A Noobs First Battle
Hello all. I took my 12 year old son and drove down to the AAF Museumin Danville Va this past weekend to give RC combat a try. We both agreed thatit was the best weekend we have had in a very long time and unfortunately formy bank account we are both hooked on this. I see much more money being spentin the near future on tanks.
If you haven’t met the guys from ACE or visited the AAFMuseum you are really missing out. The museum is incredible and huge; not big,HUGE. We took about an hour and a half at lunch time and looked through thevehicles/guns. That was all that we saw, there are uniforms, patches, rifles, toysand untold other treasures there waiting to be discovered. I would say a fulltwo days would be a good amount of time to try to see everything that is thereand truly enjoy and understand what you are seeing.
The ACE guys are great. We had no clue what we were doingand by mid-day on Saturday both of us were running on the field. They helped mefigure out problems with my tank, loaned my son one to run with, taught us botha lot in a very short period of time. We made friends, learned things and had ablast (pun intended) on the battle field.
My experience with my tank wasn’t so much fun but it was alearning process and I felt a lot better afterwards. I bought it used a fewweeks ago and only ran it for about a half an hour. I had planned on spendingmore time with it but work and life got in the way so I was unprepared for someof it. Like a true noob I didn’t have a tool kit or any spare parts or my ownreal charger: all things that will be corrected for the next trip.
Check in started out ok; my 4.1 gear boxes and the weight ofthe all metal Tiagen Tiger did great at the proper speed. My IR system workedproperly and I could hit other vehicles and receive hits. We found a problemduring the check in with it being blocked. My commanders hatch would not fold down so it blocked theright side of the IR receiver; that needed fixed. Trying to remove the hatch resultedin the accidental removal of the commander’s copula and a wire or two from theIR receiver base. I didn’t realize this until after the first battle. I took hits;the tank shook but I did not light up. It did shut down after 9 hits. Betweenbattles an ACE guy tore it apart, soldered and reinstalled the socket for me.
My IR bulb was also not properly installed in the mantle soI had to make sure that I was in front of teammates so that I would not causefriendly fire issues.
Halfway through the first battle I lost turret movement. Themain drive gear in the traverse gearbox had a chunk out of it and it would lockup. I spent the entire weekend trying to figure out how to get it to work. Iwent from being afraid of breaking something while changing a battery to tearingthat gearbox apart a dozen or so times over the weekend. The museum had spareparts for Tamiya’s but nothing for my Tiagen.
My transmitter does not have a return spring on the rightstick so I had a Tiger running around on its own on occasion or going where Ididn’t really want or need it to go. Without the auto center return I wasovercompensating on returning the stick and it made for some interestingmovements on the field. Unfortunately I was able to flip it over on its side; I didn’t thinkthat it would, lol.
I was not used to the Clark board settings soelevation/depression of the barrel often resulted in firing the main gun at themost inopportune of times. Once again a good learning experience. I have a post up now on how to address that issue.
Thanks for the knowledge of the ACE guys I had my beastback on the field by late afternoon Saturday. I used it as a TD Tiger and pivotedthe tank to compensate for turret movement. It was doable and fun. I actuallyhad a few kills and survived a few battles.
Sunday brought about some more creative turret repairs and Ihad about 30 degrees movement on the front for the morning; it was a lot morefun.
Lessons learned, mental notes taken and new friends made. Myson is usually very quiet and to see him out there on his own interacting withpeople was great; it made the 6.5 hour drive well worth it. We weren’t’ on theroad home for five minutes when he asked when we are going to return.
Thanks to our list members, ACE guys and museum staff for a great weekend!
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