News Archive 12-25-02 to 5-26-02
12/25/02
To answer a question over on tank talk
12/21/02
Hard to believe that it's nearly 2003. I've been neglecting this site for a while now and must apologize to those who sent in tank related e-mail that I haven't done anything about. Some of those are as follows
Anthony formerly of Team Delta Force has sold the TDF-1 Devastator and sent in word that he and his dad have bought Bad Company II's tank from John M. He also told me that they've joined the Bad Monkeys which adding that tank to the Bad Monkeys collection of Armor puts them up to 5 paintball armored vehicles.
Mimi AKA 'Mimi the Maniac' sent in word that the Tiger Recon PAV that was also at the Shatner event is named Julius after Lt. Julius Wassel, WWII veteran, tanker and Bronze Star recipient. More on Julius can be found here Julius the Tank and I recommend checking it out. I also added that to the Tank Names section and finally got around to adding a few pictures of Julius at the Shatner event to his entry in the Germanic Invaders section.
Almost forgot, new Easter egg somewhere and if you find Joains songs that's not what I'm talking about ;)
11/27/02
It's been pretty quiet around here lately some interesting talk on the Warpig tank forum that I'm posting this picture here for. Dawn and I are about to run off to Maine for Thanksgiving so no work getting done here on anything for the holiday weekend. In case anyone who didn't know already Dawn's premier article was printed in the latest PB2X as a sidebar to the William Shatner write up. It's got some good stuff in it and you might want to check it out. I'm pretty sure that her next tank article will be in next months issue. Anyway as for the picture related to the Warpig discussion here's my rough and quick draft of a foam rubber paintball sabot.
Hoping to get some distance numbers sometime this weekend and I should have a 'mini' cannon up and running too. Things here are most likely going to be slowing down for me as far any any sort of development that actually costs money, it's the holiday season pretty much so most of my free money for the next few months will be going that way. I do have a picture I'm posting in response to a Warpig Tank Talk entry. This is a close up of the air system that I use to connect to a SCUBA tank. The pressure chamber uses a regular quick connect for air compressors. The only problem with that is I can't charge the system and disconnect it from the air source, not a problem for the tank but a bit of a pain if you wanted to use it as a LAW launcher. I'm thinking of picking up a few more fittings and I'll then be able to hook it up to a regular paintball air tank.
10/30/02 12:30 am
Getting really late but I wanted these up. Here's a few pictures of yesterdays 10' barrel, using the 5' barrel as a pressur chamber. I also picked up the PVC to build the 30" pressure chamber/barrel that I wanted. I'm itching to try that one out as a barrel using the 20" and 10" pressure chambers. I also picked up the fittings to connect the original cannon from last springs SCUBA based air source to the x-cannons current air coupling. While I was out at George's I switched the Supah valve with our old 2" ball valve to see the difference. Well I didn't even bother to chrono that. In fact I don't think it'd even register on the chrono. It was still set to the 22 psi from the day before and the only difference was the valve. Instead of the rocket flying several hundred feet (never measured, ran out of space though) the range dropped to 10 to 15 feet.
10/26/02
I went out to my grandmothers and shot up her shed with the Nerf rockets again. I was using the 20" x 2" pressure chamber on the X-cannon. Using that at 50 psi most of the shots that I chrono'd were between 221 and 237 fps. So things are looking good using the Supah valve on the next cannon. I don't think I'll have time to go out and get the right PVC fittings to build a 30" pressure chamber until tomorrow so testing of that may have to wait a bit. I also shot and chrono'd a rocket with the cannon pressurized to 95 psi and that one came in at 369 fps. Here's a few pictures from today's testing. The guy with the cannon is my dad and I managed to get a few pictures of the rockets just before they hit the shed. The first pic with the orange rocket came out the best.
10/23/02
Hopefully this update will cover every thing I lost with the momentary power loss the other day plus some more stuff. I don't think I put the last update in the updates section and I'm too tired to add this one now, have to catch that later.
Well I've had some really good success with the X-cannon finally. Unfortunately I forgot to bring the 20" pressure chamber and I don't have any results for that yet. Using the 10" chamber the Nerf gets about 2 or 3 feet out the barrel at 25-30 psi. At 45-50 psi it registered on the chrono at 125 fps. After several more shots I managed to bring the velocity up to 225-229 fps at 80 psi. Strangely enough I'm getting slightly different pressure readings from the two air gauges in this system. The gauge on the regulator consistently reads about 5 psi or so lower than the gauge on the pressure chamber. The 80 psi reading is taken from the pressure chamber not the regulator. I didn't really take enough shots to be really sure that 80 psi will always stay under 230 fps because I got side tracked with shooting the Nerf rockets straight up in the air. The first one was either a bright neon green or neon orange which actually disappeared from site. It was in the air longer than we expected but we did recover it. The second vertical shot I used one of the dark purple rockets and that one stayed visible for the entire flight. My girlfriend tried to time it using her watch and she said it was in the air for about 20 seconds before hitting the ground. All the vertical shots were at 80 psi. I wish I had an altimeter like the model rocket hobbyists use but I'd say it easily went several hundred feet straight up. My first guesstimate going by the rough time of 20 seconds put it over 1500 hundred feet at 225 feet per second but I'm sure that's very wrong since I have no idea how to account for the rocket slowing down as it traveled. I like to think that it went at least 500 feet up but I really don't know.
