Ok so I was tagged and asked out to go into depth on how this part of the hobby works since I am a club leader. Bear with me this is long.
First off, I founded "San Diego RC Tank Battles" which uses this name on facebook as a reflector for our group as a sub group of the larger LATank club. Our San Diego club eventually took the name 619th Tank Battalion after our phone area code and played on the legacy Armor insignia for the Armor branch and its subordinate units. While I lead the club I am by no means a dictator and in fact the name and logos were not my choice but a colabrative effort chosen by our group. I kind of guide and orgaize our group but let it run more as a democracy so to say.
The history of the IR battling as I have been told by a couple people that were there at the supposed beginning played out like this.... A person in the LA area went to Tamiya and reccomended that they develop a system similar to what the US Military uses at the National Training Center NTC, Fort Irwin. That system is known as MILES. Its a high tech lazer tag that integrates individual soldiers, vehicles, tanks and aircraft into a scaled proporitonal Infra Red lazer tag system that uses a "God Gun" to reset the sensors. Tamiya developed their IR battle system and quickly ended their early DMD T0-1 two channel ESC for the tracks alone (of which I bought the sherman in 1999) and developed it into a full blown system that operated the turret, gun elevation, and on some tanks a recoil, while creating a 3 class tank weight system, and a self diagnostic built in as well. The system proved completely awesome for the time period, albeit quite expensive as well, but a whole new hobby was born.
Small time electronics folks tried over time to disect the tamiya system and see what made it tick and developed various levels of quality of after market systems from a board and bits you solder together yourself and hope works to current aftermarket systems that use SD cards and text files to program your tank, or a TV remote pointed at the IR sensor to do the programming to the newest Henglong offered revolutionary 6.0 system that come standard in the tanks.
The hobby has so far been, buy a tamiya kit and build it and install their battle system and have fun. Then Henglong and WSN came around and the quality was quite low in the early years of Henglong, people used to joke if you open the box and a wheel doesnt fall out you have a lucky start, but HL continued to improve year by year with each new offering and then updating their earlier releases. Taigen and Mato came around as well each taking a different niche with different levels of metal in the tank chassis and hull and different qualities of mechanical standards (IMHO)
All these brands came with toy radios and systems, and to be able to be used in an IR battle, one had to open the tank, gut it and throw away the stock electronics and then install a various after market Tank Control Board system and battle unit, or buy seperately one of Tamiya's systems from one of their tank kits. Some people set up several model tanks to move one tamiya TCB system around between a couple tanks just due to cost and availability. Now with all the aftermarket systems and current HL products Im sure no one uses one system between multiple tanks.
Currently Taigen has its one proprietary IR battle system that does not play with any other brand. Mato offers empty tanks or one with an aftermarket board. Henglong tanks for a few years had IR available with an add on kit that sort of worked but now offer the 6.0 system that is fully compatible to battle with the tamiya tanks. However there are a few drawbacks still.
The tamiya based system became the standard since they invented the hobby. There are 3 weight classes of tanks based on the WWII era tanks. A light, medium, and heavy class of tank.
Each class is selectable by switch settings on tamiya and some after market boards, others use the tv remote to program the "Weight class"
The key to the weight class is this, each tank battles differently
A light tank takes only 3 hits to knock it out, and its reload time, that is the time before you can fire another shot is 3 seconds.
A Medium tank is 5 hits to knock out and 5 seconds reload time.
A heavy is 9 and 9.
With each hit, your tank slows down. The first hit takes something like 40 percent of your speed. That is a killer when you need to maneuver. Each subsequent hit slows you down more and more until the last one you can barely move and then the last hit makes a incoming round sound, a hit, and explosion sound and fire. Then the tank will restart its self after a few minutes.
The new Henglong 6.0 system now allows you to take a tank out of the box and come play in an IR battle, however the couple draw backs are you have one fixed setting, 6 hits to knock out, and the tank does not slow down with each hit. And if you really play with the tank and learn everything of how it works, you can cheat in the battle, which I wont reveal here.
We have two clubs in Southern California. The current standard is LA Tank, which meets at the American Military Equipment Museum aka Tank Museum in South El Monte on the first Sunday every month. They have a battlefield about the size of two tank parking spots to play in. They set up various obstacles and props and buildings to have a force on force battle in close quarters or MOUT style battle. The motto is run what you brought. The museum has for a long time sold Henglong tanks and converted them to IR by adding in a aftermarket conversion system so they sort of work with Tamiya, results vary... But we all just go with it because we are there for fun, and the lower quality conversions are usually kids or newbies that are just getting into the hobby and often the adults upgraded to better aftermarket systems in their tanks. They even allow kids that have henglong tanks that do not have IR systems to participate in the battles. Each kid with a non IR tank will "Ghost" with another IR tank. They become the IR tank wingman and when the IR tank dies, the "Ghost" tank dies. This is how we get everyone involved in the fun.
