Slashdot Mirror
Hellhound Paintball ATV
tuxtattoo writes: "I was talking to a buddy of mine tonight, and he told me about a paintball ATV made by Tippmann.
it's called the Hellhound, and it's got everything you need for a nice day at the paintball field. Some of its features include a variable speed trigger which
is attached to a high speed, 10 barrel, 50 rounds/second cannon.
it also comes equipped with 2 side mounted tippmann model 98's (that would be 2 more paintball guns one on each side :), a 6,000 round hopper, heavy duty winch, and not to forget the what looks to be a self fed grenade launcher. there are many other features that come standard with this model, but NO floor mats or cup holders." I think this has been around for a while, but I played paintball yesterday (and I'm feeling it today) so this submission just seems apropos.
Its got everything they could need if it was covered in plexi-glass. Not only is it fast for getting the hell out of dodge, but the fill the paintballs with a peppery liquid and you have the ultimate crowd repellent. Basically an awesome and mobile extention on current paintball based crowd control weapons. Coming to a WTO meeting near you!
Imagine a remote-controlled blimp or dirigible with a regular paintball gun mounted on it, and a video camera. Quiet enough for recon, packs a punch, wouldn't unbalence the game TOO much, and could also allow a VERY high level of tactical/strategic oversight by team commanders.
I'm the stranger...posting to
I've often thought of bringing out the ATVs for paintball. (or snowmobiles for winter games)
Just put two people on each machine, one driver and one shooter and fire away. We usually play paintball out in a gravel pit so the ATVs would be nice.
By the way, for those of you who haven't played paintball in a gravel pit, it is definitly the best place I've ever played. There is a good mix of wide open space and sniper places as well as the gravel hills you can get up on.
I used to play large scale scenario games a few times a year. Hundreds of players per side, on hundreds of acres. Games would typically last 12 to 24 hours, with two "armys" and often with several smaller factions. Points were earned not for eliminating your opponents, but for holding key locations, capturing enemy forts, or capturing or eliminating an enemy officer or VIP. Being eliminated usually meant you sat out for 15 to 30 minutes, which can be a big deal duringa major offensive. Some games had a medic rule, where the medic could wipe off anything but a head hit. Usually you had one medic, and if they were eliminated, you lost them for an hour, or you had to spend earned points to buy a new one.
Anyway, these are the kinds of games where you see guys riding ATVs, helicopters on loan from the military or the local news (helicoptor is not a legal target. You just have to run and hide until it's out of ammo.) Night vision goggles, retired Motorola techs with his 2 teenage sons running an outpost with radio scanners and jamming gear..
If you're not a fan of tourney style paintball, you should check out scenario games. That tourney player who carrys a case of ammo on his back to fire during a ten minute game has to rethink his strategy or go broke (or more likely suffer a heat stroke) if he has to do it for 24 hours straight. There's just nothing like crawling across a field towards an enemy held fort in the pitch black of night, with your team in a ditch 20 yards behind, and the other team 20 yards ahead, trading insults, the occasional volly of paintballs, and million+ candle power spotlights.
It looks from the photos that the minigun is powered ENTIRELY by a commercially available electric hand drill. The drill chuck turns the mechanism and it looks like there's some sort of chain drive connecting the mechanism to the ammo feeders. Most of this is probably obvious to those of us with rudimentary meatspace-hacking (aka. mechanical) ability. So... how long before others start building with this design? :-)
:-) Wow. If you made it with only 3 barrels (or 2 like some helicopter cannon) and stepped the rate down to maybe 3-5 rounds/s, you'd still have a formidable (but human-luggable) weapon ^H^H^H^H^H... marker which wouldn't break the bank on ammo :-)
At 50 rounds/second and a 6000-round hopper, the minigun runs out of ammo after only, um, 2 WHOLE MINUTES of sustained fire
Freedom: "I won't!"
Most of my paintball experience has been around active duty military members. Military training and paintball have suprisingly little to do with each other.
To begin with, I had a non-combatant role in the US Air Force. I fixed electronics systems on aircraft. I would get annual training on an M16 - probably so that I don't end up using it as a club if the unthinkable happens and I actually have to USE one (and then we're all in pretty serious trouble anyway). My entire team was, mostly, non-combatants. We took top positions in each tournament we played. These tournaments included teams consisting solely of combat-trained individuals.
One of those teams were a great group of Army guys in K-Town (hey HAWGs). We would drive over for weekend pick-up games with their group on their paintball area. It was common to hear them complain about the previous weeks' field training and how they were glad to be playing some paintball to get away from all that.
Lets go back over that point. Paintball was a break from military training. The game was a break from, as close as the Army could get, the real thing.
Sure - military and police units do use paintball equipment for limited training. There's something psycologically distinct about solid projectiles flying around compared to laser light beams. But when paintball is used, it involves very specific scenarios and sometimes unique equipment.
And then there's the danger of picking up bad habits. A piece of plywood or a bush makes adequate paintball cover. It offers little aid against a firearm.
I'd like to point out that our paintball team in Germany used paintball tactics. Combat tactics (used by a lot of teams with combat-trained members) didn't fare well in paintball and I'm sure paintball tactics wouldn't work well on a battlefield.
There have been a range of articles going over the "war" nature of paintball. Something about the simulated danger of the activity. Tapping our desire for adrenaline, conflict, and aggressive nature. I've pondered about it too. But in the end its all academic.
Paintball is simply fun. Its a game. And while it may have some simularity to more martial issues, that comparison is simular to those that can be made of chess or risk. Heck. Sports such as kendo or fencing have truer ties to martial arts than paintball. And even those ties are shadows.