In other news I've received some nice pictures from Captain Caveman of team 'Got Balls?' of their anti tank launcher and some really nice pictures from Raptor of the Kell Hounds of some construction pics of their Wolf Hound. There's also a really nice picture of the turret rotation assembly without the turret. I haven't seen a setup like Gary's before with the centering rollers on the outside, it's a nice design in that they don't take up precious room inside where the gunner is and they also look like they serve as turret hold downs. I'm posting both sets of them here in the news section for now but I'm planning on putting copies up elsewhere on the site. Another important thing to look at on the Wolf Hound, if you look closely you'll see that the trailer wheels are actually swivel type casters. If anyone intends to build their own version of this type of tractor trailer PAV this is an important detail that is needed in order for the trailer to turn smoothly and still have a non-pivoting attach point to the tractor.
Team 'Got Balls?' tank buster.
Kell Hounds Wolf Hound under construction.
In other news I was talking with Chris over on Warpigs tank talk and Chris spotted a gas powered air compressor for sale at Home Depot that seems to be a bit smaller than the pontoon one I've got posted in the cool stuff for PAVs section for a mere $150 with a three year warrantee. I checked 3 home depots around me so far and haven't had any luck. I couldn't find a picture of it on the internet, the closest I could find was an electric similar to the one we were using for the Tiger at the Shatner event and which is now powering the X-cannon. Considering the price (which by the way is fantastic for a gas powered compressor) if you're thinking of getting something along these lines you may very well want to hurry up and look for this. I'm pretty sure that it's supposed to be at least $250 and it may be some sort of regional clearance item that's not available everywhere. If so it won't last very long and it's at least worth looking for.
Received an e-mail from Jim B. earlier and he forwarded this site to me. I haven't had a chance to even look past the first page but this looks like a very nice source for all sorts of really cool stuff. Jim was talking about gate valves for loading when he mentioned along with ball transfers, it really looks like a good place to look around
Jim also e-mailed this idea "If you do buy the pallet turner one neat addition you can do to it is weld a #40 chain to the outside of the ring that rotates. Weld it all the way around. Make sure it is level on the ring. A spot weld about every 10 inches on the side of the chain. Then you can mount a gear motor right in the roof with the shaft running up along side the ring. On the end of the shaft is the matching gear that will ride in the chain. Push button turning or you could put a 90 degree gear box instead of the motor and turn it by hand with a handle on the input of the gear box" Which is something I didn't think of when thinking up ways of making the turret turn. This idea makes a lot of sense and seems just a bit better than any of my own ideas. I do like the idea of dual electric motors with some sort of wireless control hooked up to a joystick but that may have to wait. I also added one more item to the Navigation bar. Thanks Jim I haven't had a chance to do much more along the site re-vamp yet and little things like that will help
10/20-21/02
O.k. it's after midnight here and I wasn't going to post anything but I just had to hahaha. I tried posting some stuff earlier but due to a momentary power drop my computer re-booted and I lost about an hours worth of work. I picked up a mini-chrono today along with the proper NSF-pw PVC and it was a good thing too. I managed to break the X-cannon pressure chamber today when I was using the larger of the two 'volume displacers'. I think the kick of firing caused the insert to smack the inside of the 4"x2" reducer and it broke apart as I was firing. So I assembled basically an entire new cannon using the NSF-pw stuff. The only things I kept from the original X-cannon was the barrel, the air fittings (already in the proper PVC) and of course the Supah valve. I was using the chrono incorrectly and didn't get a reading on the last shot but it was visibly a lot closer to being safe. At least it didn't sound like it was going to knock down my grandmothers shed anyway. I've built two more pressure chambers this time staying away from the whole insert idea. I guess it was one of those ideas that sounded better than it really was. I am very glad that I had dropped the pressure down to 25 psi when that shot was fired! Anyway here's a couple of pictures of then new 'X-cannon V2.0' along with the original pressure chamber with the pieces I found. I have a really good feeling that it's going to work out very well with possibly both of these pressure chambers. I cut the longer one at 20 inches and the shorter one at 10 inches. The barrel is still roughly five feet long.
I've also managed to locate that video I once found on the exploding pressure chamber and I'll post that sometime tomorrow along with Capt. Caveman's anti-tank cannon.
