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Welcome to our semi-often newsletter! Date: 26 OCT 04 Edition II Vol 4, correction C | |
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Table of Contents However, they are not going to break if you simply sneeze on them 2 Long Distance Protocol Codes. 3 Short distance protocol codes 3 Second layer protocol. EWoW-C 3 Come for the fight, stay for the rain! 9 |
Welcome back everyone to our 4th volume of the new format for our newsletter! ~Editor Notes~ ~ My apologies for taking so long to get this edition out – however, I feel the wait was worth the content. ~ We have had multiple contributions to this newsletter. There are a lot of things going on in the Laser Tag World. ~ Multiple new venders are opening the doors in both the hobby, and outdoor market. I figured a quick review was in order. ~ I’ve added a couple new sections to the newsletter, these where inspired by chat sessions and a few listings from other news groups. ~ Also too, we have added a lot of resources to our website – there are also new resources popping up on the web, one of the new sections will cover these resources to bring them to everyone’s attention. ~ This newsletter has enough content that I actually had to put a table of contents on it! ~ I actually had to tone back on some of the material for this newsletter to get it out on time. Plus this leaves me material for the next newsletter <grin> ~ Please note that some of the material in this newsletter is provided to you raw from the person who wrote it, and other sections have been edited to fit our format a bit better. |
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As many of you may have already noticed, Kapowwe™ has started making their own version of Realistic Laser Tag guns! What they are actually doing is taking the crème of the crop of Laser Challenge (LC) guns – the Radar Extreme™© gun set, and installing it into some of there better spring based Airsoft guns – hmmmm, sounds a lot like what Styfle was doing for their commercial grade gear. There have been a lot of people asking for this kind of gear, and with Ed Elbert stuck in the war in Iraq with the Army, I guess it was high time someone stepped up to the plate. There has been some concern however, as some of the guns people have bought from Kapowwe™ in the past were not the greatest of shells, and there are a lot of taggers who will not go near LC gear. For those of you who are not afraid of LC gear, Cloud Captain has been nice enough to provide us with a review of the gear that he bought from them. However, they are not going to break if you simply sneeze on them I've had two of the Kapowwe m4s for about a week. I was expecting the $20 airsoft bodies to be a lot more fragile. Don't get me wrong...I dont think they will survive a full tumble down a hill like some of my metal-bodied AEGs (auto electric gun.)
However, they are not going to break if you simply sneeze on them.
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Kapowwe suggests that you use the tactical sling included with them. I agree fully. The sling rings are metal too. The lens is mounted in the flashhider of the weapon. I understand why...clarity and all...but I have this awful tendancy to forget my barrel length and drag it across objects while in motion (hence my use of metal airsoft guns). You power up the gun by inserting the clip. The batteries appear to be in the "black box" and not in the clip...it probably just completes the circuit. The gun is reloaded by pulling the m4's charging handle. A VERY nice touch.
The gun has a capacity of 10 shots if you fire full auto. I have a feeling that it is pulsing one or more times a second...too fast for LC sensors to react. I discovered that if you snap-fire, the gun seems to have 25 or so rounds capacity..respectable for a Colt replica.
I have not had a chance to test range and accuracy yet. The length of my living room is not a good testbed for such things. Considering the guns retail at $80 each...and you get a full radar extreme set worth of part (pistol guts and sensor)as part of the package..its not a bad deal. I figure at least $40 retail on the parts alone. Its not like they just slapped the parts inside the shell either...the shell is functional and adds a lot to the guns panache.
The black box on these puppies seems to house the reset button and the batteries. The box is mounted on the ris rail at the bottom of the foregrip. |
They concealed the external wiring with a cosmetic wire covering - so it looks fairly nice. The only problem I have, is that the only object like this you would find on an M4, is a PEQ. These are most commonly mounted on top of the fore grip, and sometimes on the side; but, I have never seen them on the bottom rail. If they include a bit more wire and covering, you could move the box to the top rail which would be more realistic in my mind. After sending Kapowwe feedback they are looking to try placing the blackbox on the top rail...possibly with a cosmetic chance to make it look a bit more like a PEQ. I've also just gotten the new model p90 and am anxious to put it through the ringer as well. More to come on this model soon. For a summaries, pictures, movies of the guns in use, and an idea of what is being carried, check: Ill post more after I field test them Halloween night at the Macon Laser Tag League game.
