RC paintball tank/ground drone?

[redfireant3]

I'm surprised I haven't seen any ground drones yet but I'm going to begin finishing a project I started years ago for a rc lawn mower(just repropose the parts for a UGV). Do you think fields would allow it for scenario games? The motors were from a Pride Jazzy style wheelchair and I'm going to use a metal lawn cart as the frame so it won't be super big and 40v tool batteries for power so it'll be easy to keep moving. Has anyone ever seen something like this?

[Trbo323]

Doubtful. They have lots of rules around normal tanks with human drivers in control. With a drone you can't look around and make sure there's nobody nearby before you move it.

Not to mention, how does the other team eliminate it? It would be pretty unfair if one team gets an invincible juggernaut drone that just can't be taken out.

Sent from my motorola edge 5G UW (2021) using Tapatalk

[redfireant3]

reposted as a comment below since the app doesn't display quotes

[redfireant3]

Same rules as tanks, need a tank walker/ref(would probably be the drone operator), eliminate with Nerf rocket, satchel, whatever prop. Same encroachment rule that you can't just roll up inside a bunker with another player, stick to the roads only, and speed limit. plus with the motor weight limit of 300lbs, it would weigh about as much as a person.

[Ratzo]

I had thought of making an RC mobile paint bomb back in 1999.

[Ecapnation]

Been there done that....

The fields we brought it too were receptive and loved it. Basically we had two operators a weapons guy and a driver. It wasn't fast but had a good amount of torque for off road running.

We had about a half mile range with cameras because we used off the shelf long range baby monitors because they were cheap and ran on 12 volts. The rc set up had a line of sight range of well over a mile.

The turret has a joint to allow continuous 360° rotation with the air being in the tank body. But we stuffed an ion and 500 rounds in there...... It was a thin aluminum light fixture body and basically got crushed in by shots..... And yeah some idiot flipped it.

After it's first "full combat" outing we switched it to more anti tank and psy-ops use.

Currently it's used as a remote snow plow if the need arises lol.

[redfireant3]

That is so awesome! Got some questions,
Does the turret have elevation?
What did you use as a hit flag?
What's the anti-tank setup look like?
Did you get many camera shots?
Is the body aluminum? I was thinking of using plexiglass but that looks great.

Amazing build, thanks for the reply!

[Ecapnation]

Not a remote controlled elevation but I did mount the ion on a hinge with a large threaded rod on it so we had a bit of angular control ... Basically enough to not constantly shoot people in the junk.

The fields assigned refs to all tanks that we brought it to. However mostly it was utilized as an Area Denial Weapon so you had to have a mission card to destroy it. When it was eliminated we had a flashing light in the back we would turn on.

The anti tank set up was no turret just a bank of six homebrew sprinkler valve controlled "cannons" they only ran at like 40 psi so had minimal range... Basically we would drive the thing into a hidden area and wait for a tank to drive by a fire off everything hoping we got the needed two hits to eliminate the tank. It worked but was cumbersome and very short range.

The camera was in a weird low spot with a large field of view..... The nose of the tank just in front of the bash bar is 1 inch thick lexan we tucked the camera set up in there. The little round plate is where the antenna sits it's silver painted plastic so the signal could get out

I over built the crap out of it knowing full well someone would try and flip it...... Under all the aluminum is this

- 1x1x.125 wall chrome moly steel frame
- .375 plywood
- .125 lexan
- the outside layer is .0625 aluminum with the exception of the top deck.... That's .25 aluminum because we hung the turret bearing on it ...... Which came from a magazine rack of all things.

It honestly could take small arms fire direct to the side and shrug it off.