10/19/02
Well just finished up my first round of tests on what I consider the 'X-cannon'. I would like to mention right off the bat that I do not intend to use this particular cannon on the tank it's only meant to find out what size pressure chamber I can use with the Supah valve to get a safe velocity. I didn't have a chrono with me and I only had time for a few shots before losing daylight and I didn't get a chance to try out my 'variable volume pressure chamber'. I also didn't have teflon tap on all the joints so it leaked like a sieve. I started out with about 40 psi and left it there. This was the first time my Dad has ever seen an air cannon and we were having fun shooting the shed and a poor defenseless plastic flower pot. Unfortunately the flower pot is pretty much finished. My Dad wanted to shoot a 1 gallon plastic container full of water hoping to get a nice burst of water but I hit the flower pot instead. One thing is for sure, there is simply no way that this thing can be used the way it is now. I never thought I see a Nerf rocket as a deadly weapon before today but let me tell you it most certainly is! Check out the pictures below and judge for yourself.
One thing everyone should know that hole was made with a Nerf rocket on a single shot with hardly any damage done to the Nerf itself! That was a typical large plastic flower pot to give you an idea of it's size that's a one gallon plastic jug used for stuff like orange juice on top of the flower pot. As for my variable volume bit I have a screw off end cap on the 4" PVC pipe and I put together a couple of sections of 3" PVC that'll fit nicely inside the pressure chamber. All I have to do is open it up slip in a 3" insert, close it back up and 'TA-DA', smaller pressure chamber. Pretty neat eh? I'm actually pretty excited about this project because I really think that my hunch that the Supah valve will let me use a pressure chamber that's half the volume of the barrel (or even less) will be correct. I'm even thinking that I may be able to ditch the 4" PVC altogether. If everything goes well I should have some actual numbers to share tomorrow.
10/18/02
A couple of minor changes to the navigation bar. Also added a new page for all the Cool Tank Stuff also working on consolidating the stuff for the Armored Fist Tiger tank.
I did some running around last night and I picked up the last few things I needed to make a new working cannon. I've cut all the PVC and dry fitted it together. Unfortunately I couldn't find any of the proper schedule 40 fittings in the sizes and shapes I wanted. With the pressures I intend to use for this upcoming series of tests that shouldn't be a problem. I have to run out to a company party tonight but I'm going to try a few plumbing supply housed to try to locate the proper fittings before I start gluing stuff together.
10/16/02 late night
In case anyone missed it I posted a pic of Todd Meyers turret a little further down.
Also got a new item in the Tank Tips section some people may find interesting
10/16/02
Brought back a navigation bar. This time it's on the top of the pages and no hover buttons. The current one up there is really only a preliminary version that's pretty close to the old vertical one. I'm figuring on some more changes to that to better reflect where I'm trying to take Armored Fist.
Talk about a conflict in interests so to speak! I've been talking to Dawn about lot's of tank stuff that she's been working on and to be quite frank I'd really love to include it here. She's going to see what can be done but for the mean time everyone will just have to keep an eye out for her articles. The conversations Dawn and I have had on the subject have been extremely interesting and as far as I'm concerned things are looking good for all paintball vehicles in my opinion. Those of you who have talked to Dawn so far have some idea what I'm talking about but let me tell you it's really cool being a small part of the whole thing. Hopefully with a little luck a lot of that will be reflected here on Armored Fist.
With several of the ideas that's been going on in my own head and between talking to Dawn, the guys from CPX and from many of the e-mails I've gotten I'm starting to think that I'm going to need some sort of PAV commentary section here pretty soon. Watching TV recently has made me somewhat painfully aware that the PAV bar is going to go up soon in a way that many of us here have never really talked about to my knowledge. After talking to Dawn I've also come to realize that there are in reality several bars of excellence in the world of Paintball Armored Vehicles. Without a doubt the original bar was set by Bret Golihew with his Sherman. I used to think that we had raised that bar with the Tiger but I now realize that what we really did was setup a completely different bar the more you know about the two machines the harder it really is to compare them, it's definitely an apples to oranges thing. While we were working on the Tiger here on L.I. for the past several years yet another bar was raised primarily in Florida as PAVs began to seriously compete against other PAVs. I'm also starting to believe that the spirit of Kelly Johnson and the original Skunk Works has taken up residence in Wisconsin. To add to all of that there's the annual D-Day event in Oklahoma. There are several individuals involved with that event that seem to be working on adding the PAV version of the World Cup to it as more and more tanks seem to be going there. I think that the next years event may very well see the tank on tank competition that many of us were hoping to see at the Shatner event.
