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Post by brownien on Jun 10, 2014 21:11:55 GMT -5
I was thinking, especially with night missions, having the capability to illuminate rounds coming in even if just mixing in tracers with regular rounds will help in the aid of conducting safer firefights and more easily calling hits in the dark. Only problem is that there is no commercial offerings for WW2 weaponry that don't detract from the overall lines of the weapon. The only real way to do this would be to install LED's into the feed tube of the hopup unit. All you would need to do after is wire those LED's up to the motor contacts with a resistor to keep the LED from burning out. This would work best for all AEG's, although for someone who really doesn't want to mod their gun, and has Highcaps, you could always place a small light into the top of the highcap to illuminate the inside. This would also be a viable method for those who have Squad automatic weapons like MG42's and 30cals, with auto wind box mags. This could even be done to springers like the CYMA M1 Carbine. The LED's could be run off of a 9v battery placed in the handguard or stock on a switch. I have read reviews that state that a 9v can potentially run the tracer unit lights for more than 24hrs straight! This leads me to believe that running these units off an AEG's main battery through the motor terminals, wouldn't noticably drain the main battery any faster!
I personally think that seeing a quiet night erupt in tracer fire and sqaud leader commands would be an amazing sight! As long as each side is kept under a tight leash and both sides fight as a unit, there wouldn't be too much of a problem with engaging at too short of a distance. As long as both commanders keep in contact with one another to "set up" the fights a bit, so they don't bump into one another too closely, fights would be a bit safer. Even after the fire commences and the chaos of combat ensues, being able to guage the distance the enemy fire is coming in from, and sticking close to your buddies, you won't have too much of a problem with firefights getting too close for comfort.
I am really considering modifying my entire arsenal to have Hutu tracer capabilities! Depending on what you all think, and if many people are willing to try this out here in the NE, I may base some future events I put on around these kinds of night mission scenarios, and possibly supply the correct color tracer to each side.
BTW, does anyone have any ideas what colors each respecive nation used for their small arms tracer ammo? I believe the US used Red tracers, as they used red in Vietnam and I believe they still do currently. I really don't know about others like Germany, Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan.
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Jerry-ADK
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Post by Jerry-ADK on Jun 11, 2014 12:08:54 GMT -5
This is a great topic and one I have been thinking about lately too! Your right, it will make night fighting much more visual. I was thinking what you were thinking about installing a small LED somewhere in the drum of our MG42. Im going to look into what is available on line for retro fitting a LED there. Couldn't be too difficult to do, right? If is easy to do, maybe we should definitely try to do it for Overlord. It may be possible to just find a very small key chain type LED flashlight that the internals could be scavenged from and somehow taped or glued in place inside the drum pointed at the feed wheel. You could just turn it on when you want to use it via its own switch or wire it to your motors connections points as you suggested, although you would have to match the voltage of the LED with your gun battery to get it to work. Which would require calculating the right amount of resistors to drop the voltage. Buying a tracer unit and stripping its internals out might be option since I think they are set up with a sensor to activate the LED. May be the sensor and light could be installed in the feed tube somehow. I think buying something already made with its own power supply would be the easist way to go since you wont have to worry about matching voltages. You just need to figure out where to mount it so the BBs will pass the sensor and light. I As far as colors are concerned, Im not too sure about which color was used by what nation in their tracers. I think they all had access to the colors, since they are just magnesium pellets and powdered metal that makes the color. I think though that US should go red, and Germany go green. Somehow that seems right. It will help organize fire fights a bit. And be quite a spectical to see at night!
We probably should keep this to the HMG's because they would be easiest to modify. And if everyone has them it wont be very realistic.
