Re: Bring on the infantry [TANKS]

[strangebut-at-aol.com]

To reply to the various points raised:

 

1. I accept that a HE shot arriving within 6 feet would seriously inconvenience an infantryman! The problem I was raising was that if one has a walker, walking on its feet (as opposed to on a motorised base, say) then he can't also stand on a base. I suppose that you could suspend a 12" hoop around his waist, but it would look a bit Elizabeth I. More realisticly one could measure with a hoop after a shot, but this would slow things down considerably.

 

2. Yes, obviously there would in reality be thousands of infantry around, but we are only concerned about the one with a bazooka, who would not be walking around but hiding ina hole and difficult to hit or even see.

 

3.I take Steve's point about the vulnerability of the machanical marvel which I am trying to create. Size, vulnerability, and speed are all issues with a 12" robot. I have a feeling that if one is to produce a walker that is battleworthy then it will probably be nearer 24" high (I just wandered off into a fantasy there about a motorised base, or "moving foxhole" perhaps, but I think that basically that's a t-a-n-k).

 

Another possibility would be a very simple walker with no steering, no rc, that just walked forward until it touched a tank with its outstretched paintball (or perhaps used a PIR or very simple rc so that it fired when something came in view).  One could make these cheaply and fairly robustly and set off say 6 or more at a time. Casualties would be horrendous, but that's war.

 

4. Someone asked about servos and the difficulty of constantly reversing them. I am using a "sun and planet" system, so the motor goes 1 way only. It's a bit like the way a steam railway engine (or internal combustion engine) converts an in-out piston movement into a circular movement, only the other way round. I have some photos of a couple of test rigs but I can't get them up at the moment.

 

For myself though I'm going with the "delicate walker" option, and see where it takes me. Thanks for everyone's comments. The site has produced "Cheap control Systems" which looks very interesting. The point about infra-red is that unlike rc you can shield it, so that you can control say 3 figures individually or all together.

 

Cheers

 

Phil

-----Original Message-----
From: mxlyons-at-cox.net
To: tanks-at-rctankcombat.com
Sent: Thu, 1 Feb 2007 3.23AM
Subject: Re: Bring on the infantry [TANKS]

For the record, I proposed a 12" radius i.e. 2 foot diameter, which scales to 6 
feet in any direction.

Regards,
  Mike Lyons

...
> > so would you say that a 12" disc of some sort  (paper plate maybe?) 
> > would be acceptable as a kill zone?
> >  
> > Chris
> > Odyssey Slipways <http://hometown.aol.com/odysseyslipways/index.html>
> 
> To be honest 12" (6ft) isn't anywhere near what I would suspect is the 
> killzone of an average tank shell.
> But I think for what we are doing 12" would be good.