Turret construction ideas have popped up on Tank Talk and I've got a pretty good picture of the Gryphonians turret that I'm hoping to put up soon. If you haven't seen the pallet carousel on the Tank Tips page check it out. I think it's the best solution for really large turrets. Talked to Todd and here it is, not as good as a set of blueprints but it should at least give people the idea. I've got pictures of the turret on Brets Sherman, the turret on Jims Freak and the turret on Rick's Tiger Recon when they were at the Shatner event. Unfortunately none of the pictures of those turrets is as revealing as this one of Todds turret. If you look closely you can see the rollers that Todd uses. Todd e-mailed me this information if anyone is interested 1" diameter ball bearing work rollers purchased from Woodcraft (part # 07b08 @ $2.70 a piece for 6) www.woodcraft.com
On cannons. I've started gathering pieces and came to the realization that I actually have enough stuff just lying around that I could easily build a new cannon! I'm thinking of something a bit smaller than the last one that George Uribe built for the CPX game and also a bit simpler. I have a cool idea on how to make an adjustable size pressure chamber that I'm hoping to put together either by next weekend or during next weekend. I could probably have it up and running tonight with one run to Home Depot...Hmmmm.... hahaha. Unfortunately I left our stock of nerf rockets in the Tiger over at George Poveys house. Right now I have a copy of the basic firing setup of George Uribes cannon on my work table right now. I have the Supah valve but I'm using a ball valve for actual loading purposes. I'm thinking of starting out with a 5 foot long barrel for a couple of reasons and hopefully I'll finally have some nice numbers on pressure chamber size and pressures in relation to the Supah valve and projectile velocity. I'm also working my head around several ideas that will allow my next tank mounted cannon to fire either the Nerf rockets or various paintball/sabot loads with equal ease. Unfortunately none of those particular ideas are even close to being simple. Oh well at least I won't have to build Georges triple pressure chamber and quadruple valve cannon hahaha. I am most assuredly going to need my own chrono when I get around to testing this one out. Borrowing one from our home field would be a little tricky this time of year.
Jeeeze it's getting late, I've had this update going on my computer for nearly three hours as I go back and forth with several different projects going at once. I should have more stuff tomorrow.
10/13/02 9:30 am
Here are the pictures of the Kell Hounds Wolf Hound at Viper Scenarios Apocalypse Now event in Forney Texas. Anyone who is currently working on a PAV should look closely at the windows here. Many people know about this but I believe that these are the best pictures here on Armored Fist of this style of window. By wrapping some foam insulation around something like a wooden dowel and then stretching your window netting over that you greatly increase the bounces off of you windows. We've been trying to do this with the Tiger for about a year and a half but we always seem to run out of time. Luckily for us we have so much space we still get mostly bounces on the windows. It really looks like Gary hit the nail on the head with his setup.
I fixed the link below to the Army of Darkness tank page, sorry about that Todd I was getting even more fuzzy than I thought last night. The first three show the transition from golf cart to PAV base. The next three show the Civil Was Battle Wagon shell. The last two show them preparing for the second shell. Todd is planning on having at least 5 different shells to cover 5 different types of scenarios/time periods.
This link goes to the AoD home page, the one lower down goes to their tank page.
I added another page for Links this one is dedicated to Paintball Teams
Giving the PAV Galleries a quick look as I copy-n-pasted the pictures above in I think I'm going to break up the galleries a bit more. With the ideas mentioned below and looking now I figure there's going to be four more separate galleries soon. I think in addition to one dedicated to cannon loads and valves and one dedicated to retired PAV's I'm going to split off the Tanks of Wisconsin into their own gallery and also dedicate a gallery to the PAV's of EMR. I took some more pictures of the Assassins Guild machine and some more of the Hell Raisers machines when Dawn and I went to socialize at the last EMR Castle Conquest. Even though it's not an Armored Vehicle event I think I'll going to post some of the pictures I took there.
10/13/02 12:30 am
I've been working on some changes to Armored Fist in the attempt to make it a bit easier to get around and so that people can easier find what they're looking for. I'm not really satisfied with what I've got so far but I feel that it's heading in the right direction. I also feel that the focus of Armored Fist is really drifting away from the Tiger and more on the Paintball Armored Vehicle community as a whole. The change of focus really started with the creation of Armored Fist when I took all the tank stuff off of my personal site and has continued on from there.
Sometimes I truly despise working in windows! I just got a windows error that trashed all the work I did in FrontPage for the past hour or so. Now I have to try to re-do everything grrr.
I hope everyone got a chance to see Bill Tison and Paul Hoard go head to head on Junk Yard Wars. I really enjoyed it myself and made a couple of extra copies of the episode on tape. I'm planning on mailing one copy out to Peter aka Jammyboy who did all the render drawings over Tank Designs gallery. Peter recently joined the Army and I believe he's hoping to either work on Apaches or Abrams. I wish him the best of luck with all the craziness he may encounter.
