How do you Tank Battle at club meets?

[Tiger6]

Here is a quick tour of (part of) Danville's battlefield as seen from the back of my halftrack (and the late great Phil Pflueger leading in his TD conversion) - not sure about anybody else, but I would get quite seasick watching that kind of view for more than a few minutes at a time...

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[Tiger6]

Here is the same camera platform runing around outdoors - I had to have Youtube's image stabiliser work its magic on this one as otherwise it is unwatchable:

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[General Jumbo01]

Most tiny modern FPV cameras have image stabilisation as standard. Driving by FPV can be done in two ways, but FPV goggles or using you phone screen mounted atop your transmitter. The latter allows you to look around, driving normally until you want to aim/fire.

[tomhugill]

FPV needs a tiny camera that can look out of a 5mm hole next to the IR emitter. You won't see it. Higher powered emitters pose no threat to anyone else if the tube length and diameter restrict the beam spread. Its either on target or its not.

High cost electronics? Why, get it made in China (where its all made anyway). It would be no more expensive than any MFU board.

I'm sorry, But the quickest way to get bored with a hobby is for it to have no structure or competition. A wandering monthly programme using various club venues would be superb but, if all you want to do is talk and have free for all's then that's not for me. Add structure and competitions and talking and socialising becomes more meaningful and more fun - yes, more fun.

Sounds to me as though this is a hobby that's lost its way, which might be why all the magazines, real or 'e', have folded, why there are so very few clubs around, some of them not at all active, afraid of change and new ideas. Harsh? Maybe, but l suspect its true.

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There were never magazines for rctanks.

[Tiger6]

There was an E-zine put out by the Michiana club in the early to mid 2000's if memory serves, and the Bay Area group had a news letter around a similar time, but not sure how widely it was circulated outside of that group? The Michiana group lasted 4 editions - I used to have a complete set but no idea what happened to the pdfs - and I believe both clubs folded 10 years ago - certainly Miciana was wrapping up just as we got things moving in Detroit in late 2009.

Its a niche hobby and we have always struggled to maintain a critical mass of interested people.

[General Jumbo01]

FPV needs a tiny camera that can look out of a 5mm hole next to the IR emitter. You won't see it. Higher powered emitters pose no threat to anyone else if the tube length and diameter restrict the beam spread. Its either on target or its not.

High cost electronics? Why, get it made in China (where its all made anyway). It would be no more expensive than any MFU board.

I'm sorry, But the quickest way to get bored with a hobby is for it to have no structure or competition. A wandering monthly programme using various club venues would be superb but, if all you want to do is talk and have free for all's then that's not for me. Add structure and competitions and talking and socialising becomes more meaningful and more fun - yes, more fun.

Sounds to me as though this is a hobby that's lost its way, which might be why all the magazines, real or 'e', have folded, why there are so very few clubs around, some of them not at all active, afraid of change and new ideas. Harsh? Maybe, but l suspect its true.

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There were never magazines for rctanks.

That's not what Google says but l wasn't into it then. However, if not, why not?

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[General Jumbo01]

Its a niche hobby and we have always struggled to maintain a critical mass of interested people.

Tamiya prices saw to that! It doesn't need to be now though. When l started the 1/10th Drift Championships RC drifting wasn't niche, it didn't exist. With the right management it became mainstream with 3 to 10 pages per month in Radio Race Car International and clubs starting all over the world using the D1RC rules and regs formulated by myself and son. It just takes a bit of dedication while you ignore the doubters.

I'm happy to provide a conference room here in the south east if anyone else would like to see this work. Just pm me.



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[Tiger6]

Even back in the day when you could buy an assembled DBC for $120 and a HL Tiger for $50, people weren't flocking to the hobby - Cost really isn't the issue. I'm sure your drifting cars weren't cheap, nor are the racing drones that seem to be all the rage at the moment.

I think perhaps the real issue is that you don't need a whole lot of infrastructure to race buggies or drones, where as making a tank battle both visually interesting to spectators, and stimulating for the particpants requires far more effort and resources. A lot of the RC tank battlefields you see online have taken years to put together (and considerable sums of money), and require constant maintainance and improvement by the local club. You need obsticles for tanks to hide behind (i.e. buildings), landscaping features to break up the field and create choke points to fight over, and a good deal of space so that the fight is not going to degenerate into a bunch of tanks pinned down behind various buildings.

The buildings I used to make for the old club were in the region of 50 quid each in paint and materials, not to mention hours of labour. They had to be maintained, stored and transported to every event, and I usually had to nag people to adopt a building (or a box of trees - I brought back 4 large boxes costing over $150 as well) so that I wasn't bringing the whole lot everytime. Even then not everyone bought the building they were supposed to, and they were constantly losing the bolts that held them together costing me even more money

So in summary: good luck with this - I've already put a considerable amount of my money where my mouth was with this, and ultimately gave up due to a general lack of interest on one side, and intra-club politics on the other.

