Is 8 a good number of team channels?
Is a maximum of 99 hits sufficient for a single combat round?
Is it important to know how many hits came from each opponent or is good enough to simply track the total number of hits?
8 Does seem as a good amount of channels, and 99hits should be sufficient for a 5 min. round.
You may want to make that an extra feature for more money to make the controller keep track of which opponent hit it.
When a plane gets hit, it would indicate it by its motor speed being reduced or some other method so that pilots and spectators on the ground can follow all the action.
What is the best indication(s) for a hit to a plane?
- A loud tone? (Could it be heard from the ground?)
- The throttle being reduced for a few seconds and then restored?
- The throttle slowly being reduced more with each hit the plane takes?
- A combination of the above or another idea?
In my opinion, the best idea is to let the user decide. In other words, have all of these features put in the combat unit and lat the consumer configure it themselves.
An example is to have the user program the chip is to...
- make the plane either make a tone and lose engine power.
- have a servo moved to a preset channel to make the plane go out of control and make a tone
- etc.
The combat system should be easy to fire to allow the pilot to concentrate on flying.
What is the best way to fire the combat system?
- Using the throttle control? (Setting the throttle to full fires the gun and then the throttle must be reduced for a few seconds before it can be fired again.)
- Using a separate channel (Do most people have free channels on their radios)?
- Continuously fire (for instance, once a second)?
What should be the maximum range for the system? A range of 50 ft has been suggested by other users. Is this long enough or too far?
Throttle control may not be the best idea as most pilots at my club keep throttle on high. A possible better idea is to have it plugged into a servo port and assigned to a switch.
The range may want to be variable as this system could be used on larger aircraft as well. A good distance would probably be variable from 10-100 ft.
Considering the description above and the features you would want, we have some general product questions:
1. Is this product something you would be interested in purchasing?
2. If you saw this product in your local hobby store, how much would you expect for it to cost?
3. How much would you be willing to pay for this product?
4. What features are most important? How would you rank them?
5. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest, how would rate your overall opinion of the product?
1. I would be interested in purchasing if it could possibly reduce the rick of a mid-air.
2. Considering the suggestions above, I would hope for it to cost about 50-100 US dollars
3. I'm willing to pay up to 100 US dollars each
4. My most important feature is the scoring system and when ranking scoring system, range, targeting system, plane reaction, and firing system. They would go in order: Scoring System, Firing System, Targeting System, Range, and Plane Reaction.