Phil,
AMAZING! Great idea on those keyfobs. I'd love to see how they
perform. I've got enough to worry about before I can go spending on
that (namely T027, and FA006, which have already cost me enough!). I'm
hooked though, so what does it matter. Can't wait to see these in action.
By the way, is that your new tank shed? If so, well done on finishing
that. I get the impression you've got a lot of *half* finished projects
(so have I mind you). Time to finish them, I guess!
Well done, I look forward to seeing what else you have to offer. P.S.
Did hot glue solve the castle's "self-dismantling" issue? If so, I'd
like to take credit for that.
Chris "I want to get building again, but these damned exams are in the
way!" M
Phil wrote:
> It lives!
>
> At last I can reveal my secret project for the winter: radio-
> controlled infantry!
>
> http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff13/sasquevaneach/SV202839.jpg
>
> Older members will recall that I spent some time trying to get this
> working a year or so ago.
>
> THE DREAM
> My original concept was this: A half-track would rumble up; 4
> infantrymen would debus from the back, and march (yes, march as in
> walking) to attack an enemy tank. 2 or 3 of the chaps might be shot,
> but 1 or 2 would get through to beat up the enemy. Yeh, right.
>
> I spent some time trying to get a walking robot to work, and I got as
> far as this:http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff13/sasquevaneach/
> Robot1001.jpg This would walk- just about- if you held it up so as not
> to put any weight on it, and might be developed into something that
> might work- just- on a nice flat table. However, working on a bumpy
> field, and in conjunction with heavy radio-controlled tanks which
> might occasionally bump into it, was clearly going to be impossible.
>
> I found a walking figure for £600, but I it looked fairly fragile. Not
> the thing with Neil’s “challenged” driving skills anyway. Oh, here’s a
> silly picture:
>
> http://www.robothut.robotnut.com/atomicbat.html
>
> Not entirely suitable.
>
> I tried various layouts for soldiers with wheels instead of legs, or
> even tracks, but nothing that didn’t look, as my wife put it, “like a
> tank with a head stuck on top”.
>
> I then went on to building tanks, but still pondered on infantry…
>
> ON THE ROLE OF INFANTRY ON THE RADIO-CONTROLLED BATTLEFIELD
> On a real battlefield, infantry have always been able to attack and
> destroy tanks. A rifle bullet inside a tank will ping around until it
> hits something sticky. An anti-tank rifle, bazooka, panzerfaust or RPG
> can attack it through armour. In WWII a Japanese officer leapt out of
> the jungle, jumped on a tank and got the commander and gunner with his
> katana. He was poking around inside for the radio operator when the
> latter shot him (My father was a tank radio operator in Burma, and
> told me the story- it wasn’t him though).
>
> From the point of view of a tank crew, infantry are virtually
> invisible when hiding on cover; easy to kill when moving; and
> dangerous when close. From the point of view of rc tank combat, that
> translates as equivalent to a self-operating mine- a stationery single-
> shot weapon with a degree of aiming- as envisaged in the rules.
>
> Trouble is though, I’m not interested in stationery things. I want it
> to move. The one thing I didn’t want was to have a figure standing on
> a powered base, like a wargames figure.
>
> The figure
> OK as you can see I went with a powered base. The motors are these :
> http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=43357&DOY=23m1#specifi
> motors- the 30:1 ones similar to those we usually use for traversing
> and suchlike- and the batteries will be 8 x 1.5 V 2,300 mAh
> rechargeables. These are stacked inside the figures legs- in later
> models I might try to get them under the base, which will increase
> stability (and appearance) at the expense of ground clearance. I
> considered having a separate 12V mini-battery for the radio, but
> haven’t at the moment.
>
> ON RADIO CONTROL
> I went for these key-fob transmitters:
> http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?ModuleNo=30323&doy=22m3
> You’re probably wondering why I didn’t go for a straightforward rc
> unit using servos (adapted for continuous movement) for power. The
> point is that I don’t see infantry on the RC battlefield as just tiny
> slow single-shot tanks. To put it another way, I don’t want to play
> with one soldier, but a whole army (well, say, 2 or 4) bwahahah! OK
> sorry about that but with these controllers- which are coded- I can
> have 4 separately controlled figures each with a separate controller,
> and a 5th master controlled keyed to all 4 so that I can control them
> separately or together (SQAUD left turn!) This was 1 or 2 can get shot
> but the rest can carry on. A little- just a little- like real life.
>
> WEAPONS SYSTEM
> My first thought was a spring-loaded bazooka. Springs are much less
> trouble than compressed air, I think. The only trouble is that I
> didn’t feel that a bazooka would really look right- I couldn’t see a
> standing figure charging across the battlefield with a shouldered
> bazooka, and if he was in the kneeling position then my opponents
> would say that he wasn’t really a big enough target. Another problem
> is that it could only be single-shot.
>
> Now, the rules assume single-shot but while that is fine for static
> models but imagine going to the trouble of creating a squad of moving
> infantrymen who charge up in a half-track, debus, charge tanks/guns
> Somme-style, losing 3 of their number, then arrive within their (very
> short) range then oops miss so let’s go home again. I think he should
> get a 2nd shot. I had an idea based on a medieval trebuchet- a
> spinning arm with 3 or 4 paintballs inside it- but having realised
> that that would never work I went for torsion-power, using pieces of
> luggage elastic.
>
> If you look at the left arm, it’s got a piece of elastic attached to
> the base. This is the “just fired” position. If you imagine winding
> the arm anti-clockwise about 340 degrees, the elastic will tension and
> a trigger (in his chest) will hold it in position with the arm held
> low in front of his body. Put a paintball in the hand (it had a hand
> but it fell off last time I test-fired it- the elastic is quite
> strong) let it go and the figure bowls it underarm at the target. Fit
> another arm on the other side (I’ve got an idea for the trigger- I’ll
> explain that later) and you’ve got a 2-shot figure that bowls
> paintballs (representing grenades or sticky-bombs) at about groin
> height 3-4 inches from the ground. That, by the way, is much better
> than bowling overarm 15-16 inches from the ground, where the shot is
> likely to sail over the target.
>
> So that’s were we are so far. The “head” is just a screwdriver
> inserted to give an idea- I can model heads. Action Man (who, oddly,
> appears to have joined the Village People) is there to show the size.
> The figure will have cotton clothes to hold everything in place (wool
> would be more authentic but I’m not taking a dry-clean-only figure to
> a paintball battle and anyway, wool looks a little fluffy at this
> scale).
>
> Hopefully we will end up with a 1/6th scale figure that can cope with
> a reasonably flat field, will be reasonably rebust, cheap enough
> (about £70) and simple enough that I can field several, repairable,
> and moderately authentic both in terms of appearance and (more
> importantly) function.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Phil “Generalissimo” Palmer
>
> >
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