SpudFiles

I'll chime in. Noise is a factor in some locations. A large bore air cannon sounds nothing like firearms or fireworks in a city. If I started doing chronograph shots in my back yard, the police would be called in 3-2-1..

I do live in a neighborhood. I can plink marshmallows all day and it doesn't sound much louder than using a hammer or staplegun. It doesn't raise an eyebrow. I let my immediate neighbors know when I am smashing pop cans with the large cannon and invite them to watch. I've even taken it to a local city park to launch T shirts and tennis balls.

If I fired a burst disk hybrid at a high mix in the park or my back yard, I would expect uniformed visitors soon.

I have joined discussions on piston hybrids. I find them interesting and am glad to see the concept become a reality. My location is not proper for testing them.

What needs updated is this, http://www.spudfiles.com/spud_wiki/inde ... rid_cannon

Technician1002 wrote:I'll chime in. Noise is a factor in some locations. A large bore air cannon sounds nothing like firearms or fireworks in a city. If I started doing chronograph shots in my back yard, the police would be called in 3-2-1..

I can personally attest to this, unfortunately.

Now you got my attention

realistic looking air rifle with a cool wooden stock

That's what I've been wanting to build since before my join date..
I apologise for getting better at it.
Speaking of join date:

Maybe I'm just getting too old for this 'new generation' of spudders

I thought I was getting old and I consider you the new generation.

I'd love to build hybrids.
I would just hate to be away from the kids ...for about three years or so.
Don't know what they sentence us to these days for fabricating what they claim is a firearm.

However I do support a rise in interest in both combustion types.
I would like to see innovations in that field as well.

10 different adaptations of the same low performance semi-auto valve concept

That's a bit insulting...
name more than 10 types of combustion that don't boil down to the same concept....

Firstly, I'd like to point out that age is not a good way to bias between the contributing members and the ones who plague the boards with help me posts.

Secondly, this may not be an issue for many on here, but for me (and yes I've built a fairly advanced hybrid and hope to improve on it) small bore hybrids that are pushing towards firearm performance are kinda reinventing the wheel IMHO in that an actual firearm could achieve the same thing more efficiently and easier. I know that there's the thrill of building it yourself, but for those who just want the boom, a firearm may be an easier option since both technically need to be registered under a firearm liscence

a ROF higher than most single shot pneumatics

Right there is another reason why interest is so high in pneumatics.

It's easy to achieve multishot capacity or even full auto.
It could even be suppressed quite easily.

Not everything is about

3kJ+ muzzle energies

Brian the brain wrote:Not everything is about

3kJ+ muzzle energies

A well designed / built pneumatic can easily exceed 3kj. Hybrids don't have an exclusive on power. People should build the type which pleases / interests them most.

small bore hybrids that are pushing towards firearm performance are kinda reinventing the wheel IMHO in that an actual firearm could achieve the same thing more efficiently and easier

I would argue that, for the hobbyist who isn't keen on mass-producing and loading his own cartridges, a gas-phase fuel is considerably easier than a solid, which needs to be physically loaded rather than flowing under its own pressure. Also, hybrids can perform much BETTER than "actual firearms", but we've been over this before.

A well designed / built pneumatic can easily exceed 3kj. Hybrids don't have an exclusive on power. People should build the type which pleases / interests them most.

Pneumatics become very expensive to operate at high energies, especially when using bottled gases like helium to achieve better muzzle speeds. Hybrids have, for a given expenditure, better performance in most aspects.


On to the topic at hand: I think that members like myself and Spudblaster have grown in directions which put us out of touch with this community. Sure, there may have been more "innovation" back in the earlier days, but the hobby was so new then that innovation was dirt cheap and achieved without a great deal of thought. Considering how violently opposed the community was back then to anything more energy dense than the norm, I'm very impressed that we've managed to creep up to the level where a 500psi pneumatic or a 10X hybrid is not particularly shocking to anyone who views it.

I posted a launcher which ran >100kpsi a few months ago, and I did not get a single "OMG ur going 2 jail" or "ur goin too die". There may not have been many responses, but at least there was no trouble from those I did get. I imagine that, if society were not so sedentary and legalistic, we would see more development in the "energetic" directions of this hobby. As it is, I don't know of any members with interest in this side of the field who didn't at some point have access to isolated testing spaces. Considering how few people are exposed to the correct conditions, I don't find it particularly surprising that there is little interest in pushing performance beyond what we currently see by switching to an entirely new propulsion method.

It is my opinion that members like myself, SB15, and Zeus, just have to learn to accept that we're part of a small minority in the community, and to realize that it is worthwhile to continue to contribute, regardless of perceived appreciation. I continue to post my creations both to share new information and in the hope that, somewhere along the line, someone may see what I do, realize that it is possible, and pick up the interest. So long as the Spudfiles community will allow me to post what I build, I'll stick around.

