I've been playing with a firing system for cannons for Age of Sail ships on a 1/48 scale. On this scale 32 pounders would be about the size of a .177 bb. Basically I've got 5 cannons daisy-chained together that work off of a standard pellet gun C02 cartridge. It seems to work okay and it has a slight "ripple" effect as the pressure travels down the tube. The problem is that those small canisters dont provide a lot of shots. Also, the way that I have the ammo feed set up currently the guns only carry about 12-15 rounds of ammo before they're out. I'm trying to figure out how to bolster the pressure in the system without rupturing the lines and make a single-hopper system that loads all (or at least more than one) gun simultaneously. Anyone who's good with pressure systems who would like to help, please contact me at: Johnathan.clayborn@gmail.com. Thanks!
If you use a 3.5 oz tank and run your tubing like a fast gun or big gun ship then you will be fine. Are you using solenoids? If not what are you using?
An idea for this would be (will it work?) a combo big/fast fun setup. I like fast gun cannons as they are cheap. Cheap is good when looking at 5 to 10 cannons per ship as far as I am concerned. The main reason fast gun doesnt use hoppers I am told is that they don't feed at the rate needed for the kind of shooting we do. In my baden I can dumb my 50 shot bow gun in 20 secs or less. So either use 4 or 5 fast guns per side with 75 or 100 round magazines OR use a big gun ammo hopper in place of the standard fast gun magazine. With a reload time of 4-8 seconds jamming shouldnt be an issue. We can always add a small vibrating motor to the ammo hopper to keep them from blocking the magazine or sticking in the hopper. I suppose that we can use advanced tech to control the shooting. Lets say whenever the ship heals to a certain point the guns will be disabled until it returns to a safe position. This can be done with a small micro-controller. Any thoughts so far?
