Then don't build guns. Simple. Most of if not all of the Vets build their own. If you sell them or patent them you expose yourself for VERY LITTLE money. My wife read me the riot act back in the 1980's and frankly I am glad she did.
Hmm, I seem to remember a wolf urine gun before freon. The idea was that wolf urine is more viscous than plain old water, therfore it has substantially more dynamic capability when impacted on 1/32 balsa at high velocity. Of course wolf urine has an acidic quality in reaction to the steel of the pneumatic spring therefore frequent replacement was necessary. In other words all the regular Joe's would need a screw driver and a spring compressor. The other limitation was availability of urine. Unless you had a pack of wolves camped in your back yard or were willing to climb the fence of the Wolf enclosure at the Denver zoo you were sol. Randy
Old timer!!!! Ha, I have gone to every IRC Nats since 1983!!!! I have lived through the freon, unlimited mags, spurt guns (not only legal but the only gun in town) , 1/32" balsa superstructure. And you call your self an Old Timer!!! Yes, we do look skeptically and newbies coming in with "great" ideas. I have heard most of it like heated bb's to trailing string (I think the Big Boats tried that.), and to the universal boat. Bring it to the lake so we can look at it.
As soon as you sell one everyone in a given area will get a good look at it. Lots of guys around that can reverse engineer... happens all the time. If your concern is someone using your ideas.. you are right you may want to hold back on that,
Well, Heck. run with the water gun thing on a RTR beginner model. a Destroyer or something. Ideally a gearing with twin sterns to make a decent punch. I don't know how you'd make sure that they can't be shot more than the allowed number of times, but go ahead, knock yourself out--put out a few of them. I'll buy one of the suckers if a water jet cannon goes through balsa at close range. it'd be the Coors Light of the hobby, barely beer, but *still Beer*. As to CO2, there are onesies and twosies of us that don't have a ready source of CO2. I think my nearest CO2 source is a 90 minute drive away. @Beaver helped me Modify an air compressor to use for test firing my guns. For the extremely low number of people in my position, the struggle to ensure the guns are ready on gameday is real. The rest of you Jabroneys, that ain't a problem, CO2 flows from the mouths of fountains and you merely have to extend your bottles. @modelshipsahoy , I'm hoping to see you at one of the GLAS battles this spring. Kas, Craig, and Will are great brains to pick at, so pester them. Me, I love engineering innovations, and spend half of my time just reveling in the amount of tinkering I get to do on these mad creations. So any time somebody has a cool Idea, I like to encourage them. As @Kevin P. mentions all the time on the forum, there's a lot of typing but not a lot of doing that happens. (his personal version of "pics or it didn't happen"). Most of my atypical zany Ideas, I keep them Off the main forum because I don't feel like being subjected to an inquisition. If I have a question about something, or need help, I either ask in person, or Ask Kevin, Kas, Will, Beaver or Craig on an inbox message. Doing and Proving have a high value, but after Strike's dissolution, I'd suggest caution if you're looking to profitable ventures in the hobby. The Hobby's not going do die out any time soon, so it's not like you have to rush things into development. The best place, I suspect, to do new development is in the back channels of the hobby, and present the tested results to a stunned community. @jadfer 's brawler concept probably took a lot of flack in the beginning, but now you've got a sizable chunk of the fleet running in Brawler configuration.
Didn’t think about the ammo limit for water cannon... I guess you could do a mechanical counter that snaps shut the supply valve after x number of shots...didn’t really get down to development of it, but I’m an engineer in a field closely related to waterjet cutting machine development... It can be done. The good thing for all you Hooligans, is that I have no grand hopes nor needs of large piles of combat market cash to keep my lights on. My powerboats are the bread and butter of my business... plus I have a day job. I am just like you and simply love the concept. I have already spent a huge pile of cash getting going here with no end to the red ink in sight.
Truthfully it was not my idea it was flower power boy - Daisy Jeff.. but I didn't need much convincing. Two pumps... SOLD... Haymaker and Stern Side-Mount … SOLD... Bow Gun @ 15 deg.. SOLD... All of it was said it wouldn't work and I can't tell you how many times I pulled up to a ship and dumped that bow gun and after 10 shots.. they got moving real fast. In a ship that can sit and spin this is a killer setup. Truth be told I had considered going with 1.5 pumps and two bow guns but there would be no down-angle on the A-turret.
Well, we'll see what the Texas does with the 2 bow guns and 1 pump. I don't feel like gutting her out to install a half unit pump, it'll be cool to see, but I'm going to take a while to figure out the bow gun thing and how to do it best, then build a New Mexico with those lessons learned and an even crazier setup.
I am building one of the vacuboat fletchers and have a couple of friends who may do likewise, I like the idea for forming a DESRON and fighting as a cohesive unit. I was wondering if these destroyers are actually faster and more nimble than the larger ships.
dude they're fast AF. like, absurdly fast. here's mathematically how fast they are. Displacement hull speed is generally the *absolute maximum* speed that a hull can go before hydroplaning. when you do the math for a boat like my Idaho (52.08 inches long) the Maximum displacement speed is 3.15 mph, which is a tad under 22 seconds. Idaho is a 26 second (2.622 mph), so as long as I have the right running gear, the hull will readily meet speed. In other words, the IRCWCC speed for Idaho is around 83% of her maximum hull speed. A fletcher was 377 ft long in 1:1. 1:144 she is 31.42 inches long. IRCWCC speed is 21 seconds. So let's crank this out. 1.34*Squareroot(length at WL in feet)= (Max hull speed, Knots) Now I get that I am using the LOA, but the LWL on a Fletcher is close enough that I'm waving it off. I don't care enough to look it up. this is a hobby so my DILLIGAF factor is high 1.34*SqRt(2.618ft)=(2.168 KTs)=2.495 mph what is 2.495 mph in seconds per 100ft? Unit conversion time!!! 100ft/X sec =2.495 Miles / 1 Hour mile=5280 ft so 100 ft/X sec = 13173.6 ft / 1 hour hour=3600 seconds. So 100 ft/X sec = 3.65 ft / second 100 ft = 3.65X/sec 100 ft*sec =3.65Xft*sec 27.3298 sec= X A Fletcher's MAX HULL SPEED is far slower than what we give them for speed. and if you watch videos of them, you'll notice that they're effectively climbing out of the trough that their bow and stern wakes are creating, and starting to hydroplane. Granted, this is the equation that describes the interaction of the bow and stern wave functions. it is by no means complete. but this gives you an idea of how obscenely fast these little DDs are compared to 1:1. Even when side by side with even our absurdly fast Superdreadnoughts (Remember, the IRL Idaho's flank speed (21 kts) was 63% of her displacement speed, and an IRCWCC Idaho speed is 83%, which would have been IRL like 28 kts) the Destroyers are still rocketships Hope that answers your question. generally yes, if you got like 6-8 Fletchers and ganged up on me in my slugger, I would not be able to hold them off. I'd hem you guys up if you made a mistake, but generally would get poked full of holes by experienced DD cdrs.