He reviews products for both Airsoft Atlanta and most recently Kapowwe. He turned to tagging in his search for a safe way to run a science fiction and survival horror games. |
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The Buzz on EWOWThere has been a lot of talk about the new website that poped up not to long ago. At first it was considered to be a prank, as no one had a clue as to who made the website, or who to contact about it. Well the truth is finally coming out of the woodwork, and it looks like a new tag vendor is in town! The following information was donated to us by Peter J O'Riley:
Hey everyone, especially you who are thinking of making your own equipment. You ought to take a look at this if you haven't already. Who Is EWoW
EWoWnow , is a group dedicated to the growth of the industry in Outdoor Laser Tag, initially started by Mr Peter O'Riley of Nth Ireland. EWoW it self is broken into two parts, Hobby and Commercial. So far everyone has only seen the hobby side, and it is as it looks, being run and managed as a hobby product. ( more distributors are needed ) The commercial aspect has now been handed over 100% to Zone System USA to continue the work and funding of its full development. It will be released at IAPPA in Orlando this November. However one commercial product being released next week called the “Supercharger” this is an upgrade “plug in” for another product on the market today. It does exactly what it names implies Supercharges the product for an ultra low cost. (pic attached). From WoW to EWoW-C , adding data coms, PC control and membership and financial systems. EWoWnow goals
1) Make it easier for novice electronic people to build their own laser tag weapons by providing tools and “simple kits” that are feature rich. For eg see www.ewownow.com/sunblock.html as to the direction we are slowly taking to make it as easy as possible. 2) Support the growth of Outdoor Tag as a SPORT 3) Provide an alternative to existing commercial equipment that is in the market today by providing a) Upgrade paths to what would normally be stagnant product lines here a "free" design service exists. b) New product lines from Weapons to PC software 4) Continue development of Outdoor Tag to almost military specifications. When will it be ready?It was always planned for December and that is still the target date. The official launch will be at IAPPA late November. Range
Well that is dependant more on the Lens and Receiver setup, than a protocol, but protocol does help. Using the Sunblock sensors with a standard Vishay IR and receiver pair, we have achieved well in excess of 100m in “bright” sunlight. With our sniper real laser modules 100’s of meters were achieved and FDA safe. How it all started,
It all started with a player naturally, who though there could be more to the game than what was offered. He did this on his own, and interestingly looked at it from a different viewpoint. He was one of my staff, I guess it was how he thought he could do his own system that was the birth of EWoW. The simplicity of his concept from day one was amazing. I bought into it as test showed it just worked! He will not let me yet release his name. |
What actually is EWoW ? ( Here I am sorry, I have to get a bit technical) To start with we need to look at “What is WoW” - and we find it is nothing more than a set of 1800hz pulses that are modulated with 57kh (56kh for today’s receivers). Now technically, this is also a 55 Hex being transmitted at 3600bps on microprocessor UART modulated with just one stop bit. Easy to implement, no timing needed. A simplistic TX and RX system and a PWM had this running in 15 lines of code (naturally we improved the receiver for the –C versions ) . But it was not all easy as not all possible codes are the same. Long Distance Protocol Codes.
Now when you analyse the receiver specifications and look at the issues it faces, with all its requirement on the length, of both short and long pulse it receives and needs, just to keep its AGC happy, (especially at low signal levels) there are in fact many other code sequences other than 5555 that can be used, and they work just as well. More than enough for teams, clans or even individual ID’s. All this on WoW's standard bit rate. A full set will be published after its official launch, with development kits to play with on PC’s with all the needed codes already worked out. Short distance protocol codes
Then for the many more code combinations that simply do not work reliably at long range, they do however work exceptionally happily at short ranges and these are used for Mines, ammo dumps, start stop, referee modes, medic , Captain's codes , flags etc. etc. Here we have used only a tiny percentage and will apply more as needed. Decision time
As we believe in promoting the team sport aspect we elected EWoW to be Team and Clan orientated protocol to start with in its 16 bit long protocol. For example , Note 5555H is just one shot code repeated X times at 3600hz and that one is WoW compatible. Second layer protocol. EWoW-C
