Mounting Weapons (for fun)
 

Not sure which catagory to post this in, but I'm interested in mounting a paintball gun and a flour-bomb rack on my RV-4. Has anyone done this before? Any tips?

Thanks,

-Martin

Would a paintball gun work in-flight? It would seem that the speed of the RV might adversely effect a shot.

I don't see why it wouldn't work in flight.

What does the speed of the vehicle have to do with it? The projectile will move 300 fps. (or so) faster than whatever launched it.

I say utilize the wing tie downs as hard points...

Bluetooth technology for triggering!

;) CJ

Paint Ball Mass
 

Yes the initial muzzle velocity may be 300 FPS faster than the aircraft but it isn't the same as firing a military type projectile. A military projectile has a lot of mass while a paint ball has very little mass. Couple the low mass with a heck of a lot of air pressure in the opposite direction and I am thinking you might end up with a nicely painted leading edge. :)

I guess to test you could take your paint ball gun out in a 100 mile an hour hurricane and shoot it into the wind. Or just stand behind your RV with the throttle wide open and see if you can hit the empenage. Be sure to wear your goggles. :)

Of course I am no physicist so I may be wrong.

This is a thought provoking question though.

Click here

:)

I think your point is valid in that persons hit with paintballs seldom, if ever, die of it. I chalk that up to the low mass and hence low momentum of the ammo. The air resistance probably slows them significantly and relatively quickly. It would be kind of cool if it worked, though!

Terminal Velocity
 

I've been doing a little poking around. It turns out that the muzzle velocity of most paintball guns is around 200 mph. So I'm assuming the terminal velocity of a paintball is higher than that.

If you throttle back to 100 mph for your strafing run, you might get a 200-300 mph paintball. More than enough to a make a few satisfying spashes on a target.

-Martin

Terminal Velocity?
 

Actually, the terminal velocity of a paintball has no relation to the speed at which it exits the barrel of the gun.

Think about bullets fired straight up. They don't come down with a higher velocity. Generally, the gas pressure that fires projectiles from guns increases the speed of the projectile above the terminal velocity.

From my experience skydiving (and chasing things like small pumpkins and other round fluid filled objects on occasion) none of the objects went 200 miles per hour. How do I know? I caught up with most of them.

What you need are depleted uranium paintballs.

FALL GUY IS RIGHT.
 

Just last night on Mythbusters, they did this experiment with firing a gun straight up into the air. The determination was that the bullets return to earth a no more than terminal velocity. However, if the gun was even slightly off of straight up, then it did carry some energy from the bullets original charge. The trouble comes in when you try to get it straight up, and also one must figure in the wind. I know this is not exactly on the subject asked, but it was a very interesting experiment. As far as the paintball shots from the airplane, I would be concerned that the plan may not work. My thought would be that you would have to slow the airplane down to get any kind of shot off, which is not ideal, in that it will expose you to enemy fire from the anti-aircraft guns. :)
The other thought that comes to mind, is that paintball guns don't have a tremendous amount of range. One would have to increase the pressure on the gun to get some velocity, and thus range, and given the fact that you are already travelling a fair speed, the pressure exerted on the paintball woud rupture the ball, then you would end up flying into your own paint. (which doesn't look good when you get back to camp with your own color paint all over your plane)
As far as the flour, it is great fun, but be careful one misguided flour bomb was dropped at our airport years back, and ended up in the FBO hanger. Went right through the steel roof. Roof stll has a drip there during heavy rains. (luckily no one was injured in the mishap)

Just my thoughts

A buddy and I tried shooting his paintball gun while in flight in my ol' luscombe. It didn't work. It's kinda like trying to spit out a car window...at 110 mph.