SpudBlaster15 wrote:

D_Hall wrote:So start your own.

With a fringe hobby like this, it isn't exactly easy to start from scratch. I don't have the time nor the interest to run a forum that is very likely to never get off the ground.

I was actually somewhat sympathetic with ya until I read that.

The internet wasn't created fully populated with forums. At some point, EVERY forum was started from scratch. And there are a fair number of very active forums that cater to hobbies that are way more obscure than spud guns. It can be done.

Also, as a guy who started one such forum, it doesn't take much time when it's small. Heck, in the beginning about all that's required is logging in for 10 seconds once a week just to make sure the server hasn't crashed.

Which leaves us with "I don't have [...] the interest".

Now let me get this straight... The members of this forum clearly don't have the interest in hybrids that you wish they did and you're taking them to task for not jumping on the bandwagon, but you're gonna use lack of interest as an excuse for why you're not doing something to further your agenda?

D_Hall wrote:Now let me get this straight... The members of this forum clearly don't have the interest in hybrids that you wish they did and you're taking them to task for not jumping on the bandwagon, but you're gonna use lack of interest as an excuse for why you're not doing something to further your agenda?

Very well said!

sir,i assure you that the dark side is still alive & well here on s.f.
some of us painstakingly collect or fabricate our parts as funds & time allow ,so naturally frequent showcase postings are minimal
i freely /proudly accept that im in a minority category here..as for a sub or new forum im indifferent ill still be here..spud files forever

jrrdw wrote:

D_Hall wrote:Now let me get this straight... The members of this forum clearly don't have the interest in hybrids that you wish they did and you're taking them to task for not jumping on the bandwagon, but you're gonna use lack of interest as an excuse for why you're not doing something to further your agenda?

Very well said!

Actually, if his interest lies in improving the site and sparking an interest with current and future members... I don't see how this makes a lot of sense if "furthering your agenda" means starting a new forum.

I am disgusted by anything small bore, especially pneumatics. When I see the forum flooded with posts of little spit ball launchers, it makes me feel like i'm surrounded by third graders. I simply never click on any of the posts that I don't like. If I check spudfiles and there are 300 unread new posts, I will seriously click maybe 2 or 3 of them at most. All the rest are so boring to me its painful to even read the title or see what forum they were posted in.

BBMG blah blah micro garbage pneumatic blah.

@Moonbogg, then you've missed one of the most bad ass guns ever made.

Wyz, I never told you to like hybrids, just that you haven't had much luck with them, hell, I had a lot of trouble getting a 3X mix to ignite myself.

Al-xg, true, I should say assuming the same post ignition pressure and identical dimensions.

I concur with what DYI said, with no offence to the community, most people here don't appreciate the potential in ETCGs, standard launchers including hybrids are a dead end in terms of performance, you can only compress a fuel air mixture so much.

Believe it or not, I actually rather like small calibre pneumatics, but I see that they're extremely limited, including that they'll never exceed SOS by any reasonable amount.

I think back in 07/08 hybrids were still quite rare and SB15's original hybrid design was taking hold and heaps of members building them. Now that it seems they're fairly easy to build and there's plenty of them, there isn't the same interest in them anymore. Which is unfortunate, because 3/4" union hybrids are merely the tip of the iceberg, if it wasn't for the complete lack of interest in hybrids all together, they would disappoint us hybridists a little bit too

If SB15, or someone else, was to make a new forum it would need to have a heavy emphasis on chemistry to attract members; like a tuned-down version of RogueSci (basically people with degrees in chemistry wondering what the best way to blow an ATM out of the wall would be).

It could cover anything from model rockets and rocket fuel to pulse jets to certain explosives and hybrids. Like at RogueSci, I think as consequence of having a diverse range of potentially dangerous hobbies that require a lot of expertise, advances in hybrids would come naturally as you attract builders who don't bother making 90% of the cannons on this site.

To those who say that they can't build a hybrid because of legal reasons and/or noise issues; I have built a number of hybrids and fired them dozens of times in a country that thinks they fall under firearms with laws that can put me in prison in a affluent suburb surrounded by 9 houses within a 15m distance from my property.

This is not an argument saying that you will not be arrested or have the police called, I'm just making the point that I once too used the same argument. I rarely fire hybrids at home any more but I can take them to a field (only 5 minutes away) on certain days at certain times where there aren't many people or houses to be disturbed by the noise. You aren't limited to your garage, be creative. If you saw the Google maps of my suburb, you wouldn't know where I would be able to fire hybirds safely but a little reccy over the years has found a few locations, both of which, funnily enough, are opposite a navy base (they're both the same 'base', but some parts of the base are a few km separated from other parts).


I'll finish with this: the only cannons I have never got bored of are hybrids. The potential of a particular pneumatic design can be so limited one gets very bored with it very easily. For example, the projectile of a hybrid can be almost as important as the hybrid itself.