09/11/2025
I hope you enjoy this latest video creation. They take long enough to fiddle with in order to get what you want! I know it's the same for everyone who tries to do this sort of thing really. If you trusted in some clever-clogs (not really clever in the original creative invention sense) to produce an edited video for you it would never be up to requirement and likely full of superficial effects unrelated to the true content which should stand on its own merit. 🌋Rather carried away there - presumably I've been up all through the night again!
Ok, calm down Dan and tell the nice people what is presented here!
Yes, this is the recent Battleship Turret testing performed with optimised tennis ball mass ammunition. It is a legitimate question as to why I haven't properly investigated this matter regarding tennis balls years ago, as had been done for the optimised darts used on Wolf and Dragon Cannons to extract best performance.
Perhaps we were always generally happy with the standard tennis balls in stock as people could get them out to 60 metres or so and that was good enough for the general public. The school science classes did go over the principle of the ball mass versus air friction, energy and gravity, but that was more to look at the extremes for comparison purposes. Often it would be the case that the venue simply couldn't accommodate long range shooting anyway, so keeping it all damped down a bit was preferable.
The later Viper Cannon suddenly had the performance that could make the most of a more scientific projectile but that would mean managing a separate class of ammunition that would need continual separation from the other standard type of tennis ball during a full on shooting event when it's complicated enough to keep running smoothly and safely.
Now we have the focus on an entirely new multi-barrel cannon in the Battleship Turret, which is intended as a stand alone attraction in its own right, packed with technology and interest, the question of addressing sub-standard performance cannot be dismissed anymore! Achieving the ability to land a salvo of projectiles on to a target 100 metres distant, with some likelihood of accuracy and repeatability upon successive salvos is an attractive feat to demonstrate. Please tell me if it's not!
It has a further knock-on effect in that the realistic next improvement step to the Viper Cannons (there are actually two in existence you may remember) can be justified with the new heavier ammunition, autoloader mechanism and a list of refinements to create the 'Ultra Viper' - with shocking ballistic performance. Even more remarkable is that the closely supervised public visitor will be able to safely operate such a device.
Well that's enough for now. I should perhaps point out a slight downside which is the task of filling quite a number of the new TB110 tennis balls with the additional mass. Hmmm, it is indeed a task that needs to be kicked off well in advance I reckon. Better go to bed first though, after a cup of tea! Finally a great appreciation given to the existence of Fordhall Organic Farm and the symbiotic relationship many of us have with it and its people. What would we do without them? Presumably not as much as we do with them! See you all later. 👍☕