JimB sent in word that his fomer tank the Freak was the subject of a recent post on the Warpig tank forum. Jim sold his tank during the Shatner event at CPX and it now resides in California. Click the link below to see how it's been modified. Jim also mentioned that the field he does tank work for should be getting the next chassis for him to turn into a P.A.V. Looks like it's going to be another 6x6 only this time it'll start out as a 4 person chassis. Jim also sent in an idea to start up a new section here devoted to cannons, primarily valves and loads so expect that to be added to the Tank Tips section soon.
Caveman941 sent in word the PAV 'Cruncy' of team 'Got Balls?' has been retired and that they should begin preliminary work on their next LAV in early December. He also suggested that there should be a gallery of retired tanks which I think is a really good idea so hopefully I'll have something along those lines soon.
Todd Hintsmann sent in the O.K. for me to pull some pictures of his PAV so expect to see that one added to the gallery soon. Todd has beaten me to the punch in what I consider to be the next big thing in the future of PAV's. It's what I call a 'modular' system. I've had this on my mind for some time now and it's my real ambition for the second AF tank. The basic concept was sort of attempted on the Tiger for the Shatner Spplat Attack! Unfortunately the Tiger isn't really suited for that kind of stuff so we probably will not be doing any more modifications like that on the Tiger. If you want to check out Todd's tank to see what I'm talking about click the link below. I'm planning on at least doing a write up to further explain myself here soon.
p.s. to Todd. Yes we did have the A/C working, at least until I broke the generator!
Gary aka Raptor of the 'Kell Hounds' sent in some pictures of the Wolf Hound after it's premier event in Texas. Sorry Gary but I'm going to have to post them tomorrow. I have to save and rename them with unique file names and I'm kind of running on autopilot right now it's after midnight and that having my computer crash on me screwed up my time table for tonight. Hopefully I have them up sometime tomorrow night at the latest.
Before I forget check out the Tank Tips section. I've added some interesting stuff there. I finally got around to adding a few links for Golf Carts along with a few other things that I'm especially intrigued with.
10/1/02
Sorry about the delays here just in case you're reading this and are not a frequent visitor to either my personal web site or the Warpig tank forum I seem to be suffering from a bit of 'tank burnout'. The Shatner event had a lot of nice things about it but it was a very stressful event and in many ways I'm not very happy with a bunch of stuff there. I'm not at all happy with myself in a lot of ways. Most of all I've been feeling like I could have done a much better job it's more of a wish to have done better than really feeling all that depressed or anything. Looking over the entire event and it really seems as though fate was against us there but we learned a lot had a good time in many ways and got to meet a bunch of great people.
I really owe an apology to Gary H and his son for neglecting to add their tank to the tank names section. I received the e-mail from him either just before the Shatner event or just after and it kind of got lost in the shuffle. His tank is based on a lawn tractor with a trailer for an additional gunner. Gary just sent in a couple of pictures from just before it's debut at the Apocalypse Now Viper Scenario in Forney Texas. With this update the Wolf Hound will be in the Tank Gallery and the Tank Names section
My girlfriend and I went off to EMR this past weekend to check out the fall Castle Conquest event. It was a lot of fun even though we didn't bring the tank or even play for that matter. I did get some more tank pictures there and we got to socialize with a bunch of people. The biggest surprise for me was while crawling around up on the wall inside the castle taking some pictures, I looked over and saw 'Mudguts' on the back of a players shirt. I thought to myself 'Nah, gotta be a coincidence' then I overhear a bit of him yelling over the wall and the only thing I really caught was that he was teasing Joker and he refered to himself as a 'Southern Boy'. At that point I had to ask and sure enough he was Mudguts former driver of Gunship Apocalypse and currently playing on the Moles. Muddy himself is from the Atlanta Georgia area and came up north to help defend the Castle at EMR.
I also ran into a couple of friends from the new paintball customizing company Divine Craft Paintball at the Castl Conquest and although they're only getting started and their web site isn't up yet we did discuss a rather interesting addition to the armament of the Bolo. If all goes well that will be revealed sometime in either late March or early April.
Bolo? What's a Bolo you ask? Well that's what I'm calling the possible second Armored Fist tank that I just haven't been able to get out of my head since the Shatner event. To be a bit more precise I currently like to think of it as a Bolo Mark III SP. The SP stands for special which if you've read the Bolo books can basically mean the design is whatever I wish it to be. If you care to know a little more about Bolo's without reading the books try this site BOLO
9/10/02
I've been neglecting posting the new tank in Florida mostly because of all the work related to the Spplat Attack game and also due to a project I'm working on for my jobs website. John M of Bad CompanyII will be debuting it at Waynes World this Sept. 21 & 22. Further proof that Florida is pretty much one of the biggest hot spots for paintball tanks in the country. Also nicked a pic of the new howitzer due to 88Arty's hint over on Warpig ;) Now all I have to do to complete this update is get the changes made to the index page for tomorrow.
