AOSC Forum Archive

Recently completed, we managed to roll this bad boy out for Op Downfall. It's a full conversion from a 1979 Jeep Cherokee Chief, into a deadly airsoft tank. This would be the flagship of Black Poison and all of our pride and joy! It operated flawlessly and was able to deal quite some damage over the Op. Wonderful maiden voyage and excellent game. Our whole team is very pleased with the results.

Nice tank

What does this beast shoot?

The main gun shoots mini tennis balls. All the little black circles you see are gun ports for the 7 guys we can fit in the back.

Is that all painted plywood with a steel frame, or is it a steel frame with pieces of steel and plywood?

Hotspur93 wrote:Is that all painted plywood with a steel frame, or is it a steel frame with pieces of steel and plywood?

The main frame is steel piping, the smaller framing was done with square piping. The frame is built into the chassis of the original Jeep and is strong enough to withstand a rollover. The "armor plating" is sheets of plywood painted black and bolted to the frame.

Nice, how well does the motor hold up and when fully loaded. Granted you probably won't go over 15 mph on any field for safety reasons, but does it take hills and rough terrain with ease? I would assume it did having Jeep as the base, but just curious. My friend and I were thinking about taking up a similar project and we were trying to think of the best and most efficient way to do it. Meaning that if we could have a Jeep with a 4 cylinder engine be able to support the weight when trying overcome obstacles we would shoot for that just keep the project cost effective.

Very nice work gents, smart of you to think of rollover protection (and hence possibility) on the front end.
Also nice use of the shower pan liner to shroud the cannon's mantlet.

Is the cannon a 2" bore? If so, have you looked at Nerf mini vortex foam rockets instead of the mini tennis balls? Sadly a lot of insured fields (example: Fulda Gap at CDWC) won't let you use anything else (and it was a fight to get them approved, they've since become a scenario pball standard). Not sure about the mini tennis balls (same as doggy toy 1.5" tennis balls?), but a regular tennis ball weighs several times as much as the Nerf round, and can actually knock someone unconscious at regular (~220fps) cannon velocities.

If in fact it is a 1.5" and you're using the pet toy tennis balls, I must say that is quite clever. How does it perform?

Also, although I've not seen it up close and personal yet, I'd suggest adding some ventilation to the interior, perhaps replace a few of the plexiglass/lexan "windows" with mesh grating or similar. Bet it gets hot in there otherwise, even in the winter.
This will also allow for better hearing/communication from inside the vehicle to those nearby, both for safety ("I'm backing up!") and for tactical considerations ("They're over there!").


Also might consider adding a small flagpole or similar inside the vehicle that you can raise/wave/put up/out the top, so you have some way to denote when you are out of action, assuming you don't already have something along those lines.

Hotspur93 wrote:Nice, how well does the motor hold up and when fully loaded. Granted you probably won't go over 15 mph on any field for safety reasons, but does it take hills and rough terrain with ease? I would assume it did having Jeep as the base, but just curious. My friend and I were thinking about taking up a similar project and we were trying to think of the best and most efficient way to do it. Meaning that if we could have a Jeep with a 4 cylinder engine be able to support the weight when trying overcome obstacles we would shoot for that just keep the project cost effective.

This Jeep is one of the older big Jeeps. It has a V8 360 engine, so it doesn't strain at all and the mud tires means it can get just about anywhere. Believe it or not, with only two people, the tank is actually lighter than it was stock. However, when fully loaded, some extra leafs had to be added to the suspension to keep it from bottoming out. If you want to make a tank out of a 4 cylinder, I'd think it would work perfectly fine as long as it isn't used for a troop transport.

fallout11 wrote:Very nice work gents, smart of you to think of rollover protection (and hence possibility) on the front end.
Also nice use of the shower pan liner to shroud the cannon's mantlet.

Is the cannon a 2" bore? If so, have you looked at Nerf mini vortex foam rockets instead of the mini tennis balls? Sadly a lot of insured fields (example: Fulda Gap at CDWC) won't let you use anything else (and it was a fight to get them approved, they've since become a scenario pball standard). Not sure about the mini tennis balls (same as doggy toy 1.5" tennis balls?), but a regular tennis ball weighs several times as much as the Nerf round, and can actually knock someone unconscious at regular (~220fps) cannon velocities.

If in fact it is a 1.5" and you're using the pet toy tennis balls, I must say that is quite clever. How does it perform?

Thank you! We did alot of thinking and brainstorming to set it all up.

Well, unfortunately, we keep details of the gun design and performance classified. However, let's just say we used a few tricks that no other gun has and the tennis balls we shoot are no heavier than a nerf football. Also, the gun is able to use different PSI loads to ensure low impact velocity at certain ranges. Say, 25psi for 100ft and lower and scaling up from there.

As for the ventilation, we learned a hard lesson on that last game. It was extremely hot in the tank due to the engine roaring and so many bodies moving around. We used lexan windows, but we'll be replacing them with mesh soon.

And we have a hatch on the top with a "Don't Tread on Me" flag we stick out when shot. So that's covered.

It looked a lot more intimidating in person, haha. Was very fun to play against... "Tank is coming! Fall back and get the RPG here!"

My favorite encounter against it was when you guys pulled down into Honshu/Coronet (day 1) and our entire team ran back towards Coronet except for me and some other guy who ran the opposite way. We ended up on the top of the hillside, just above the main road, looking down at the tank. I was like "Should we go?" until all of a sudden the back door of the tank opens and we start spraying a rain of BB's down at all of the players exiting. Got a few of them before we were both taken out, but that was definitely one of my favorite highlights from that event.

Black Poison Airsoft wrote: Well, unfortunately, we keep details of the gun design and performance classified. However, let's just say we used a few tricks that no other gun has and the tennis balls we shoot are no heavier than a nerf football.

Say no more.

Tiger wrote:It looked a lot more intimidating in person, haha. Was very fun to play against... "Tank is coming! Fall back and get the RPG here!"

My favorite encounter against it was when you guys pulled down into Honshu/Coronet (day 1) and our entire team ran back towards Coronet except for me and some other guy who ran the opposite way. We ended up on the top of the hillside, just above the main road, looking down at the tank. I was like "Should we go?" until all of a sudden the back door of the tank opens and we start spraying a rain of BB's down at all of the players exiting. Got a few of them before we were both taken out, but that was definitely one of my favorite highlights from that event.

That was the only time the infantry took a hit on the way out. Me and the driver were trying to find where those bb's were coming from!

You guys seemed very shy to use the RPG the first day though. We saw it maybe once the whole 1st day. Which was kinda odd, because I know we aren't exactly quiet or stealthy either!

Your vehicle reminds me of the BTR-152.
http://www.google.com/search?q=soviet+a ... 00&bih=495

The trapezoid shaped add-on on the back of yours- what are the advantages of having this add-on as opposed to just having the doors flush with the back?