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Post by brownien on Jun 11, 2014 17:00:28 GMT -5
There are several tutorials out there explaining how to do this with a standard hopup unit linkscroll down past the G36 mod and look at the way the AK47 hopup is done, its a more standard model hopup than the G36 heres a nice video explaining it as well linkI actually just ordered bulk 100 of the 12000mcd 3mm LED's. They are SUPER bright! Much brighter than the kinds you get from radioshack or other electronics stores. I would highly reccomend getting these. I also don't think I will be needing all 100 either! If anyone wants a couple to try out, PM me and I can send you how many you like! Besides the LED's you can get the resistors at any ol' electonics store, just give them the voltage and ampereage of your aeg battery, and the voltage and amperage consumption of your LED's and how many you will use, and they can find the perfect resistor for your application! I will just be wiring the Hutu's I do in my guns up to the motor terminals, and adding in a small switch so I can turn off the Hutu, in case I have tracer ammo loaded but don't want to illuminate it. This way, the LED's will only be on when you pull the trigger, and from what I've heard this is PLENTY of time for these High Power LED's to energize a tracer BB! I was also toying with the idea of putting the LED's at the tip of the muzzle. It would still illuminate the BB as it leaves the muzzle, and it would simulate a muzzle flash! Only problem is that for full auto, the light would continuously be on, not flashing with each shot. I suppose one could splice a pressure switch into the gearbox to close the curcuit whenever the tappet plate moves forward when firing a BB. But I still think the easiest way to do tracer rounds would be to do a standard Hutu mod to the hopup. No need for any external wiring or gearbox mods! Also I was thinking about the highcap LMG idea, with putting a light into the mag itself, and although this would illuminate all the BB's in the resivoir, no light would get to them once in the feedway. So essentially you wouldn't get tracer rounds coming out until you shoot 50-100 BB's!
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Jerry-ADK
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Post by Jerry-ADK on Jun 11, 2014 17:11:29 GMT -5
Very cool, Thanks for the links. Hopefully we can mod our MG42 for tracers before the event. Mark will probably see this thread and "jump" right on it. Along with all the other projects he is trying to get done before the event.
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Post by brownien on Jun 11, 2014 17:20:51 GMT -5
I'd love to see that running with tracers! Have him PM me if he wants some of those super strong LED's I have!
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ScottCollins
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Post by ScottCollins on Jun 11, 2014 17:22:14 GMT -5
The only problem I see is that if you modify the M1 Carbines, it might illuminate the inside of the receiver and give away some positions when cocking the gun
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Post by brownien on Jun 11, 2014 18:02:58 GMT -5
Could put the Hutu power on a switch hooked up to the trigger, or a switch to the bolt to turn it off when the bolt is out of battery
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Jerry-ADK
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Post by Jerry-ADK on Jun 11, 2014 20:25:25 GMT -5
I'd love to see that running with tracers! Have him PM me if he wants some of those super strong LED's I have! I will.
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Post by insterburger on Jun 11, 2014 21:52:30 GMT -5
The only problem I see is that if you modify the M1 Carbines, it might illuminate the inside of the receiver and give away some positions when cocking the gun Yeah, it might... which would be similar to, if not quite exactly the same as, muzzle flash. Which was prominent on the M1, hence the development of the flash supressor that was used with the M2 infrared scope. Sounds like added value in terms of historical accuracy! Nate, will PM you on the LED.
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Jerry-ADK
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Post by Jerry-ADK on Jun 12, 2014 6:51:56 GMT -5
The only problem I see is that if you modify the M1 Carbines, it might illuminate the inside of the receiver and give away some positions when cocking the gun Yeah, it might... which would be similar to, if not quite exactly the same as, muzzle flash. Which was prominent on the M1, hence the development of the flash supressor that was used with the M2 infrared scope. Sounds like added value in terms of historical accuracy! Nate, will PM you on the LED. It will be very cool to have tracers Herr Interburger! I hopefully it will be a easy mod. Looks pretty straight forward.
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2nd Bat
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Post by 2nd Bat on Jun 12, 2014 8:42:04 GMT -5
Muzzle flash is a critical safety aspect that not only adds realism but also tends to prevent the up close camper and seperates forces. At RECONDO we don'trequire tracers, just tracer units. hence some people load every third or fifth round, others none at all all some just the bottom of their mags and most load all tracers. The effect is awesome. I made a couple tracer elements for home made machine guns by painting the inside of the box magazines white and installing some super bright LEDS inside the BB servoir which over time suffiiciently charged the BBs to glow as they flew. The challenge was sealing the ammo box sufficiently that the internal glow didn't give away your position which was nearly impossible. The feed tibe was a flexible spring hose and the glow would leak out from their.
In reality a Machine gun barrel quickly emits a glow as the barrel heats up. I have seen M60 barrels fired until they were white hot. (not a regulation rate of fire and a ruined barrel but it seemed like a good idea at the time.)
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