesterday Dawn and I were at the Cousins store in Deer Park with the Tiger along with Dean, JC and John from the Store also Kenny and James from the field and finally Slam the Stuntman of the WBLI radio station morning show. There are some more pictures here: Slam at Cousins, that show the Cousins mobile paintball shooting gallery that I didn't get any pictures of. The following are the pictures Dawn and I took. The right most one is Slam in the turret hatch of the Tiger and the middle one is me and Slam.
Afterwards we had to make a stop to pick up a couple of things and I just couldn't resist this picture.
Now that's the kind of sponsor we'd all like to have. I'm pretty sure that George once said he'd have no problems painting the Tiger orange if they'd pay us for it hahaha and I'm sure he'd like to see a Home Depot commercial featuring the Tiger. Maybe someday we'll start seeing orange Home Depot sponsored 'Ref PAVs' at big PAV events.
4/28/03
I'm happy to say that Tony K re-sent the pictures that I had lost. I didn't even get a chance to see these before and I was a bit on the stunned side when I looked them over. This is a pretty impressive machine to put it mildly. I'm extremely curious about the video camera driving system. This one is based out of Rockford Paintball Games just west of Chicago in Illinois.
4/27/03
I had wanted to do this sooner and I wanted to do it separately from everything else but I keep getting side tracked with different things in life. Dawn and I have got a copy of the Gryphonians 'Pug Building Guide'. Due to the above mentioned side tracking I haven't been able to go over it as well as I would like until now. I've also been devoting some of my spare time (and money) to another set of instructions 'How to Build a P.A.C. 6' from XINVENTIONS. To round those off I've got a copy TECHLEAGUE's 'Rapid Fire Potato Cannon Construction Manual'. Of the three the 'Pug Building Guide' is by a very large margin the best in just about any way I can think of. Now to tell the truth I haven't built any of these three although I've ordered several items from Spudtech and I started preliminary work on a new cannon using what I learned from the P.A.C. 6 instructions. As for some comparisons I found the 2nd edition rules for Axis and Allies easier to get through than the Rapid Fire Potato Cannon's and I found the P.A.C. 6 instructions useful but rather irritating, to the point where I would hesitate before buying any of the other plans they offer.
To be fair there are a lot of good points about the P.A.C. 6 instructions, it has some extremely clear pictures and it's not over whelming. It just seems that they glossed over a few critical areas of the design and that some of the pictures don't exactly match the written instructions. Also the pictures seem to jump around a bit also glossing over a few critical points. Anyone who has built an air cannon or two should be able to puzzle out the glossed over areas and will immediately think to themselves 'Damn, why didn't I think of that', it looks to be a rather promising concept to me, like I said I've already bought some stuff because of these instructions (some 2 1/2" PVC with the 2" adapters from Spudtech).
The 'Rapid Fire Potato Cannon Construction Manual' is easily the most intimidating of the three. Although the instruction drawings are done rather well they're a bit too small in my opinion and the actual pictures are lousy and with no real pictures of the work in progress. The written instructions aren't as bad as they first appear but they don't seem to directly connect to the pictures associated with them by the layout. I think the layout itself could have been done a bit better for clarity and it definitely needs better photographs. One other thing about these instructions, they're for a combustion style cannon and would need to modified right off the bat for paintball uses.
Despite the fact that there are no real photographs in the 'Pug Building Guide' it is easily the best set of mail order plans I've ever encountered. To be honest the instructions and diagrams are so clear and well laid out that I don't believe that actual pictures are needed at all. There are also some nice little touches throughout the Pug instructions that tankers will appreciate. I haven't looked into the costs for materials but I can't see it being too expensive. I also don't see why someone couldn't assemble their own PUG during one weekends time. I wouldn't be at all surprised if people start seeing more PUGs at events. I don't know if I personally would want to go out in one since we already have the Tiger and have gotten somewhat lazy you could say by riding around instead of 'ground pounding' but this is a rather attractive alternative to a 'powered' tank in may ways, it's a good deal smaller and therefore far easier to store and transport and in the long run would cost far less than a vehicle based PAV.
At this time the Techleague web site is down but you can find the others here.