Rules are loose but if a person is noticed cheating, which is often when their tank has been K'Oed and self restarted and they just jump back in battle, or they have an after market system that allows them to shave time off of reload or add more hit counts beyond the tamiya standard, we will first gang up on that person for fun and quitely single them out killing their tank right away first off every time, just to frustrate them. Then we will go talk to them and suggest they leave their tank dead after its K"Oed or maybe they should reprogram their profile on the tank. Its happed a few times but not often. Like I said we are all their for fun and while its competitive, its like profesional sports, in 10 minutes you could be switching teams when you swap from your panzer to your sherman and now the enemy are your wingmen.
At 619th Tank Battalion in San Diego I started us up as an extension for the SoCal area that wanted a little more serious intense fun out of the battles. I searched around for a large area field, and my first field was closed and became open space next to my old college. My second field was hard to find but became a perfect location. Its huge, a vast expanse of dirt, light ground cover and shrubs. I made lots of mock up buildings out of large cardboard boxes and I nail them to the ground with two 16 penny nails because I hate an obtsacle that moves when the tank bumps it. Some of the buildings have blown out sides so the tanks can hide inside and ambush.
Our turn out in our club is smaller than LA Tank because of the driving distance invovled, and competition with LA tank. Every once in a while we get visited by about half of the Phoenix AZ club DAK. But I will say, while our turn out is lower in persons, it surpasses the LA Tank events in fun. We get the more serious tankers that drive good distances to come and battle on our large field and we play different format battles. We have timed battles, often rather than just attrition, we have capture the flag using home made IR sensor boxes with beacon lights and boom sounds, and we have points battles where some tanks are worth more than others, and planing and skill requires a different battle technique.
We started out running battles every month but that eventually wore us all out doing two battles a month between LA Tank and 619th San Diego so we dropped to every other month and we often get rained out once or twice during winter/spring. Last season was epic in that LA and San Diego were rained out every time from October to March. We were all itching to battle so bad.
We also started running themed battles to make our events more interesting and cater to a theme since nobody has just one tank. Most of the hobby unitl about 2 or 3 years ago was all WWII tanks but modern tanks have been released recently. So we started out with a battle of the bulge theme one december and continued on with hosting all modern only tank battles. IDF Super shermans and russian armor have soared recently so we now have our "October War" Arab - Israeli themed event. Shermans, panzers and russian armor.
Sticking with our motto run what you have, we dont stop anyone from running their Tiger 1 with our modern tanks. Sure they are at a disadvantage because we all have henglong and tamiya modern tanks upgraded to be fast moving, fast aquiring tanks but they can still run and have fun, were not going to exclude someone just because they dont own a tank for the theme of the day. And always we have one or two available to loan out for newcomers or even just passers by that walk up and say whats going on here?
I also devised a tank competition that was designed like a model boat regatta. (I also used to do rc warships) The "Tank Trials" I came up with was a timed obstacle course that had IR targets included for IR type tanks where they could earn points by hitting targets. The catagories were for IR and non IR so all tanks could compete. I make up trophies for the various levels and for the attendees to vote on their favorite tank in each catagory. Like favorite modern tank, favorite LAV or support, Favorite Cold war tank, Favorite Allied WWII, etc..... This event is still our most talked about and anticipated event. The trophies are a biggie to everybody even non winners. We have so much fun rooting for each other to do better and better and eveybody is hoping everybody wins. I really cannot recall a time I had more fun than these events and I was the poor worn out sucker that organized it and set it up and was one of the 3 judges for the course driving.
I should also add, that some clubs like back east have strict requirements. They are very strict on scale speed by testing your tank on a clock, checking the IR emitter depth, making sure you have either a barrel flash or a barrel recoil etc. Also they often require that a tank be operated at the class that the tamiya class guide dictates, which was mostly made by them. Running a heavy tank is tough, its much more fun to run as a medium and we allow that. We do frown if you want to take your sherman and run it as a heavy but we really arent going to stop you.
Many in this hobby still hold a snobish attitude that if its not a tamiya brand tank its not worth spit but those days are gone yet sadly the snobs still turn their nose up a the rest of us that use the plentiful field of tanks that are avialable out there from various manufacturers.
There is also a made up class called Invunerable frontal armor or IFA. These are the German Tank destroyers and the like that have sloped front armor and no turret, just a casemate with a gun, In theory shells would bounce off the front, making them invulerable, so we allow these models to have black tape on the front of their receiver so they cannot be shot from the front. Makes a battle really tough but fun game play.
Our San Diego field is near an aircraft field, the San Diego Electric Flyers on mission bay at South Shores park near the boat ramp.
I think I have covered the history of this hobby/ sport and how our clubs are organized and run. I may edit this to clarify or correct anything or add to, at later dates. Photos will be in follow up posts.