Working with 3600bps on a PC is near impossible or at least difficult but if you talk to a TSOP at 4800bps or even faster, it works at a very short range. Perfect for downloads and start commands. With this we were able to create a secondary channel in parallel with the standard IR channel using a PC UART. It uses all the same parts , its just a code change. This forms the basis of our second layer that adds all the “bells and whistles” for EWoW-C. During the game its EWoW, At the start and end its EWoW-C. A very cheap, sneaky and exceptionally easy way to implement on the same IR channel. Importantly EWoW-C is almost totally designed for the benefit of field operations. It must be remembered the protocol we developed allows for Layer 1 changing, we have not said and do not say that EWoW is "THE" best outdoor IR protocol, its just exceptionally easy to implement, WoW compatible, and so easy to upgrade existing commercial WoW equipment. Every one must recognize that the electronics is only one part of a successful outdoor tag system, the lens and receiver are just or more important to its success. With EWoW , we just wanted and needed to ensure we had yesterday , today and the future covered and most importantly as it is going to be a fully open protocol that will actually be used commercially it stands a small chance of acceptance Was there ever an EWoW-B ?Oh yes - but it was a dog and we had to put it down, with EWoW-C now nearing commercial installs we are actually developing EWoW-D, and yes it is also compatible to EWoW-C and hence WoW. This product line (should it work !! it is R&D after all ) surpasses all know features of today’s game, orientated primarily to military purposes. Some of the new EWoW-D features will be on show at this IAPPA and I sincerely believe it will open peoples mind to the direction that is possible. Peter J O’Riley |
EWOW CHAT SESSION There was a chat session recently put on by Ry Wilton for the EwoW™© system. Unfortunately, yours truly was stuck out running errands and missed the event. The whole transcript however is posted under the Laser Tag Chit-Chat posting section of the Laser Forums posting board (www.laserforums.com). Here are some highlights that I picked up from reading the transcript: . For those of you that have seen the MP2 mockup, you may notice that the board looks a bit large, 200mm long by aprox 30mm to be more precise. You will be happy to know that this was more of a proto-type board and not the EwoW-C board that will be released when these go on the market. The board shown with the MP2 is a development board designed to be as a learning tool. It is not going to be the only size offered. There will be more compact boards in the realm of 2x1 inches available as well. It sounds like there will be different boards available for different uses.
There are some screen shots showing some of the projects being worked on: www.ewownnow.com/Screenshots.html These photos give an idea of what the EwoW-C will look like.
Wilton mentioned that some of the boards will be sold as cheap as possible to encourage hobbyists. There are no hard core numbers available yet on the prices, but there is a good chance that the displays and sunblock sensors kits are going to be about $10-$15. That will be for the board and its immediate family. Hopefully there will be a full price list around DEC 10th. It was also mention that a gun hardware kit for the electronics will possibly run around the $70 mark , that is all the alluminium pre cut by laser. Some of the other features mentioned was that if you have the development kit, you will be able to change the sounds of the gear via computer as often as you want. So much for my marketing idea for Fxonics gear! All in all, this is starting to sound more and more impressive to me. Also, if you are a field operator….or a club planning on using multiple guns, their Mission Controller will be a major asset:
http://www.ewownow.com/MC.html It was also brought up in the discussion that the EwoW™© guns have been tested against Battle Field Sports (BFS) guns and seemed to do okay; unfortunately, there were not any exact names of who did the testing. It’s only safe to say that the guns were very close to BFS equipment, for what that is worth. There is also a competition currently going on for gun sounds. if you are interested, look at the following page:http://www.ewownow.com/comp.html The winner of the competition will be announced on DEC 6th. One thing to keep in mind, there have been a ton of people who have tried to start a hobbyist system (myself included), it looks like these folks are going to finally pull that dream off. It was even stated, “everything has been designed with the hobbyist in mind, simple electronics, easy software and hopefully low price! “ So we here at 1SLT will definitely keep a close eye on this development, and will eventually try to get some of this gear in stock, to try out and do our own review. If it is as good as it sounds, we will most likely be opening up a new Catalog on our website soon. Info Summary EWoW and EWoW-C major internation release is at IAPPA late November, held in Orlando. There will be all new guns, upgrades for existing systems and our full software systems on display. The Australian "hobby" Release is on December 10th at the PicAxe Trade fair in Sydney. The EU release is not till the ATEI trade show at Earls Court in London late in January. EWOW is also running competitions to give away 10 MP-2 assembled Guns, where the winner is the player who submists the best set of sounds for the MP-2. Deatails will be on the web site: www.ewownow.com There are 5 competitions of 2 MP-2 each. |
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To try and be fair, there are many other venders out there that should be mentioned that develop outdoor gear for both the hobbyist and consumer. This list only covers those that we are aware of and can verify personally. There are probably several other companies out there as well. If you are aware of someone who is not on this list, please let us know about them. I plan to try and feature various vendors in future editions of THE LASER HORIZON, if you would like to be in the newsletter, contact me at: droman@1sourcelasertag.com | ||
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Company |
Website |
Any News |
Miles Tag |
http://lightbrain.8m.com/mtdesign.htm |
Miles Tag is a Do It Yourself system made by Jim Robertson. Currently considered the best of the home brew gear systems by many, Miles Tag just released version 3.14, which is now available for download. Includes Gladiator Mode and now allows 250-round clip size. New version 4.XX
available soon for download. This is intended for a new PCB design
that mates to back of LCD. The PCB will be (1.3" x 2.5").
