Scale speed

[Kaczor]

I get my kicks from trying to drive as realistically as possible. It drives me nuts to see an RC tank take off like a formula 1 race car and then stop on a dime.

Yep. bunny hopping (e.g. during IR battles) drives me crazy But I could watch slow moving models whole day.

phpBB [video]

[Jimster]

That’s an outstanding video! Thanks for sharing that.

[Herr Dr. Professor]

“Low and slow, mean and ?weathered??” I agree that tanks need to have smooth low low speed control. The HengLong 7.0/7.1 earned my respect for the low speed setting and control. The new CoolBank M5 is way too fast. I can use a very light touch to make it run slowly forward, but in reverse it’s way too fast.

[RobW]

Just a comment on the scale speed for boats etc. There are various correlations for wave tanks as speed is only one of the factors; surface area and drag are others. The ratios may even be (wave) tank related.

The other scaling is by Reynolds Number. Means we can test devices that should use high pressure air by scaling up and using water or occasionally sewing machine oil.

Thankfully I don't have to remember most of that now as we just use computer models


I quite like that the Coolbank M5 is silly quick, it livens the battlefield up. I am wondering how long the gear box and tracks are going to last though.

[Meter rat]

Thank you for the answers. S-O-G you must have read the same article as me, which had piqued my interest to start with, as it seems a simple formula, and wondered if it would work for other models, not just test boats in tanks. My own formula is. If it looks right to me. I hated the fact that my Tamiya Tiger was faster than my Challenger. Easy to correct, by using the slow button on the transmitter. Getting a realistic speed for the modern tanks is a bit harder. I do drive, as they say according to the conditions. Tiger, nice and slow, modern tanks, fast on road and and good tracks, and again slow and carefully on grass.

[Fenrisian]

one of my other hobbies is building RC boats, specifically fishing trawlers and tugs
I am really of the opinion that if it looks right it is right i.e. no bow waves or prop wash
same with tanks, it's a matter of learning to drive each model

Pete

[Meter rat]

Hello Fenrisian.
Thank you for the reply. I am of the same opinion. If it looks right.
I will say it before others do. We are a polite forum, and we like a proper introduction. May I respectfully point you into the introduction section, so you may give us a proper introduction, you skills, any tanks you have, or any you wish to purchase, and how you may contribute.

[Jib]

So, this is something that I obsessed over for a bit with my HL Abrams at the time. For a modern tank it just felt so slow. I wanted to beef up the speed, but wasn’t sure what I should be aiming for.

Maybe it’s simplistic, but my logic was this:

Find the top speed of the tank in question

Most of these tanks are 1:16 scale, so divide that top speed by 16

Convert that number to something realistic for 1/16 models (in my case I went from mph to feet per second)

I had an Elmod card in it, so acceleration and inertia are built into it, and I can set how much power goes to the motors as a percentage.

So for my Abrams, from a top speed of roughly 42 mph I calculated my target for scale speed as 3.87 feet per second.

Maybe this is not the most accurate way to go about doing this, but once I set all of my tanks to their calculated scale speed, the Abrams was zooming around compared to my WWII tanks, and the difference in speed “felt” realistic to me.