[General Jumbo01]

I fully understand your points. It costs about £1500 - 2000 per annum to put one top flight championship level drift car on the road, another grand for personal infrastructure like portable pits, tools, chargers etc, then there are travel costs, accommodation (l used a caravan), and all that is per entrant. The cost of hiring tracks, buying pa systems, maintaining related web sites etc runs into thousands per year. That's why l had a string of top line sponsors on board and, remember, drifting was something only the Japanese had heard of at the time.

Its easy to shy away. Forget a big meeting next year for the public's benefit - for our own benefit we all need a regular well organised RC tank meet to support our hobby, a series that moves around the UK in support of all of us and in addition to what already exists. You can still have your 'free for all's at existing clubs - l wouldn't want to stop the fun you have, but add to it. Anyone?

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[Tiger6]

If we have anough numbers interested we could certainly approach the Wicksted at War organisers with a proposal for something bigger and better. We would need circa 20 people to put their hands up and commit to being there both days, and battle twice a day at a set time so that the organisers could draw attention to it over the PA and get a crowd going.

After that, the considerations in my mind would be:

1) shelter for all of the gear - 'Grantham and friends' filled 2 4m x 3m gazebos with display tables down both sides last year + a whole bunch of diorama outside that also needed putting under cover at night to stop it getting ruined by the morning dew, which filled the space that visitors would stand in while viewing the static display in the gazebo's during the day. We could squeeze a few more in but not an additional 15+ tankers worth of kit.

2) Lots of Trees and building to hide behind. (plus bridges etc) The ground is very flat, and if you want to have a proper battle with manoeuver and objectives to fight over, then you need a lot of cover. Denzil and I have quite a bit that can fill up the local hall we use in Grantham, but not enough for the kind of space you need to get away from the static sniper warfare that small spaces dictate.
Danville is listed at 6000 sq ft, I reckon you'd need at least half of that for 10 per side - from experience 2 basket ball courts is barely sufficient to allow you to flank an enemy in a 5v5 (tho again that might have perhaps worked better if we had more trees and buildings?)

3) Access to power for charging - last year there was a model railway display next to us, and a genset had been provided for us to share. We might not be so lucky another year.

4) Camping space for all those extra bodies - there won't be room for all of us on the pitch we had last year.

5) we would need some kind of PA system and somebody to talk the crowd thru what they are looking at, otherwise its just a bunch of toy tanks crawling around a field in the eyes of Joe Public - racing is exciting to watch becuase you have a leader board and a number of laps counting down (and presumably the vehicles aren't all painted in a similar shade of green or whatever ) - everybody can understand what is going on with racing. The finer points of how IR battle works, what the point of the game is, etc, all need to be explained for the crowd to become invested in watching for more than a few minutes.

6) Some kind of pyro beyond tossing smoke bombs around (and hoping nothing catches fire) I've looked into RC pyro before, its not cheap for the control boxes to get started, but if the consumables are only the plumbers candles and igniters than it might be do-able?

7) some kind of barrier to stop small kids rushing in and grabbing/sitting on stuff (yes, it has happened before), or joe public just wandering right through whilst glued to their cell phone...

8.) Inspections need to be done either a people arrive on Friday or first thing Saturday. Must check:
a) their emitter works(!)
b) they take a hit on all 4 sides at a set distance
c) their hit lights are clearly visable in the sunlight - I've seen plenty of 'custom' installs that aren't
d) Their tank is set to the correct weight class (as defined by the RCACN standard - its old now, but comprehensive and is based on average armour thickness which at least lends consitancy to it) The reasons for this are (i) you know how many hits it will take to kill the other guy, and (ii) you know how long his reload is.

Inspections are a ballache and usually most people get bored halfway and start goofing off, much to the frustration of the guys trying to carry them out.

9) Some kind of marker to tell the 2 sides apart - at Danville it was a cocktail stick with a little coloured flag at one end, and a mini bulldog clip at the other

10) We would probably need to know by numbers by November at the latest so that the conversation with the organisers could be held in good time - suddently suprising them in March with a request for access and camping for 40 people, and an area 10 times the size of what we had last year probably isn't going to go down too well...

Plus I would need to talk to Dave and Frank, because they are organising it - if they don't want a weekend of herding cats, resolving bickering, dealing with/setting eyes on certain 'personalities' in the hobby etc, then it ain't happening at all

Anybody got any other thoughts? Various game types have be tried over the years, so there is plenty of info out there (tho some of it might have been lost when they shut the old H*E*A*T forum down?).