Includes full ISD sound support and Player "Handles". New updates to the
MilesTag site. Posted some new code versions and schematics. Includes the
new Gladiator Mode that I described earlier on this board. And Version
4.XX includes long awaited ISD sound support! 4.XX also allows naming of
the first 16 Players with a 5-character "handle" that appears in the LCD
when you are hit. Jim is working on an
expanded version of the MiniMilesTag using the new PIC12F683 chip that has
2K program memory (vs 1K in the '629). This will allow me to add in some
of the missing features. For more information contact:thelightbrain@yahoo.com |
FragTag |
Status: To summarise, we have been very busy completing the system lately and are very close to release. We are firmly backing MilesTag as the free, open, unencumbered protocol of the future.
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LaserCombat Technologies |
www.lazerarmoury.com | Currently engaged in a large meet to test holding a large annual event in the AU in the future. More news to come in the next newsletter. |
Tactical Field Simulations |
Has just hit the market with our new Outdoor Laser Tag gear and will be presenting at the IAAPA Tradeshow in Orlando, Florida Nov. 16-20. Booth: Booth 1274 | |
Laser Chaser |
http://www.laserchaser.com |
No New News……. |
Steradian |
http://www.steradiantech.com |
IAAPA Booth: Booth 186 |
Battle Field Sports |
http://www.battlefieldsports.com |
BFS is one of the longest running Outdoor Laser Tag Equipment vendors around. To find out what they are up to, check out their great newsletter LOCK N LOAD™ at: http://www.battlefieldsports.com/latestlockandload.pdf IAAPA Booth: Booth 1158 |
NEW SECTION |
This is a new section that I’ve decided to add to our newsletter. Every once in awhile people come up with a new game, try it out, and post it somewhere that it gets my attention. This section is devoted to new game ideas that people come up with. Give the games a try, and then post what you think of the games. <CLICK HERE for THE LASER HORIZON POSTING AREA!> |
Ball Room Blitz! |
At one of the recent Steradian Chat Sessions (which are held on Wed nights in the Tag Sport Chat Room on www.1SLT.com), Tom Baker had us brainstorm on new tournament ideas (transcript available). One of the ideas that I came up with, and others elaborated on, is a game I am herby dubbing as The Ball Room Blitz! You start with a field the size of a Basket Ball Court. You can use a very large box with a hole cut in it, just large enough to STUFF (should not be easy to get the balls in if thrown) the balls into the box – the boxes should be the same size and at least waist high, but not higher then the head level of the shortest player playing. Where the hole is on the box is up to you – just as long as the hole(s) are in the same location for all teams involved. At the start of the game, a box with MANY small nerf balls are randomly spread in the middle of the tournament arena. Each team starts lined up on their edge of the arena. When the game starts the players try to get as many balls as possible into their box. Engagement
Rules: -If you are hit and you are not holding a ball……you must count 2 Mississippi’s and then resume play. -If you are holding a ball, you must toss it in the air and pick up another ball. -If there is one ball left, and you threw it in the air, you cannot touch the ball again till someone else has been shot holding it. -If there the last ball is on the ground, the closest person to the ball MUST pick it up……no running out the clock with a ball on the ground. -If you are tagged out, you must go to your base, count 10 Mississippi’s, then reset your sensor and rejoin the game. The team with the most balls in their goal box when the time runs out or all the balls are collected wins the game. If you try this game, please contact us and let us know how it went, and if you came up with any more necessary rules. Have Fun……… Dave |
Laser Tag Football |
Recently a group from the U.K. posted an interesting
game on their forum, and from the comments of those that played, they had
a BLAST! (pardon the intended pun). For those readers in
America, please keep in mind that to a majority of the rest of the planet,
football means soccer – although, from what I understand, the players in
this game used both hands and feet…..so …um…..never mind on that
thought! Please note that its getting late so I’m going to put this in here as mostly raw form straight from the emails! The following is copied from an email from Trent,
Stephen (STEVE), being that I didn’t get a chance to get permission from
him to post his email address, you will just have to go and join the
uklazertag news yahoo group if you want more information: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/uklazertag-news/ -
Two teams of equal size Note: The players were carrying the ball, kicking it,
basically anyway to move the game on. |
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Remember when you first found out about Laser Sport
and you thought it
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The Laser Tagger Profile Database was created
specifically for fans and |
The thing is, right now it's still in its infancy. It
needs more people |
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Perhaps one of the least talked about things on the posting boards
