10/22 Now a SPITFIRE

[CmdrSlander]

I was into building and flying R/C aircraft for quite a few years. Every so often someone would mound rockets under the wings and launch them at other aircraft. One man used 12ga shotgun shells as bombs, he made a carrier with a nail in nose, on contact the shell went off. I started building a Corsair with 84" wing span several yrs ago and I had intended to mound two CO2 pellet guns in the wings. The plane is still hanging from the roof might actually finish it.

POST PICTURES if you ever complete it.

 

[theCan]

How would using a zip line attached to a radial trigger mechanism be legally any different than a purely radial device?

On a practical note though the zip device could easily exceed the cyclic rate of the firearm, leading to reliability issues.

 

[Sam1911]

How would using a zip line attached to a radial trigger mechanism be legally any different than a purely radial device?

Legally? Only in that this legal matter is given to the BATFE to interpret, and they have to enforce it whichever way seems to fit the wording of the law best.

I can't tell you that a rip-cord mechanism IS a machine gun, but it seems a lot closer than a hand-crank mechanism. With a hand-crank, you can crank one turn (or half-a-turn) and get one shot. Crank two turns, get two shots. (Or whatever the rate is.) With rip-cord it would be, pull the cord, get a bunch of shots. One operation, multiple firings.

It would be so for no other reason than how these rip-cords operate, generally. Every "rip-cord" device like that I've seen you're spinning up a heavy flywheel that drives a reduction geartrain which operates the device. So if you hooked that to a trigger mechanism you'd be pulling the cord, spinning the flywheel, and then it would run the gun continually until that flywheel ran out of momentum.

 

[theCan]

Legally? Only in that this legal matter is given to the BATFE to interpret, and they have to enforce it whichever way seems to fit the wording of the law best.

I can't tell you that a rip-cord mechanism IS a machine gun, but it seems a lot closer than a hand-crank mechanism. With a hand-crank, you can crank one turn (or half-a-turn) and get one shot. Crank two turns, get two shots. (Or whatever the rate is.) With rip-cord it would be, pull the cord, get a bunch of shots. One operation, multiple firings.

It would be so for no other reason than how these rip-cords operate, generally. Every "rip-cord" device like that I've seen you're spinning up a heavy flywheel that drives a reduction geartrain which operates the device. So if you hooked that to a trigger mechanism you'd be pulling the cord, spinning the flywheel, and then it would run the gun continually until that flywheel ran out of momentum.

I look at it from a physics stand point. Linear motion versus radial motion. A certain number of rads = a trigger pull or a certain "length of pull" = a trigger pull.

 

[Sam1911]

A certain number of rads = a trigger pull or a certain "length of pull" = a trigger pull.

I see what you're saying, but interia/flywheel drive rip-cord devices don't work like that. I suppose you could build a version that just trips the trigger every inch of cord or something. Then...maybe. It would still be up to them to decide.

They've declared that a shoe string is a machine gun before, so I wouldn't be surprised if they did so again.

 

[theCan]

A toothed zip cord directly turning the crank (obviously toothed as well) should do nicely. No fly wheel. Insanely impractical. But probably legal.

 

[Sam1911]

Possibly! You want to write a letter and ask? I'd be fascinated to hear the answer. They're always just absurdly entertaining!

 

[theCan]

Well, it might have to be a sprocket so you could put the cord back in, but essentially the same...