Belegarth

So i was watching mythbusters the other day when i saw them making an old time korean rocket launcher called a hwacha
And i got to thinking has any one thought about making an compressed air powered hwacha to fire belegarth arrows
i bring it up because its i know why catapults and other siege weapons are hard to make in the sport due to moving parts but this has no moving parts...so would this work or not?

I'm pretty sure i put this in the wrong forum so sorry about that

Ha well "thought" about it ha it would be nice... but it wouldn't fit me in battle. In my realm we would just make it and test it, put a maximum poundage on it and if it don't kill, bruise, or cut it's good

there's a group in the SCA that have cannon. The propulsion system for this is the round itself. They take a plastic coke bottle, pad the front then pop a modified cork onto it. They put a little water into the bottle, pop the cork onto it then pump it up with air.

The cannon portion provides the the lever that removes the cork and the tube to aim.

http://sg.sca.org.nz/siege.htm About half way down the page are photos of what I'm referring to. This may give way to more ideas!

A Belegarth Artillery League!? AWWWWWW YYYEAAAAH!!!

There's your 'hwacha' right there, Geshtal. Looks like the biggest challenge will be making effective plastic soda bottle ammo that DOESN'T contain lead plates and plywood...

Not to sound negative But i think it would sorta fall into the same boat as Cross Bows (half draw and max draw, etc)

If I was playing Devil's Advocate- that would be my first question.


S

Satanaka wrote:Not to sound negative But i think it would sorta fall into the same boat as Cross Bows (half draw and max draw, etc)

If I was playing Devil's Advocate- that would be my first question.


S

If you go the "pneumatic ammo" route... I'm pretty certain there'd be a PSI restriction. For Airsoft MilSims, If someone's using an air powered bazooka, there's always a strict PSI cap and a strict designation on what you can fire it at.

I'd say, contact an SCA Marshal and ask how they go about judging artillery, I can already think of how to go about building the rounds!

But if you want to stick with the idea of building a launcher that fires generic arrows, build an Airsoft Bazooka (203 Rocket, Launcher) but size the barrels for siloflex arrows. The only moving part in the laucher would be the trigger mechanism.

If this idea is indeed viable, I'll sit down and start designing something now. For now, I can think of a design foe firing standard cannon sized rounds withough resorting to self propelled ammo.

If you are planning to use the hwacha in sca combat then having it powered by compressed air won't work. The Siege Engines Handbook says "Cannons or any replica of cannons are not allowed in SCA combat. Engines may not use compressed or ignited gasses or liquids or combusting materials of any kind to power projectiles."
So sadly no compressed air. I had the same idea after watching that episode of Mythbusters myself. Now I'm trying to think of how to do crossbow style, maybe with tennis balls and surgical tubes. Still a work in progress in the idea stages but it has to be workable somehow.

Doesn't the Kingdom of Caid have an artillary league? From what I've been reading, they use ammo that's self propeled. Cork and pump the ammo to a certain psi then load it into the cannon. The cannon offers the latch that pulls the cork on the ammo.

If that idea has been cashed since the posts I found then I'm looking into launching rock weapons from a surgical band powered ballista that looks like a cannon!

I think if I set up several tubes loaded with boffer arrows, then run plungers up the tubes to push the arrows out, then connect the plungers to a plank that's connected to several surgical bands, I should get the same effect as a Hwacha! No air involved, just pure mechanical power.