4/26/03
It's definitely tank season! We finally got a break in the weather. George and his wife Dawn were able to paint the tank a few days ago and do some work to keep the roof up. We took it out and towed it to Cousins indoor field to start our promotion of this years Big Game. We had wanted to start this at least two weeks ago but the weather just has not let up long enough for that. Also did a preliminary setup of this years cannon. At 70 psi it shot a Nerf at 236 fps so that's looking good. I think I'm going to add a second regulator but as of right now it works well and can be adjusted over a nice range. At 40 psi the Nerf was doing somewhere in the 160's so I'm rather happy with the range of those numbers. The air lines are a bit hap-hazard but I'm not really concerned about that. I taken any new measurements for this cannon but the barrel is somewhere in the area of 8 to 10 feet long and the pressure chamber is about 2 feet long, using 2" PVC, you just gotta love that Supah! valve.
As for this years Big Games here's the link that goes to the information on the PBLI site 2003 Big Games and they have an online registration form done up in a printable pdf format here 2003 Big Game sign-up
I did a few minor changes to the home page and I'm still not exactly sure what other changes I'd like to make. At this time I have a desire to make it easier to locate stuff in the web site. I just feel that the Armored Fist website has gotten a bit cumbersome. At this time I find the best way to get around is by using the site map but I'm thinking of adding some sort of summary page in addition to the site map as a sort of expansion to it. I still haven't been able to get any real work done on some of the other pages like some of the other links pages yet either.
Speaking of Links I got an e-mail from Andy Van Der Platts aka Dorsai and here's a link to his site and it's one of those places that people like us tankers should enjoy, lot's of cool toys there. I was just surfing through the product page there and saw something I thought had disappeared along with the Firstshotpaintball.com web site, it seems a bit on the expensive side (until you think about what it is and compare it to a high end marker) but they carry 'The Load' Claymore mine, something I'd love to add to the Tiger, it'd make one hell of a point defense weapon, maybe one on each side under the iron crosses. .
Those of you following the nerf debate over on Warpigs tank talk forum might find this picture that Andy sent in interesting, he's been doing some testing with this and he says it seems to work best around 60 to 80 psi, it seems to distort at higher pressures when leaving the barrel. Which after yesterdays testing of the Tiger latest cannon sounds great to me. Andy brought up an interesting point in that apparently there are no tank in Airsoft yet, sounds like something that some of us tankers might want to try out, it'd definitely be easier to clean up afterwards.
The Lyons Rocket
I was in Florida for a good chunk of the past week and if anyone missed my post over on Warpigs Tank Talk, Dawn and I discovered Nerf Vortex pocket rockets for sale at a place called 'Family Dollar'. The store closest to me here in NY also carries them and the good news is that they're selling for $2 which is a bit cheaper than anyplace else I've seen them at. They've got a store locater on their web site here: Family Dollar Stores so if there's one near you and you're looking for some Nerf rockets check them out.
One of the bad side effects of going to Florida last week was my e-mail got a bit overloaded. I attempted to download a few things to my mom's computer and then tried to copy them onto a flash memory card that I have for my digital camera. The actual word documents I created came across o.k. but the zip files got corrupted somehow. I lost the pictures below of the Tankinator but John was able to re-send them to me. I also lost some pictures of a new tank in Illinois. Built by Tony K for Rockford Paintball games this one sounds really unique by Tony's e-mail. It's built on a '91 cavalier and can carry 4 gunners plus the driver and is driven by video camera. I really wish I hadn't screwed up that zip file and I'm waiting for Tony to re-send them and will post them as soon as I can.
Raptor from the Kell Hounds sent in some more pictures of the Hell Hound. It's been modified to accommodate a main gun that they've gott running off of a mobile air tank and two small automotive compressors that are powered by a marine deep cycle battery and set to shut off at 110 psi. They were recently at the T-Rev Viper scenario in Houston and you can see that they got shot up pretty well.
John from Bad Company II sent in some more pictures of their tank the Tankinator. They've added a dual cannon turret with bolt action cannons. They've formed a tank division within Bad Company and now play as the Tank Terminator paintball scenario unit. There's room for three with the rear gunner using 2 Tippmann 98's and there's an additional cannon for the front gunners port. Looks like the tank battles in Florida are heating up.