In other news after the whole adventure of going to CPX for William Shatner's charity Spplat Attack! game I keep thinking of my next big project ;) Seriously after talking to all of the other tankers there and looking over their machines I've got all sorts of stuff running around in my head for the second Armored Fist tank. I saw some things that I really liked and got some really good ideas from everyone there. I'm hoping to figure out a way of funding the next tank some time soon. Bret showed me something on the Gryphonians tank that really gave me a revelation on the whole tank construction concept. It's really outside of my knowledge at this time ;) but I'm planning on changing that. In a word...Fiberglas! One thing though I'm pretty sure that the next machine will have a much smaller crew carrying capacity. I can imagine going as low as a three person crew and maybe as high as five with no real troop carrying capability. Even if I never actually do this it's definitely going to be fun thinking up stuff!
9/4/02
Finally got most of the stuff up for William Shatners Spplat Attack! game
8/23/02
O.k. I have been doing some small updates here. I just haven't setup a link to the hidden page until tonight. For the time being the link is sort of hidden, it shouldn't be that hard to find though. The new page is devoted to the work we've been doing to the Tiger to prepare for the William Shatner Spplat Attack Charity game at CPX near Chicago. That's also another reason why I've been neglecting work on the site, I've been spending a lot of time either running around for this project or working on stuff out at George's. I will say this, I received the new valve for the cannon and it's out at George's. It looks like we'll be testing that out on Sunday.
8/18/02
Work has finally begun in earnest on modifying the Tiger for the William Shatner Charity event at CPX. If we can continue on at this pace we should be ready almost a week before the game. Here's a couple of pictures of the MK-II pressure chamber. It's now time to start adding all the fittings that'll turn it into a functional part of the cannon.
8/7/02
Well this is actually round two for this post, I hope I can remember everything lol. I had pretty much finished an update last night and was switching back and forth on the internet, checking a few things out. When I clicked back into Frontpage and clicked save I got one of those damn windows errors, lost everything I had spent the previous hour or so working on and it also knocked out my browser. So here I go again hahaha.
First off Wesley of Team SOG 1 sent in a picture of his teams Recoilless Rifle which has been added to the Paintball Howitzer Gallery. These things seem to be a growing part of the scenario world so all us tankers have to watch out, before you know it Demolition Goblin will be offering anti-tank classes and our lives are going to be that much more difficult hahaha.
For those of you who don't frequent the Warpig tank forum you might want to check this out. These guys recently picked up one of those carnival tennis ball tanks like the one I have pictured in the regular gallery in the unknown section (I know I keep forgetting to move it). They're planning on converting it over to a Panther Tank
Let's see now if I can recall all the stuff I typed last night on the Spplat William Shtner charity event. To top that list off we have been confirmed to be on the Federation team along with Bill Shatner. Now Bill is not just hosting this event and planning on sitting on the sidelines he's going to be in the participating in the fight, leading the troops into battle! For Bill's words on the event click the Spplat Attack picture below.
If you're interested in the Challenge Park Xtreme field where this event is going to be held at check this link out. Some of the fields are simply incredible. There are also even more details on the event there.
Also if you do plan on playing you should sign up with Spplat. At the very least doing so will shave off $50 for the Spplat Attack game and Spplat is an up and coming association of paintball players that will be doing much to further the sport of paintball.
As for us and the Tiger...well I'm not letting everything out yet, partly because we're not sure exactly what we're doing yet hahaha! I will say that I finished my preliminary sketch for modifying the Tiger to fit into a Star Trek themed event. I e-mailed it to George and he thinks it looks good. Now it's just a question of how much of it we can really do. We are going to be looking into adding either a compressor or a string of compressors to the tank to power the cannon instead of the SCUBA tanks. Not sure if we're going to go with electric or something running off of the engine, I should have at the very least a better idea after this coming weekend. One really limiting factor on that is we're running on a really tight budget for this entire event. Looks like we'll be driving there with my truck, Mr. P's van and George's car. Gas, tolls, food, lodging and don't forget the paint! It's adding up to quite a chunk of change. Which reminds me anyone want to buy a trailer? We're asking $400 for it and it'll probably work fine for someone towing something that's just not quite as big as the Tiger. We'll most likely tow it off to the local track and find someone there who wants it sometime this weekend. Some other improvements I'm putting on the list will be to improve the rotation system for the turret. George Uribe who's an old friend from our high school stage crew days is going to be helping out with that and has already thrown in some really good ideas for the cannon and the turret. George U. will most likely be flying out to join us at CPX, due to his job he just can't take off enough time to join us on the drive over.
