13 replies to this topic

[Gym]

I wanted to design a missile for indoor wars that when fired at a ceiling or possibly a wall would essentially release pieces of shrapnel that would fall onto enemies below. After consideration of a few different methods I went with what I believe is the simplest. This write-up will walk through how to modify a Buzz Bee Big Blast missile into a RPG (rocket propelled grenade) without the actual rocket part. So APG? With enough testing, this RPG can be used to detonate on impact with a solid surface, or in mid-air. Let’s get started:

Necessary Materials:
- Foam Missile
- 4” of ½” CPVC (or similar outer diameter pipe)
- Plumber’s Goop or similar adhesive
- X-acto knives
- Drill and drill bits
- 1 Rubber Band
- 1 Dart Tag Dart
- 6 Darts

- Start cutting from the tip of the missile down. About an inch in you will hit a black rubber disc; stop here (trying not to damage the disc). Now cut around the missile to remove the entire tip (it may be beneficial to cut the tip in quarters before cutting the whole tip off). You should now see a flat tipped missile with a black disc in the middle.



- Remove the disc and drill out the middle to accommodate your pipe. I ended up drilling ¼” and cutting the rest to size with my xacto knife. Keep in mind that the pipe needs to be around ½” diameter, light, and strong enough to handle repeated impact. I mention this because although brass may be lighter than cpvc, it will not handle the impact like cpvc. And obviously brass is too heavy.


- Make sure the pipe and disc fit snugly, and glue them together with the plumber’s goop.


- Now liberally squeeze glue around the area in the missile where the disc was originally. Place the disc assembly into the missile and glue around the top of the disc and over parts of the missile, encasing the disc section in glue.


- Let the whole thing dry overnight or for a day or so. Stick the Dart Tag dart into the tip of the cpvc (this creates a shock-absorber for the impact of the dart with the floor/ceiling/wall/skull). You can use regular fbr if you want, but the tagger dart was more convenient for me and doesn’t get knocked all the way into the cpvc after a few impacts.


- Take 6 darts, arrange them around the cpvc, and apply the rubber band to the tips of the darts. It takes a
little experimentation to figure out how far up to place the rubber band on the tips of the darts.



I tested this several times in a gym with a 25’-30’ ceiling and found that the stock LBB could not handle the weight of the new RPG and though there was occasional impact on the ceiling, it was not adequate to release the rubber band and darts. So basic modification to the LBB would be necessary depending on the height of the room you are in. Also, there is potential for a degree of pain when the missile falls. I suspect that this is negligible compared to being shot with a high-powered blaster. Ranges are heavily dependant on the height of the ceiling and the timing of the release, among other factors.

Edited by Gym, 28 October 2008 - 10:41 AM.

[Ubermensch]

If you enlarged the airtank to get more power, like Slug did, I'm sure you could get the missile to fly farther. Did you cut off the end of the barrel of your LBB, or was it bone stock?

Edited by Ubermensch, 27 October 2008 - 06:40 PM.

[perezinthenet]

I don't exactly understand how this works, can you explain a little bit more?

[Echnalaid]

Perhaps using a titan for this? With the right barrel change, of course.

[TAiLsChaser]

Yes, use a singled titan like mine. I've used little rockets and arrows on mine and it works quite well.

[Thom]

I don't exactly understand how this works, can you explain a little bit more?

The darts are loosely attached. When the thing hits, the darts fly off.

[perezinthenet]

I don't exactly understand how this works, can you explain a little bit more?

The darts are loosely attached. When the thing hits, the darts fly off.

Oh ok, thanks, thats a cool idea. How far is the spread?

[Gym]

If you enlarged the airtank to get more power, like Slug did, I'm sure you could get the missile to fly farther. Did you cut off the end of the barrel of your LBB, or was it bone stock?

I did it stock, mostly because I wanted to see where the bottom limitations were. Now that I know what a stock BBBB will do I can do the simple mods like cutting off the end of the barrel, as you mentioned, or plug the valve in the pump. I just tested the APG on a BBBB with only the easy barrel mod and it had no noticeable impact compared to the stock version. It is apparent that to make this work on a BBBB or LBB a valve plug is necessary.

I don't exactly understand how this works, can you explain a little bit more?

The darts are loosely attached. When the thing hits, the darts fly off.

Oh ok, thanks, thats a cool idea. How far is the spread?

An additional note on how it works:
The darts are fairly secure on the missile because of the rubber band, but the force exerted on the heads of the darts is ideally barely enough to keep the bottom of the darts secure. When the missile makes impact it's like putting a rubber band on your knee and extending your leg to shoot the rubber band off. As the darts extend away from the shaft from the impact, the rubber band flies off.

The spread, as I mentioned briefly in the original post, is highly dependent on how you're using the missile. If you have a high ceiling rather than a low one you will probably have a larger spread. If you rig it to fire in mid air (not on impact) then the spread is different from an impact-based spread. However, the majority of the results were 5'-10' from impact with a 25'-30' ceiling.

Whew!

That's a BBBB missile, not an LBB one.
Or possibly from a Mega Missile.
Buzz Bee, in any case - not Lanard.

And in my opinion it's much more suitable for sacrifice. The LBB missiles have two whistles on them, and in flight it's as if it brings along its own echo - really cool sounding. Before I scrolled down to the pictures, I was preparing myself to cringe over the destruction of a much more cool missile.