is buying and selling Laser Tag gear. When I first got back into Laser Tag about 2 years ago, I got real excited about making and selling home brew gear. I started working on my Fxonics line of Laser Tag microcontroller……but then all of a sudden, several other people stated they were doing the same. I had already purchased a Website, but the thought of making gear when several other people were already doing it seemed like a waste of time. So, I thought to myself, what can I do with this website? Then it dawned on me – with all these people making home brew laser tag gear, everyone is going to need a central place to sell this gear! It was at that point that One Source Laser tag was born. I wanted to provide a service – a place were people could exchange ideas and buy and sell gear. Well, after a while, it became clear to me that a lot of those people that were going to make all this cool gear to sell were more full of words then they were of actual intent. It became clear to me that if I was going to be able to afford to keep my website which was costing me almost $80 a month (paypal didn’t exist at the time and a credit card merchant account requires a 4 year lease), I was going to have to figure out a way to make some money to keep the website alive. |
At first I tried buying and selling gear with the website and using Ebay as a backup. This does pay a little bit, but it is a lot of work for the pay. I soon realized that wasn’t working. Next, I decided to try Associate programs. All kinds of articles talk about how easy it is to make mass amounts of money by doing simple advertising on your website. So, I signed up for several services. But soon I discovered, its darn near impossible to find anyone selling items that would appeal to the Laser Tag crowd. At first I tried just using random pop-up ads, and watched the number of visitors to my website go from roughly 100 a day to around 15 a day. It seems that people hate pop-ups as much as I do – go figure. Eventually though I found certain ads that I could place here and there….as well as a massive web page devoted to Ebay listings…finally, this brought in a trickle of funds…roughly about $30 every month or so. I then started concentrating on increasing web traffic. I worked on trying to develop the best links list on the website, started a taggers page so people could locate others in their area. I tried hard to find others who actually are making and selling gear and give them a spot in the catalogs…….not to make money, but to make the website a better resource. I also tried my hand at writing beginners articles…and thus the BLT CAT was born. Unfortunately, writing these articles takes hours and hours of work. Unfortunately, the interest in these articles was very small…and I eventually realized that for the most part they were not worth the time as a visitor attractor. For those of you who are interested in the BLT CAT, I havn’t given up on the articles……but unfortunately they have become a low prioriety for the time being. |
Anyway, to try and wrap this up before running out of column space…
(Note: Click on any picture to expand it to
full size) …as you can see from the above chart for the year of 2004, .the website now pulls in about 300 visitors daily when I don’t advertise, and as high as 3000 visitors on a daily basis when I do advertise (although I suspect, a lot of that traffic is from non-interested patrons that were dragged to our website by some crazy pop-up system…..thus I don’t advertise that way any longer). With the number of visitors at a satisfactory level, I have now turned my attention to getting 1SLT back to the resource center that it was originally intended to be. I’ve gone through great lengths to add resources to our website to help the tagger community. This has increased our spending to a degree…but I feel in the long run, things will work out. The only problem is that if no one knows about the resources, then no one will utilize them. That is the whole purpose of this
article…..to get your attention! The following table lists the resources available on
www.1SLT.com, and
gives a discription of each of them. |
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Tagger Locator |
This is a unique service of the website provided by BraveNet services. The tool was originally designed to show where visitors for a website come from. I used the tool to create a resource where people can leave a pin on the world map, to show others that they exist. You can look at the world map and quickly identify others that are in your country/state/town. |
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The Laser Horizon |
Need we say much more? After all you are using this resource this very instant! At first this was to be a newsletter about the website. What it has evolved into is a news service that lets you know when various events are happening – as well as newsletters like this one that give you an idea of things going on in the Laser Tag world. This is also a great place to advertise events, ideas, gear, and services. My goal is to turn the Laser Horizon into the ultimate news source for the Laser Tag Hobby/Sport. If you have anything you’d like added to our newsletters…you can add it in one of four ways. You can submit information directly to laserhorizon@1sourcelasertag.com or you can use one of the Tag Sport Resources, which is where we pull a lot of information for this newsletter. |
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Tag Sport Chat Room |