7/31/02
Picked up a Nerf AirBazooka for $7 at WalMart. The rockets looked promising unfortunately the don't fit inside a piece of 2" PVC. The little piece of plastic that forms the two whistles is slightly larger than the tube and it isn't compressible like the fins. The box claims that this thing shoots up to 30'. From what I've heard that's between 7 and 10 times less than what some people are getting using the Nerf Pocket Rockets in their air cannons. I'm hoping to start work on the Tiger in preparation for the CPX event this weekend. George is back in Florida so the tank crew meeting has once again been delayed. I'm hoping to do some tests with the Nerf Rockets (o.k. I'm dying to fire off one of the two Howlers George found when he was in Florida for the 4th of July races at Datona hahaha). Can anyone say Sabot? hahahahahahaha. As far as my first test with the AirBazooka, well 25 pumps got me 10 to 15 feet. It may have gone further but it glanced off the door frame and spooked our kitten. I don't think that these things will be effective anti-tank devices.
7/20/02
I finally got a new truck! Well new for me, hahaha. Picked up a 1996 Chevy Silverado 2500 4x4 yesterday, so now the bank owns a truck in my name for the next 5 years. I really wasn't planning on doing this for almost another month but things just kind of fell into place. The only thing that it doesn't have that I had wanted was the third door. I'd also like to have a cap on it but that can wait. This is going to be our primary tank hauling vehicle from now on. Now all we need to do is get our trailer either repaired or replaced.
7/10/02
Not really tank related but if anyone is a NASCAR fan you'll appreciate this. George went off to Florida for the night race at Daytona, due to what we call the 'Power of George' and the fact that he's a NY City Fireman he managed to get to work as a firefighter on Dale Jr.s pit. George's wife Dawn got to take all the pictures.
7/8/02
I went out to George's today and picked up the air lines, adapters and such from our main gun. I probably won't seriously start work on the Mark II cannon for another week and a half though. Basically I'm building a new pressure chamber (current one leaks) and going with a better valve. I'm also hoping to improve the way it loads. I'm still thinking of pulling the turret off and doing some improvements to that too. Most likely re-skinning it along with a different setup for the gun ports, bigger casters and possibly a metal ring for them to roll on. The clock is really starting to tick on the CPX game!
7/6/02
I really haven't had much in the way of news for Armored Fist lately. Our next Big event is going to be the CPX Charity game. We're planning on playing on the Federation team. I finally got around to doing one of my internet searches for paintball tanks and got quite a surprise. There's a field out in Utah that has a Tiger that's the absolutely most accurate I've ever seen. I haven't been able to contact them yet but by the look of the pictures it's not an actual paintball tank, seems to be just a prop to mark the entrance to the field.
check the pictures section of their web site for the Showdown Outdoor field. I could be picky and point out a few minor inaccuracies but to tell the truth it's just an incredible piece of work. In fact the only Tigers I've seen that look better than this one is the toy we have, pictured here http://www.armoredfistpaintball.com/BG-02-Sun-AF-Tiger-model-001.jpg and the real Tiger being restored over in England here http://www.tiger-tank.com/ anyway click the Pegleg logo and check it out! (EDIT:) O.K. this is what you get for doing work at 2:00 a.m. If you think their tank is incredible just click on the 'About Pegleg' and read Dale's story. And before anyone asks, yes their Tiger looks better than ours but I'm pretty sure that we have the advantage, at least I hope we do hahaha.
5/26/02
And Finally! Now I've been neglecting a bunch of stuff that's been sent in for a while now mostly due to tank stuff for the PBLI Big Game of course. So I sat down this morning and started sorting through all the e-mail I had left in my in box. After about an hour or so I finally got it down to under thirty e-mails that were related to Armored Fist. Mind you this is in no order what so ever since I was constantly jumping around through the e-mail and completely lost track of any sort of possible order. This also means that I could have missed something, so if anyone has sent in anything that isn't up after this update please re-send it!
Dale Dupont sent in a R/C turret design that I've posted over in the Tank Designs section. Dale also sent in an interesting e-mail that I didn't know what to do with at first so I'm posting it here and maybe some of us might be able to help him out. Cousins Paintball does a small charity event at PBLI during the summer that's related so I'm going to put some feelers out to them about this and maybe get some more info for Dale.
I have a fantasy of a Small, fast 7 mph, maneuverable, 200 lb tank that is radio controlled remotely using 2 closed circuit audio and video wireless. One audio/video for a driver, and another for the gunner. "Armor plates" would record hits and calculated for a 'Kill formula' The goal was NOT for a D Day type of scenerio per se but simply to allow physically challenged individuals to play competitive paintball on a commerical field. Or a scenario game.
At this point I plan to gather together individuals and organizations interested in designing, building, and implementing this rather ambitious project. I cannot do it myself because I personnally lack the technical skills in RC, Audio/visual links, $Money, etc. I would like to extend an invitation to you and other persons and organiztion you may be affiliated with to play a role in this project. Large, small, financially, or just free advise.