First off, I founded "San Diego RC Tank Battles" which uses this name on facebook as a reflector for our group as a sub group of the larger LATank club. Our San Diego club eventually took the name 619th Tank Battalion after our phone area code and played on the legacy Armor insignia for the Armor branch and its subordinate units. While I lead the club I am by no means a dictator and in fact the name and logos were not my choice but a colabrative effort chosen by our group. I kind of guide and orgaize our group but let it run more as a democracy so to say.
The history of the IR battling as I have been told by a couple people that were there at the supposed beginning played out like this.... A person in the LA area went to Tamiya and reccomended that they develop a system similar to what the US Military uses at the National Training Center NTC, Fort Irwin. That system is known as MILES. Its a high tech lazer tag that integrates individual soldiers, vehicles, tanks and aircraft into a scaled proporitonal Infra Red lazer tag system that uses a "God Gun" to reset the sensors. Tamiya developed their IR battle system and quickly ended their early DMD T0-1 two channel ESC for the tracks alone (of which I bought the sherman in 1999) and developed it into a full blown system that operated the turret, gun elevation, and on some tanks a recoil, while creating a 3 class tank weight system, and a self diagnostic built in as well. The system proved completely awesome for the time period, albeit quite expensive as well, but a whole new hobby was born.
Small time electronics folks tried over time to disect the tamiya system and see what made it tick and developed various levels of quality of after market systems from a board and bits you solder together yourself and hope works to current aftermarket systems that use SD cards and text files to program your tank, or a TV remote pointed at the IR sensor to do the programming to the newest Henglong offered revolutionary 6.0 system that come standard in the tanks.
The hobby has so far been, buy a tamiya kit and build it and install their battle system and have fun. Then Henglong and WSN came around and the quality was quite low in the early years of Henglong, people used to joke if you open the box and a wheel doesnt fall out you have a lucky start, but HL continued to improve year by year with each new offering and then updating their earlier releases. Taigen and Mato came around as well each taking a different niche with different levels of metal in the tank chassis and hull and different qualities of mechanical standards (IMHO)
All these brands came with toy radios and systems, and to be able to be used in an IR battle, one had to open the tank, gut it and throw away the stock electronics and then install a various after market Tank Control Board system and battle unit, or buy seperately one of Tamiya's systems from one of their tank kits. Some people set up several model tanks to move one tamiya TCB system around between a couple tanks just due to cost and availability. Now with all the aftermarket systems and current HL products Im sure no one uses one system between multiple tanks.
Currently Taigen has its one proprietary IR battle system that does not play with any other brand. Mato offers empty tanks or one with an aftermarket board. Henglong tanks for a few years had IR available with an add on kit that sort of worked but now offer the 6.0 system that is fully compatible to battle with the tamiya tanks. However there are a few drawbacks still.
The tamiya based system became the standard since they invented the hobby. There are 3 weight classes of tanks based on the WWII era tanks. A light, medium, and heavy class of tank.
Each class is selectable by switch settings on tamiya and some after market boards, others use the tv remote to program the "Weight class"
The key to the weight class is this, each tank battles differently
A light tank takes only 3 hits to knock it out, and its reload time, that is the time before you can fire another shot is 3 seconds.
A Medium tank is 5 hits to knock out and 5 seconds reload time.
A heavy is 9 and 9.
With each hit, your tank slows down. The first hit takes something like 40 percent of your speed. That is a killer when you need to maneuver. Each subsequent hit slows you down more and more until the last one you can barely move and then the last hit makes a incoming round sound, a hit, and explosion sound and fire. Then the tank will restart its self after a few minutes.
The new Henglong 6.0 system now allows you to take a tank out of the box and come play in an IR battle, however the couple draw backs are you have one fixed setting, 6 hits to knock out, and the tank does not slow down with each hit. And if you really play with the tank and learn everything of how it works, you can cheat in the battle, which I wont reveal here.
We have two clubs in Southern California. The current standard is LA Tank, which meets at the American Military Equipment Museum aka Tank Museum in South El Monte on the first Sunday every month. They have a battlefield about the size of two tank parking spots to play in. They set up various obstacles and props and buildings to have a force on force battle in close quarters or MOUT style battle. The motto is run what you brought. The museum has for a long time sold Henglong tanks and converted them to IR by adding in a aftermarket conversion system so they sort of work with Tamiya, results vary... But we all just go with it because we are there for fun, and the lower quality conversions are usually kids or newbies that are just getting into the hobby and often the adults upgraded to better aftermarket systems in their tanks. They even allow kids that have henglong tanks that do not have IR systems to participate in the battles. Each kid with a non IR tank will "Ghost" with another IR tank. They become the IR tank wingman and when the IR tank dies, the "Ghost" tank dies. This is how we get everyone involved in the fun.