You may be able to lessen the impact issue with the main missile (after the darts separate) by putting six fins of some kind (craft foam?) in between where the darts go. That way the aerodynamics should make it fall tail-first rather than pipe-first.

Yeah, I just opened up one of the whistlers and noticed the difference (there doesn't seem to be any disc). It is still easy to modify with a few changes to the procedure and supplies. Perhaps wrapping electrical tape around the cpvc to weigh it down like the disc. I guess one must decide if increased effectiveness is worth sacrificing the whistling noise for.

Edited by Gym, 28 October 2008 - 10:44 AM.

[Gym]

For that matter - did you try cutting a cup shape into the top of the missile, rather than cutting away the whole top? If you could scoop out the center and leave a ring of attached foam, you might be able to simply shove in 7 darts. Though I suppose you may have already tried and discarded something like that. Still, I may sacrifice a few missiles of my own to some tests... thanks for the inspiration.

I actually started out wanting to use as much of the missile as possible, but in the BBBB missile there's not much room to work with before you hit the disc and in both missiles you only have 2" from the end of where the barrel goes to the tip of the missile.

Edited by Gym, 28 October 2008 - 03:48 PM.

[xtremejumpy]

I Like it, but does anyone really have wars inside? I mean its good, and I would but it, but everyone designs stuff for inside use, and I've never seen one inside. And what are you using to fire it if the LBB won't work?

Edited by xtremejumpy, 28 October 2008 - 08:51 PM.

[Foamfoot]

It's nice, It's cute, it looks fun as bell. Not so sure about war potential. Grenades in Nerf don't work, even in real combat, a grenade has to pretty much destroy everything in a small radius, using hundreds of shrapnel pieces. So Nerf grenades just don't work unless you have hundreds of darts shooting from them, they just aren't effective as shooting someone with a blaster. But, you did a really sweet job with this and out of all the Nerfnades I've seen, this has the most potential.

[Ambience 327]

I Like it, but does anyone really have wars inside? I mean its good, and I would but it, but everyone designs stuff for inside use, and I've never seen one inside.

Most of the wars I participate in are held inside, at a church. We probably wouldn't use something like this, because shooting at the ceiling there is a no-no, but I could definately see its use if we had better ceilings. I've also heard of a lot of guys who have wars inside dorm buildings, offices, schools, etc. A lot of people here Nerf primarily outside, but not all of us.

It's nice, It's cute, it looks fun as bell. Not so sure about war potential. Grenades in Nerf don't work, even in real combat, a grenade has to pretty much destroy everything in a small radius, using hundreds of shrapnel pieces. So Nerf grenades just don't work unless you have hundreds of darts shooting from them, they just aren't effective as shooting someone with a blaster. But, you did a really sweet job with this and out of all the Nerfnades I've seen, this has the most potential.

When you are playing outside, you really need a good spread and lots of foam, but inside, where space is tight and there are lots of corners and cover, things like this could become really useful if you can perfect the delivery system. For example, it can be quite easy for a small group to hold a medium-sized room (like a classroom) that only has a few entrances - like one or two doors. They can get themselves into cover using desks, tables, chairs or even the doors themselves, which can make them very tough to root out. In a situation like this, having something that can bypass their cover by doing a bit of indirect firing (i.e. you don't have to have a line of sight between the attacker and the target) can greatly increase your chances of taking them down.

For example, say a pair of guys are holding a small classroom with one door. One guy is stationed behind a desk in the corner, pointing his gun straight at the door. The distance + the desk gives him a fair advantage over anyone trying to come in. Not too hard to defeat on his own though. However, the second guy is directly behind the door, positioned so that if you rush Mr. Desk Guy, he'll pop you in the back. The best way to get him would be to slip your gun around the door and shoot, but Mr. Desk Guy would probably nail you long before you could do that, since you'd have basically no cover as you tried to pull your little maneuver.

So, with normal blasters, you have only one real option - rush in with overwhelming numbers and accept the fact that you'll probably lose a guy or two just to take these dug-in defenders down. However, if you have something like thing here, you could just launch it directly over Mr. Desk Guy and watch him try to scramble out of his death-trap of cover. If he doesn't get out, the APG hets him, if he does, he's probably a lot easier to shoot at now. By a similar token, you might be able to get either Mr. Desk Guy or the Door Man with something like a Bunker Buster.

I guess my point is, in indoor wars there are definately different tactics, and certain playstyles and weapon types are much more viable. (Just ask any of the Ball Shooter lovers who play indoors - if you are allowed to count ricochets with those things, they can be deadly in tight quarters. You will very rarely, if ever, see one in an outdoor war however.)

[Gym]

I Like it, but does anyone really have wars inside? I mean its good, and I would but it, but everyone designs stuff for inside use, and I've never seen one inside. And what are you using to fire it if the LBB won't work?

Yeah, like Ambience mentioned, I do the majority or entirety of nerfing inside. I'm a youth director at our church and we do them every couple months inside. I think we've only allowed outside use once for maneuvering purposes. Otherwise there's not much cover in our parking lot, and I don't like losing darts in bushes or trees. This APG has limitations, but it should be highly effective in the right circumstances. I'll see about the practicality at our next war.