Other Combat devices at Flight Fest '24

Mutley

Well-known member
I live for Combat at Flite Fest, it is a total rush getting your plane up in the air in a sea of chaos.
I've seen folks tow things from behind in order to clothes hang other aircraft, in recent years, someone had a wooden 'fish hook' and it actually caused 1 or 2 planes to get tripped up.
Last year I saw a lad with a FPV guided paintball gun mounted to one of those "big wheels" plastic cars- you know those 1 mph electric powered kids toys.
He shot it in combat at other aircraft participating in combat, although it jammed after like 3 shots... it inspired me.

Anyone have any interesting observations or ideas to use in combat this year?
 

LitterBug

Techno Nut
Moderator
My spiders will be there again. Plausible multiple in the air at the same time if I recruit other pilots. They may spin webs..... Just Sayin'

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Mutley

Well-known member
It's compressed air powered, it can lob 33gram water-filled ping pong balls about 300' at a 45°, and 1.5" ice spheres the same distance. We chose ice so we don't have to pick up anything after the attack. Much thanks to @FoamyDM for organizing the 'focus group'
 

Piotrsko

Master member
Like it, hope you get allowed to use it, but suspect not, probably because of "insurance issues" and no control over where projectiles end up. Since paint balls were last used, can you chamber those?

Needs something to force planes over, I can see being sucessful just avoiding the area.

Need$ better methof of cranking and aiming? Odd looking hand cranks.
 

Mutley

Well-known member
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Here's the inspiration. Working on the hand-made handles. This may be just a limited access project demonstration at edgewater later on.
 

Pieliker96

Elite member
From a general combat philosophy standpoint, if you're going for maximum collision chance then you want to make the plane as big as possible to take up as much 3D space as possible. If you then want to survive those collisions, you want the likelihood of colliding with the actual important bits you need to fly to be small - i.e. most of the size of the plane should be stuff that you don't mind getting hit. A great way to "make the plane bigger" that meets these two criteria is tow lines/nets. The drag/mass penalty is small, and as long as the lines are detachable from the plane, they can take out other planes without bringing your own down in the process. Of course, snagging a line itself doesn't necessarily guarantee a kill, it's only really effective if snagged around the motor/prop. I've been adding a parachute to that line which adds drag to the snagged plane. I got a lot of chute deployments last year, but ~15" model rocket chutes weren't doing the trick, which is why I'm going big this year - real big.

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I think this should be enough of a hindrance to your typical combat plane to drastically reduce it's endurance, if it doesn't immediately get dropped out of the sky. I think it's also important to have a drogue on your line, whether using the chute method or not, because it increases the chances of the line getting caught - otherwise it could just slip on by. Last year the drogue was just blunt on the tips, this year I've added skewers to hopefully dig into whatever is brushing up against the line and get a good strong catch. I'll need it if I have the size of parachutes I do. EDIT: The tip skewers do not work well! They hang up the line during the unravelling process at launch. Glad I discovered this during a test flight.

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Mr NCT

Site Moderator
Shooting a plane from the ground is WAY harder than it looks. I saw and participated in a demo of a line of 8 Vulcan AA guns with untrained gunners shooting at a target drone. It took 3 passes before it was hit and that's with each gun firing between 1000 and 3000 rounds a minute. Watch the video of apple cannons against the B-17.