Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Blueprints - Cars

In an incredible stroke of googling luck, I came across this mind blowing website, The Blueprints Dot Com, that has picture schematics of cars (see the side pic of a 1940 Lincoln Continental) - in the index of pictures look for a checkmark in the "T" column for "top view". This is the link for only vector drawings. There's also weapons, planes, tanks, and much more. Thank you intertubes!

Monday, November 1, 2010

Iridium 2060 - Div20 (Div25) Camper

Camper, Hvy Ch., Hvy Sus., Super PP, 4 PR-Radials, Driver, ATG (10/HEAT) in turret, HDOJ (10/reg) back, 7 Oil/Smoke Dischargers, all dischargers in panic link, 4 bumper triggers to dischargers (back to HDOJ as well), 13 pts WG/WH armor, SWC, 8 pts FP-LR CA each around driver & PP, 26/13 pts Sloped Metal/Plastic armor (F 5/0, B 3/3, R-L 7/0, T-U 2/5), Acc 5, Top 95, HC 3, 7149.8 lbs, $19,954.00
  • Option 1 "Non Metal" - same as above, except armor is 143 pts Sloped Plastic, $22,099.00

  • Option 2 "Xhvy" - Chassis is Xhvy, ATG has 10/APFSDS, SWC is HR, add 2 pts WG/WH, Ext. armor is now 29/32 Sloped Metal/Plastic (+3/+19), 7799.8 lbs, $24,888.50
Design Notes - This started as a design experiment - that I realized you could have a Camper with a 3 space turret and 4 wheels, as long as you didn't have an Xhvy Chassics. Once I started fooling around with the numbers, I realized that the weight difference of the two chasses is 750 lbs!, while 2 tires are 120-160 lbs. So the only reason to do this is to reduce cost. However, a camper is automatically going to cost a lot (3 space turrets are costly too). Then I ran into the problem of what to put in a three space turret (which may get its own blog entry). The best stuff is very expensive (XL, HL, AC) and it seems a crazy waste to just have 3 MG or 3 MML - so that left me with the erstwhile ATG. I also needed to go with metal armor to save money. And as the Xhvy version shows, a Div20 is necessary with this design because to bump it into Div25 is suicide.

Name Notes - From the element Iridium: "atomic number 77.... A very hard, brittle, silvery-white transition metal of the platinum family, [it] is the second densest element (after osmium) and is the most corrosion-resistant metal..." Which means Osmium is next!