M60A1Medium

Roboticus_Prime

Prairie dogs are highly destructive to property. Their burrows are also extremely dangerous to livestock (horses are dumb enough to try and walk through and break their legs). The burrows also attract rattle snakes.

Lord Haw-Haw

You can use a sticky target, the bb's stick for a few seconds and can be scored then will slowly drop into a built in tray: (i put different color bb's in each tank so we can tell who's who)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

And or a box with a hole and put these over the hole, the box will catch the bb's, these are a favourite as you are punching a hole into something with the added contrasting color where the bb's entered:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Martellus

What was causing the balls to break? Loading? Firing?

Pah co chu puk

Prairie dogs are highly destructive to property. Their burrows are also extremely dangerous to livestock (horses are dumb enough to try and walk through and break their legs). The burrows also attract rattle snakes.

We use other means to control the population... propane explosions inside the burrows, so they never suffer at all. I just shoot them with Airsoft to pester them.

What was causing the balls to break? Loading? Firing?

It seemed to be the firing, the barrel was where the paint mess occurred.

Martellus

was it just caching on the connection from barrel to plastic gunbody you think?

Pah co chu puk

I think the force of the spring was popping them. Some would work but several did not. I gave up the idea after about 15 shots, but was sad because I had paid shipping from Tank Zone in England.

Martellus

Spring...?

Are HL units directly powered lol? Most airsoft units just have a piston powered by a spring and pulled back via a motorized gear system

If that was it gas conversions could still work..

Pah co chu puk

Well yes, the piston did the deed powered by a spring. It was my HL pan-tiger. That tank had a good Airsoft gun before I blew it up (the tank, not the gun).. My first sign of trouble was red paint dripping out of the muzzle brake. It looked like a scale tank horror movie scene.

Max-U52

All this is true, and they're also vital to the ecosystem of the prairie. Saw it on animalplanet. Something about their effect on the grass that keeps it healthy and thriving so all that livestock can eat it and stay alive. Oh yeah, and so the topsoil don't blow away. And they're pretty gutsy little buggers, too. They'll face down a rattler and show no fear. Tom Selleck narrates this program called North America, and he taught me all kinds of cool useless stuff about prairie dogs.

Martellus

I still don't see how it could have. Maybe the outer piece that loads it into the barrel was pushed with the piston as well hard enough to mess it up?

great terminology, I know

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...s/4/44/AEG.gif

the black piece chambering the bbs

Max-U52

That's most likely what's happening. The black piston (not really a piston but it pushes the BB up against the rubber collar and seats it) that loads the BB breaks it, then the air charge shoves and spreads the oil down the barrel. I've tried paintballs, too, but my problem was they didn't break easily enough. They'd hit the target, even steel, and just bounce off without breaking. Wasted about 20 bucks on evilbay and still have some left.

M60A1Medium

hey Pah co chu puk, I saw your Sherman with the train track spikes on the front looked really cool. so I wanted to make something like that but with out copying Sooooo. its sort of a Churchill / super P / bull dozer .

Martellus

Thats really good!

Martellus

max maybe just messing with it could fix that

I need to get one of those units and play around with it at some point, I want a nice airsoft tank

M60A1Medium

Max try to freeze a paintball it will make it possibly easier to brake the paintball.

Max-U52

I'm a seriously cheap buzzard so I tape a sheet of copy paper across the front of a cardboard box (this one is a USPS medium flat rate box) and the BBs go through the paper and catch in the box. Well, most of them.

Max-U52

I'll try freezing them when I get back to experimenting with them. First I want to learn more about gunsmithing the airsoft units.

Martellus, I've been thinking about doing some serious messing around to see what I can learn and how I can improve them, so if you get one and start learning about them I can send you some parts to play with. I have a couple here right now I need to take apart and see if I can get them working again. I'm sure just smoothing the chamber and other small improvements like that will greatly improve performance, but the main thing I want is consistency from unit to unit. I take it you don't currently have an airsoft tank?

M60A1Medium

my airsoft tank target is a 6inch gong I made it fun hearing the bbs bounce off

Martellus

No, both my tanks were HL IR.

I do have some spare parts lying around from non tank airsoft stuff. I never got to try paintball bbs in them but I always wanted to.. I think they had some at my local sporting goods store but that was years ago. Not sure now.

I am betting on it being just catching on something. Do those units have any sort of adjustable or fixed hopup? Might that be it?

Pah co chu puk

We had a Colorado Dept. of Wildlife officer come out and survey the Prairie Dogs, he counted over 900 holes in a 5 acre field. At 5 per hole that's 4500 Prairie Dogs! They were so overpopulated he recommended we kill most of them to reduce the chance of plague. They eat grass, gold to us ranchers, and were killing the native grasses off. We had an invasive weed problem due to them. We tried shooting them with rifles but the Marshall reminded us that we were in town limits so we could not shoot guns. Now we hire a guy who blows them up each summer to keep the population in healthy check. We don't have rattle snakes here, it's too cold in the winter (40 below zero) but the rodents do just fine. I don't hate Prairie Dogs, but being fined for invasive weeds by the state while the good native grass disappears is a problem. We are just doing what the Marshall and the DOW told us to do about the situation. I have made some scale tank roads out there and they dig up my roads too.

Max-U52

But don't they bounce all over the place? I thought the point was to at least attempt to catch the BBs for disposal?

Max-U52

I still don't know enough to answer that. They work just like your cool diagram, though, and I've had several quit on me recently so it's time to start takin' stuff apart and seeing what's what. When you get an airsoft tank let me know and I'll send you a few of the busted ones and you can tear them apart and see what you can do with them. Naturally you have to share your findings. I think the first thing I'll try is playing with different springs to see what happens. But like I said, consistency is what I want most. I have one stock PIV with my most powerful unit in it and that's plenty for me, I just want them all to act close to the same. I have a couple that are pretty weak.

M60A1Medium

I just pick them up clean them and reuse .

Max-U52

Hey Greg, I also saw that they can be very bad, mainly when another part of the system has been removed, like predators! Before man came along they had a pretty good system going but we knocked everything off balance by killing animals like coyotes and wolves that kept them in check naturally.

And I have to admit I laughed my butt off when I watched them vacuum the little dogs out of the ground to sell them as pets overseas!