Posting boards are a great tool for trading information – however, if you need to work with multiple people on a project in real time, this tool is for you! Chat sessions allow people to exchange ideas and brainstorm on projects in real time…..not to mention it can be a fun social event as well. Use the Tag Sport Calendar to post times you’d like to get together to discuss any topic. Be sure to say who you are, when you want the session to start (be sure to include the time zone you are in), and when you want it to stop, and the topic or item you’d like to discuss. |
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Tag Sport Calendar |
This is a tool that is extremely under used. The Tag Sport Calendar gives everyone a central place to let others know when an event is happening. One thing people do not realize is that you can post any kind of Tag Sport event…including, Paintball, Nerf, Water Guns, Airsoft…and of course Laser Tag. But you can also post things such as your birthday, the opening of a new website or business. Business owners can list days when you will have specials and discounts (don’t forget to list who you are and how to contact you). Why post the information here
instead of just putting it on your own site?
If you look at the counter, not that many people check out the
calendar……but the thing is, they don’t have to because everything posted on the Calendar, is sent out to
everyone on The Laser Horizon news list! As more visitors join our readers list, this will
become a more and more powerful tool. We actually pay about $11.00 a
month for this resource (mixed with others), so please……take advantage of
our expense. As with all of the
resources on 1SLT, it is only worth as much as it is
used. |
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Tag Sport Classifieds |
It never ceases to amaze me how many people throw their money away by putting gear up for sale on Ebay. The classifieds gives everyone a place to buy and sell gear for free! Do you realize that we pay to have 2 major search engines to go over the classifieds on almost a daily basis, so if you list stuff in the classifieds, it pops up on the search engines after a few days! How is that for a resource! Granted Ebay has items on it listed within a day…but you still have to pay for that! Right now I realize that the classifieds are a mess….its another part of the website that has been prepped for Halloween with tons of cobwebs. Actually, I’m about to revamp the classifieds with a different service, that will also allow you to upload a small picture of the item your selling. We will actually have to pay for this service…but for you the service is still free. We use our rental services to pay for these resources. Once again though, if you don’t take advantage of the service…..we are wasting our money. |
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LaScenarios |
Tiered of playing the same old games? Take a look at this all but forgotten web page. If you have any new games you’d like to post……we pay up to $10 for well documented games submitted to us! To qualify, the game must be original. |
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Catalogs |
This section of the website is what 1SLT started around. Currently the only active section of the catalogs is the rentals section. I will be honest and admit I’ve let this section of the website go to neglect to a degree. However, several new venders have come into the market, so new Catalogs may be opening soon. Also be aware that if you are into Laser Challenge gear…we are about to put all of our Laser Challenge Rental gear up for sale! So keep an eye on the Used Gear Section. I’ve also have several WoW Starlyte Pro Rifles that are about to up for sale! If you have some kind of gear, gizmo, game manuals, or any other marketable item you’d like to regularly sell, but don’t want to go through the hassle of selling it….let us do all the work and sell it for you! If you are interested, contact me at droman@1sourcelasertag.com If you have a paypal account, you can have people buy directly from you, we just put your information up for you….. |
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Ebay Listings |
Looking to buy some Laser Tag gear…….then this is a great tool for you. This page scans Ebay and lists the gear all on one page for you to easily look through. Also too, when you click on an item on this page and make a bid, or win an item – our website earns 5 cents! This doesn’t sound like much, but 20 dollars every 2 or 3 months does help pay the bills! If more people used this page when looking for Laser Tag gear on Ebay, then we would be able to possibly add even more features to our website. |
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There are many other services that 1SLT provides…….but I will save those for later issues…..(my fingers are getting ready to fall off from typing, so your eyes must be getting tired of reading!). | |
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This is a new section to the newsletter that I’ve been wanting to add for a long time. The idea behind this new section is to showcase gear made by individuals and clubs to make the game of Laser Tag more interesting. If you’d like to share something “cool” you’ve created with the rest of the world, send the information to : laserhorizon@1sourcelasertag.com | ||
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Our first article ever for this section is given to us by a nice chap from the U.K. by the name of Rob Morton. I
bumped into Rob during one of the Thursday U.K. Chat sessions…and somehow
the topic turned to homemade gear, and he started telling me about
Claudia. Rob was nice enough to
volunteer some pictures of Clusdia as well as some other objects that he
and some of his friends had
created.