When I have gathered the basic expertise together and completed the design parameters, I plan to embark upon the task of funding and implementing the project. With the basic design and committed parties, I will write a grant and other funding proposals that will be administered by an appropriate Non Profit Organization It will probably be one that provides services for physically challenged individuals in cooperation with a local commercial field. So ponder this a little and what you could contribute or make available. Regardless, all comments and suggestions are welcome.
Thanks
Dale
Dale's e-mail is ahcp@worldnet.att.net although I've been getting an error message using it so I hope Dale checks in soon.. I'm not sure if anyone will be able to help him out but one thing everyone I talk to about paintball tanks through Armored Fist has, is plenty of good ideas.
Carter Powel up in Lancaster NY has a new web site at: http://www.geocities.com/lancasterpaintball/home.html he also picked up this in one of the PBLI Big Game pics:
Finally got to posting the updated designs for Peter aka 'Jammyboy' of his mini 6-wheeler tank over in the Tank Designs section. I've been procrastinating on these for almost two months now and I apologize to Peter for the delay.
This is a really good link for tankers looking for a resource to help them with making a more accurate looking tank http://www.onwar.com/tanks/index.htm the only bad thing about this site is the large number of pop-up ads and another annoyance is the back button gets disabled when you get to the actual line drawings. You can get around that by clicking the little down arrow next to the back button on IE. Thanks goes out to Dave for sending that one in.
Updated both Tank Links and Paintball Links a bit, mostly stuff that was here in the news section copied over to a more appropriate place.
Posted an e-mail from Jim Bergles about how he stood the Freak on it's nose over at Paintball Sams. Anyone who has ever had one of my old toyota rides in the woods will especially love this one. Anyway Jims story is posted over in the Tank Stories section or click this link.
David of the Bad Monkeys sent in an updated picture of Thulsa Doom from the recent Wayne's World 'Tanker Girls' event
Kyle "Kyote" DeVries with the Pink Panzer has joined Team Warlords. He should be sending in pictures of it soon. last I heard he was finished with the paint job. I've added his tank to the Tank Names section and made up a 'reserved' spot for his tank over in the Germanic Invaders gallery.
I also added the Bad Monkeys Silver Back to the Tank Names section.
I got word from Anthony that He and his Dad have joined the Bad Monkeys. I haven't moved his tank the Devastator yet since he's trying to sell it but this puts the Bad Monkeys up to FIVE! paintball tanks.
-=MoOsE GoD=- of Twilight Paintball sent in a picture of his teams howitzer. With this picture along with the howitzer at the 2002 PBLI Big Game, I figured it was time to create another sub gallery. This one is dedicated to Paintball Howitzers. Most of which are already scattered around the gallery and I'm going to keep copies of them in their original locations.
Got word from an 88Arty through the WarPig tank forum about one of the unknown tanks in the Tank Gallery (near the bottom). Not actually a paintball tank but still a tank. Shoots tennis balls for amusement park rides.
Bill Bailey recently sent in a couple of more pics.
The first one is the new German Scout car for the Oklahoma D-Day event. The second is a quad based tank out at The Smakzone in Patterson Missouri. They're both in the tank galleries also.
Added the Scorpions LAV to the gallery in addition to the pics in the 2002 PBLI Big Game collection. An item of interest about the LAV, the Scorpions built it in 4 weeks and that includes replacing the tranny. They're also the second tank crew in the Tank Crew section. Check it if you want to send in pictures to have your tank crew posted to see the format I'm using. I like getting each individual crew member with the tank and then enter their info.
What's next for us here at Armored Fist? Well we didn't build the Sherman before the Big Game but I'm still playing with it. We're thinking that it'd be very nice to take a Tiger and a Sherman to the Skirmish D-Day event in July. I have the toasted tranny out and had my Dad over yesterday with his tap and die set to clean up the threads going into the crank. I had stopped by Suffolk Auto Recycling where Butch works as a mechanic and his boss donated a flywheel. They're on Lincoln Avenue in Holbrook if you live on L.I. and need any parts. While I was waiting for one of the yard guys to pull the tranny I got to watch Butch repair a mangled Bronco steering column. Interesting job and pretty scary looking, not something I could take apart. After my Dad clean out the threads I bolted on the new flywheel and we managed to jump start the old Blazer it ran pretty well but the battery is so dead it wouldn't hold a charge. We're one step closer hahaha, should be having the tank crew meeting on all that soon.
Man I hope that's everything!
Almost but not quite! hahaha, just after I posted this update I got an e-mail from Todd Hintzmann, Captain of the Army of Darkness that I had a broken link to a picture of Anthony's tank at 'Tanker Girls' I fixed it near the For Sale sign and here it is also http://www.aodpb.com/images/tankergirl/tank2.JPG Thanks for the heads up Todd.
