The Panzer Project

Let's start from the beginning. In this case, the beginning is around the end of May, 1997. Well, earlier than that even. Scott Koch and myself have been playing Role Playing games for a few years in our local RPSIG. (Role Playing Special Intrest Group)

Scott has Muscular Dystrophy. He is reliant on his wheelchair to get around. It's a nice one too, powered and all. (Yes, he can outrun us for distance, if not speed sometimes...) He's done a lot in the chair, he's told me about playing cymbals in a marching band and all that. So that placed the seeds of idea.

Well, at the last RPSIG meeting in May of '97 I asked Scott if he'd like to play paintball with us. I was being very serious at the time. He said "Let me think about it." Two weeks later I got a message on my answering machine. "Sure!" So we began the "Panzer Project". We visualised a chair-mounted paintgun that he could use.

My first move was to call some people in the industy to see if anyone had ever tried anything like this before. And, much to my surprise, nobody has. So this was new ground for everyone.

Actually, that's not true. I've seen other handicapped paintball players in magazines and what not. But they either had the gun in their lap and wheeled along, or had a 'helmet mounted' paintgun with a 'solenoid' trigger. All good ideas, but in this case not really what we wanted. Back to our story.

So we started making our ideas. Among all the roleplayers we talked about all sorts of ideas, and how to do them. Elaborite rigs that would put the M1-A1 to shame... But, Scott's ideas were the ones that worked the best. (Again, a good example of talking to the end-user and not the research department...) I also turned to the internet for ideas, and the best one came from Remy LeBeau who sent me this ASCII drawing :

     _____________ll____________
    |________________|          |
              |______|________ _|
                 O    \  i\  \
                / \    \   \  \
               /   \    \___\__\
              /_T_T_\
________________l_l____________
                l l

This fueled the idea we already had about making a 'pintle' style mount on the center of the gun. But, at this time, we had no clue about which gun we would be using. So, I started my callings again to get ideas.

Airgun Designs was very helpful for ideas, but we couldn't get our grubby little paws on an Automag for it. The other company we got assistance from was Tippman Pneumatics. I talked to one of their techs for an hour, and got some really great ideas. (And, we got our paws onto a Pro-Lite. So it was a go.)

What we ended up doing was this.

The rig worked a little like the ASCII drawing above, but not as 'direct'. Being on a limited budget, we did what we could on the funds we had. #1 is the screw-in mount. This is screwed onto the chair (not INTO, ON to...) with a rubberized "U" shaped screw. The nuts hold a bar against the chair. We torqued on this thing, it wasn't about to budge. #2 is the two-way mount. It had two 'tubes' at opposing angles. This is the fastener between the two bars. #3 is the makeshift "U-Joint". What we ended up doing was putting a nail (blunted) in the center hole of a Pro-Lite as our axis. As the metal part of our joint we used a small piece of sheet metal. The gun rested on this point. #4 is a trigger extention specially made for Scott. It's a metal bar, plain and simple.

I would love to take credit for all this, but Scott had most of these things already made, and we all just adapted them for paintball. We test-fired the rig in the backyard. And, well, it worked really well.

As to the rest of the stuff, we had a few things worked out as well. Moondragon has some radios, so we packed them along in case Scott got stuck or something like that. I supplied the goggles (Vents, that clip in the back. They were easier to get on and off for him.) I donated an old pair of Tiger Stripe pants (And did some alterations), and Team AnthroCo donated a "Lucky" jersey for him. ^{(When you're prez, you can do anything...)} Mary supplied the Pro-Lite, I put my VL2000 on it and a "Smart-Remote". We were good to go.

Game day was July 26, the location was Hangar 18 paintball sports. I knew the venue very well, they have a 6 acre "Arena" course, and I knew Scott could play there. The weather, well, it was too hot to be outside. We chronied the Pro-Lite, and juiced it up.

From the start, we knew that Scott would need a special rule for elimination. We talked to the referee crew, as well as the players, and what we came prepared for was what we did. We hooked up an antenna on Scott's chair, and inflated some balloons. The only way to eliminate Scott was to shoot and pop a balloon. Everyone was cool with it, and we played.

Getting Scott on the field was harder that we thought, the netting wasn't set up to easily allow for a wheelchair to get through. But, the staff got him into the arena. We found out Scott could 'roll and fire' effectively on the long straights (all I could say was "YES!" It was just so cool!) And that game was good. Myself? I ran up the middle and held off the other team until someone sprayed me enough to eliminate me. (That's life.) I ran out quickly, got my ref jersey, and ran back out to assist Scott.

Scott, for his part, was doing well. I'm not sure if he got 1 or 2 (It's debatable...) but the contitions weren't agreeing with him. He was getting stuck in the mud, the referee and I had to help pull him back out a few times. He drained 25% of his battery on that one game, and decided to call it a day after that one game.

Oh, he didn't get eliminated either. Not for a lack of trying, mind you. But players couldn't rip a decent shot into the balloons!

We played for the rest of the day without Scott, but he was smiling. If the conditions were dryer, cooler, or just diffrent I think we could have played a few more games. But, as deep a rut he was creating, Scott couldn't really move around with the chair.

Our future plans for the 'Panzer Project' are mixed right now. After the first game, Scott said to me "Tell me more about indoor paintball." So we have tenative plans to get him up to the Twin Cities to play some indoor there. ("Adventure Zone" is accessable, but not easily. So that may be the only place we can go.) I've been thinking an October game at Stalker, or another field that's flat and somewhat dry.

As to the rig itself, We would like to refine it more and offer it for players and fields. I plan on talking to Tippman again, and seeing if they have ideas or if they could machine a mod for it. We're also going to talk to a few more gun manufacturers and see if they have paintguns or grip frames that are easy to modify for the purpose.

Scott has been thinking too, so what we cumulatively come up with could either be REALLY scary, or REALLY cool. We're not sure yet, but we're gamers. Anything is possible.

What's intresting, at least to me, is the reaction I got when I first mentioned the project on Rec.Sport.Paintball. I got a lot of feedback from a lot of people, and it all helped. I want to thank them publicly for their support, ideas, and contributions. We didn't use them all, but we will expirement when we have the time. they were all fantastic, and they all helped.

Most of all, I want to thank Scott Koch for allowing us to submit himself to the torturous effects of several insane paintballers / role-players with wild ideas and no hold of reality .

To contact Scott, you can e-mail him at : heydrich@luminet.net.

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