Anyway... Claudia...
First of all, the pistol was
named Claudia as a bit of a joke, it's a tongue in cheek reference to
Farscape... John Crichton calls his pulse pistol Winona after Winona
Ryder, so I called my Tag pistol Claudia after Claudia Black.
For many years now, I have been into airgun shooting, not BB guns like are popular in America, but over here in Europe. Airguns are quite popular amongst adults who just want to shoot for enjoyment or control vermin.
I have many air rifles and pistols, which shoot lead pellets rather than BBs. I find this a fascinating hobby. One of my favourite airguns is the Webley Nemesis air pistol.
This is a large pistol, quite well
made in Great Britain and good value for money. One day I was
doing some target shooting with my Nemesis, and realised that it would
make a superb laser tag pistol. It has mean, purposeful looks. It's quite
big, being about Desert Eagle sized. The frame is alloy, and the top
slide/muzzle unit (known as the 'overlever' in airgunspeak) is
glass-reinforced plastic.
The space inside the frame where the air cylinder goes accomodates a 4AA battery pack nicely, behind that there is space for a little tag gun circuit that I made (it's something like 20mmX70mm in area and was specially designed to fit in airsoft pistols). Behind that there's just space for a 40mm speaker. Best of all, when the 'hammer' is pulled back, the entire top slide hinges forward to make battery changes and mods or repairs really easy. The slide also includes a fully adjustable rearsight. I also liked the fact that I would be using a British made base for my tag pistol, I don't like buying chinese manufactured goods if I can avoid it. |
To convert a Webley Nemesis into a tag pistol, the procedure is something like this (though the pistol lends itself very well to conversion, so yours could well be very different!): -First of all, remove all the working parts of the airgun except the trigger and the rearsight. To start with, you have to disconnect the piston from the frame and the 'slide'. There are no big springs in the Nemesis to worry about like in some airguns (it's pneumatic, not spring-powered), first of all you need to remove the grub screw that holds the piston onto the pin in the slide, this is done with a small hex key in the end of the piston rod. Once this is removed, slide out the pin that attaches the piston rod to the slide. Now you can remove the entire piston assembly from the frame by removing the pin at the rear of the frame which is secured by a small circlip on each end. This pin also holds the hammer which acts like a catch to hold the slide closed, so you need to look at these parts carefully as you will need to replace them later. You will also need to remove most of the trigger mechanism by removing the grips. The trigger parts should be easily removed by pulling out the pins that hold them into the frame. Next you have to remove the
slide from the frame, this is done by taking one of the small circlips
from the pin at the muzzle that the slide hinges on. Remove the pin
and the slide should just come away. A small cross-point screwdriver and
allen key are needed to remove the barrel from inside the slide. Save all these
parts... Now it is simply a question of fitting your emitters, muzzle flash, speakers etc to the frame and top slide. There are a few ribs and strengtheners inside the slide which can easily be removed with a Dremel type tool to make more space inside the pistol. I fitted several microswitches in the trigger area inside the frame, some to activate the luminous sights (more on those later) and of course one to actually fire the gun. I found that the best way to do this was with the kneadable epoxy-putty type of adhesive, you can knead it, attach the microswitches, then adjust their position until you are happy with the feel of the trigger, then leave it to set. It does set strong and hard, so your switches should stay put! Small microswitches with levers attached are best for this. Of course you can leave the gun's original trigger-blocking safety catch in place, it works well. For an emitter/lens assembly, I used a lens unit that was got from a miltary surplus place, I don't know what it was, but the lens is very high quality and the assembly is threaded to allow focussing. The mount on the bottom of the frame was made by an engineer friend of mine on a milling machine from a chunk of aluminum. It was made to fit the lens assembly and had threaded holes that enabled me to solidly attach it to the frame. This military lens assembly, with an SFH 484-2 emitter powered by my circuit from 4AA batteries can deliver hits at over a hundred yards, which is pretty good for a pistol, though the range drops off as the batteries get used. |
