guide plates and speed [TANKS]

["Chrysanthos Kanellopoulos" <xchrysk-at-otenet.gr>]

I can confirm that the Marines reintroduced them.  They just added
checking for and clearing debris from the guide plate to the list of
"at halt" PMS checks, no big deal. Clark.

 

Ok, I feel better now. I can think of them as 'field conversion' guide plates. the hinge tracks are not thrown if you run on trimmed lawn and they are well tensioned (and abuse your ball bearings, or so I heard)., But if you like sagging tracks and you want to steer and skid over trenches and obstacles, and surf happily on bumpy ground with hidden rocks under the bush, then you do need guide plates. Work things at our convenience.

 

In other news, I measured the speed of my latest tank with a laser meter and a timer. I timed it three times and it covers 60 -  63 ms in 30 seconds. This is translated as 7.2 - 7.6 kms/h.  So the test results are:  18 V DeWalts, 18 V - 4 Amp batteries, 25 kgr vehicle weight, (two 12 V fans on 18 V batteries), air -and motor- temperature 32 d. Celsius, moderately sagging tracks, 9 cm dia. sprockets => speed of  7.5 kms /h on flat, compacted soil, with plenty of torque for U-turns.

Trimmed lawn has better traction. Ha-Go's top speed was 45 km/h  or 7.5 km/h in scale 1:6. Perfect. AT last, one thing is to scale!

 

The speed on teh 9 cm-dia.-drive wheels, with the load of 25 kgr, is 443 RPM. (7.500 ms : 60 : 0.09 m. : 3.1416) It sounds awfully lot or I have almost no loss and teh torque is more than plenty. Joe said about 30 messages back that "Most of the time our tank motors operate at about 75% of no-load speed which is close to maximum efficiency."  What is the RPM speed of the DeWalt 960's - 18V in teh low gear and no load to find out my loss? I guess I should go find it.

 

Chrys K.