Rules are loose but if a person is noticed cheating, which is often when their tank has been K'Oed and self restarted and they just jump back in battle, or they have an after market system that allows them to shave time off of reload or add more hit counts beyond the tamiya standard, we will first gang up on that person for fun and quitely single them out killing their tank right away first off every time, just to frustrate them. Then we will go talk to them and suggest they leave their tank dead after its K"Oed or maybe they should reprogram their profile on the tank. Its happed a few times but not often. Like I said we are all their for fun and while its competitive, its like profesional sports, in 10 minutes you could be switching teams when you swap from your panzer to your sherman and now the enemy are your wingmen.
At 619th Tank Battalion in San Diego I started us up as an extension for the SoCal area that wanted a little more serious intense fun out of the battles. I searched around for a large area field, and my first field was closed and became open space next to my old college. My second field was hard to find but became a perfect location. Its huge, a vast expanse of dirt, light ground cover and shrubs. I made lots of mock up buildings out of large cardboard boxes and I nail them to the ground with two 16 penny nails because I hate an obtsacle that moves when the tank bumps it. Some of the buildings have blown out sides so the tanks can hide inside and ambush.
Our turn out in our club is smaller than LA Tank because of the driving distance invovled, and competition with LA tank. Every once in a while we get visited by about half of the Phoenix AZ club DAK. But I will say, while our turn out is lower in persons, it surpasses the LA Tank events in fun. We get the more serious tankers that drive good distances to come and battle on our large field and we play different format battles. We have timed battles, often rather than just attrition, we have capture the flag using home made IR sensor boxes with beacon lights and boom sounds, and we have points battles where some tanks are worth more than others, and planing and skill requires a different battle technique.
We started out running battles every month but that eventually wore us all out doing two battles a month between LA Tank and 619th San Diego so we dropped to every other month and we often get rained out once or twice during winter/spring. Last season was epic in that LA and San Diego were rained out every time from October to March. We were all itching to battle so bad.
We also started running themed battles to make our events more interesting and cater to a theme since nobody has just one tank. Most of the hobby unitl about 2 or 3 years ago was all WWII tanks but modern tanks have been released recently. So we started out with a battle of the bulge theme one december and continued on with hosting all modern only tank battles. IDF Super shermans and russian armor have soared recently so we now have our "October War" Arab - Israeli themed event. Shermans, panzers and russian armor.
Sticking with our motto run what you have, we dont stop anyone from running their Tiger 1 with our modern tanks. Sure they are at a disadvantage because we all have henglong and tamiya modern tanks upgraded to be fast moving, fast aquiring tanks but they can still run and have fun, were not going to exclude someone just because they dont own a tank for the theme of the day. And always we have one or two available to loan out for newcomers or even just passers by that walk up and say whats going on here?
I also devised a tank competition that was designed like a model boat regatta. (I also used to do rc warships) The "Tank Trials" I came up with was a timed obstacle course that had IR targets included for IR type tanks where they could earn points by hitting targets. The catagories were for IR and non IR so all tanks could compete. I make up trophies for the various levels and for the attendees to vote on their favorite tank in each catagory. Like favorite modern tank, favorite LAV or support, Favorite Cold war tank, Favorite Allied WWII, etc..... This event is still our most talked about and anticipated event. The trophies are a biggie to everybody even non winners. We have so much fun rooting for each other to do better and better and eveybody is hoping everybody wins. I really cannot recall a time I had more fun than these events and I was the poor worn out sucker that organized it and set it up and was one of the 3 judges for the course driving.
I should also add, that some clubs like back east have strict requirements. They are very strict on scale speed by testing your tank on a clock, checking the IR emitter depth, making sure you have either a barrel flash or a barrel recoil etc. Also they often require that a tank be operated at the class that the tamiya class guide dictates, which was mostly made by them. Running a heavy tank is tough, its much more fun to run as a medium and we allow that. We do frown if you want to take your sherman and run it as a heavy but we really arent going to stop you.
Many in this hobby still hold a snobish attitude that if its not a tamiya brand tank its not worth spit but those days are gone yet sadly the snobs still turn their nose up a the rest of us that use the plentiful field of tanks that are avialable out there from various manufacturers.
There is also a made up class called Invunerable frontal armor or IFA. These are the German Tank destroyers and the like that have sloped front armor and no turret, just a casemate with a gun, In theory shells would bounce off the front, making them invulerable, so we allow these models to have black tape on the front of their receiver so they cannot be shot from the front. Makes a battle really tough but fun game play.
Our San Diego field is near an aircraft field, the San Diego Electric Flyers on mission bay at South Shores park near the boat ramp.
I think I have covered the history of this hobby/ sport and how our clubs are organized and run. I may edit this to clarify or correct anything or add to, at later dates. Photos will be in follow up posts.
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