In addition to this, I fitted a "panel-mounting" type IR emitter to the muzzle of the gun. With this, I can switch between the long-range unit under the frame or the shorter-range but wider angle emitter in the muzzle. Also in the muzzle is an ultra-bright red LED for muzzle flash. The switch that selects the emitter also changes the sound the gun makes, the long range barrel has a sort of 'machine gun' sound, while the shorter range wide-angle emitter makes a shotgun-like sound. Since the slide is reinforced plastic it can be drilled for emitters etc. quite easily. The forward part of the frame is ideal accomodation for the battery pack. It does need to be packed out with some bits of sponge foam (black mouse mat material is ideal) to prevent the battery pack moving inside the frame. After testing the gun, I decided that I wanted it to be a bit louder, so a second speaker was fitted inside the grip. There were already two holes in the bottom of the frame (where it was drilled to fit a shoulder stock back when it was an airgun) and these let the sound out nicely. The final thing that I built into the gun was a set of optic fibres in the slide that route light from LEDs inside the slide into the foresight and rearsight. The foresight has a red dot that glows, and the rearsight has a blue dot on each side. To sight in the dark, just get the red dot on your target and between the two blue dots and you should hit! The LEDs are adjustable for brightness and come on at the first movement of the trigger. They stay on until the trigger is released. The metal trigger buffs up to a brilliant silver shine with metal polish on a cotton bud, this makes the gun look really smart! This might seem to some to be an expensive way of making a tag gun, but I now have a tough, robust pistol that should pretty much last indefinitely, I don't have the same worries about cracking it that I had when I used a plastic Beretta airsoft-based tag gun. I really like the appearance of it, and I have supported Webley and Scott who are one of my favourite businesses. Finally, all parts of the Nemesis are available from Webley individually, so if I should ever damage the slide, grips or sights etc. they are replaceable. The Nemesis is imported to America by Beeman Precision Airguns (I think!) and Pyramyd Air (www. pyramydair. com), you might be able to offset the costs of buying the gun by selling the working parts to a Nemesis owner for spares. Hope that helps, if anyone wants to ask me questions about the conversion, you can reach me at: mortrob (at) hotmail . com. Cheers, Keep on Tagging! Rob M
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|
10/27/2004 |
Steradian Chat Session |
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|
The chat will begin at 6:30 PM
Indiana/Chicago/St Louis time. That means: If you are in Greenich, UK, it
starts 30mins after
Midnight, If you are in Perth, Australia, it starts either
yesterday or tommorrow morning at 7:30 am |
|
10/28/2004 |
Chat
Session |
|
|
This
will be the second session on this topic. Andy in
Indy will be hosting a chat session at 7pm tlaking about building a
National organization to promote outdoor lasertag. we will talk about the
Scope, Structure and Cost of forming and participating in such an
organization. The
chat will begin at 7 PM Indiana/Chicago/St Louis time. That means: If you
are in Greenich, UK, it starts at Midnight, If you
are in Perth, Australia, it starts either yesterday or tommorrow morning
at 8 am
All
are welcome - lets try to crash the chat Room
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|
10/30/2004 |
Assault on Benson Battery |
|
|
ASSAULT ON BENSON BATTERY
Come
for the fight, stay for the rain!
There will be a LTTO & ESS - Compatible battle at
Fort Worden's Benson Battery on Saturday. Due to restrictions set up
by our friends in the Parks and Forestry Division, the maximum number of
people allowed to attend is 14, otherwise they get to charge us a cubic
Tag-ton of money. I am sure we can get past that by having "casual
observers, so come on out if you're in the area. We intend to meet
up and get started at about 11AM, and since Benson Battery is a little
more well known and mapped out than our usual stomping grounds, we won't
have to wait to guide stragglers to the location, so the earlier you
arrive, the more games you'll be able to participate in. Anyway, we
should be covered for the LTTO gear (I will bring all of mine, 24
guns) But if you have an ESS set, please bring it out. I have
a few grenades that are ESS compat that will wreak havoc within the fort,
and LazerBait is just itching to try out his new ESS Flamethrower on one
of our hides :) Also, if you are planning on chasing me around, I
would suggest some body armor, as I can make some crazy maneuvers with my
setup now ;) Anyway, hope to see some new faces there, as I've only
met a few of the seattle taggers so far.
Sinistrahd out
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|
Time |
11 AM
- DUSK |
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==================================== |
2005 |
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The events shown in this table are provided by theUK
Lazertag News List | |
