|
|
TOKYO MARUI : Type 90 - color COUNTRY CAMO
Radio Control BB shooting Battle Tank
Tokyo Marui's 1/24th scale radio controlled Japanese Ground Self-Defense Forces Typee 90 Main Battle Tank is, ladies and gentlemen, The Business.
At a glance, it doesn't look terribly exciting:
It's not very large - the chassis has a footprint of about 30 by 14.5 centimetres
(13 by 5.75 inches), not counting the gun. It's got rubber tracks and plastic wheels and really
isn't capable of driving over anything much more challenging than carpet. It doesn't have
proper proportional speed or steering control. One mile an hour is about as fast as it gets.
And it's considerably more expensive than various other rubber-track toy-tanks.
But it shoots. And it shoots hard:
What it shoots are six millimetre plastic balls. This, plus the manufacturer, will have tipped
off those who appreciate fine and somewhat dangerous toys to the fact that this tank is actually
part of the Airsoft line.
Of which more in a moment:
What you get The tank comes complete with radio transmitter, a (far too) small bag of ammo,
all-Japanese instructions, and various decorative extras like the chap who sticks out of the hatch
and the multi-part machine gun for the lid.
There's a space in the box for the eight AA cells and one 9V battery you need to get the
Typee 90 running (the AAs go in the tank, the 9V goes in the transmitter), but no batteries
were provided with the tanks I got.
 
The tank's battery bay's on the bottom; another three cells sit under the five you can see.
There's lots of detail, and everything is sharply moulded and good looking enough that you could
use the tank as a display model when you're not out plinking.
Many rubber-track cheapie-tanks are quite poorly made, and don't actually look much like
whatever they're supposed to be - they have major problems like turrets the wrong shape, the
wrong number of road wheels, that sort of thing. I'm no world authority on what a real Typee 90
looks like, but the Marui one certainly seems to match what photos I could find.
It's not up there for detail with Tamiya's 1/35th scale static models, but for a buy-and-go R/C
kit it's really excellent. I was surprised.
The collection of plug-in extra bits helps. Along with the hatch-soldier (who's optional - you
can leave him out and just leave the hatch closed) and the four-part machine gun, you get
antennas, lights, tow hooks, a rope to hang on the back, that sort of thing. All of the little
bits come on the usual plastic model kit frames of moulding sprue. You clip them off the sprue
with side cutters.
Most of the extra bits are a perfectly all right friction fit in their mounting holes; a couple
need a drop of glue. You don't need to add them at all if you don't want to, of course.
Parts that plug into bits of the tank that are plain olive green plastic are plain olive green;
parts that plug into bits of the tank with the darker green camouflage mottling paint on them
are pre-painted to match. Nice.
The painted parts are a bit of a tight fit in their holes; have no fear, as Marui provide you
with a metal prong with which to ream the holes out a bit!
The road wheels have realistic swing-arm suspension, but there isn't enough give in the rubber
track for it to make a huge amount of difference. Looks cool, though.
 
The radio is a quite comfortable pseudo-pistol-grip unit that takes a single nine volt battery,
and lets you steer the tank, rotate the turret and change gun elevation. And shoot. There are two
fire buttons, and you have to hold them both at once to actually shoot.
There's a "boost" button in the trigger-finger location on the controller, that gives you more speed
in straight-forward mode. You can do the same thing by hitting the back-right button while
driving forward, so you don't actually have to fish about on the bottom of the controller for the
boost - you can leave your trigger finger on the second fire button, where it belongs!
All of the buttons except for the boost and second fire controls are on the top of the radio.
There's no wheel or stick, and no proportional control - every button is all or nothing. But for a
slow tank that's not a big deal.
 
The tank's turret can traverse almost a complete 360 degrees - it can't face straight
backwards, though, and its drive system will just make an unhappy clicking sound if you try to
exceed the limit.
You can raise and lower the gun, but there's only one button to do it with - hold that button and
the gun gently swings up, then down, then up, then down...
 
You load the tank with BBs through this hatch in the top. You can pour in more than 40 rounds.
The main on/off switch is on the bottom of the tank, but there's a separate switch, under the
loading hatch, that turns the gun mechanism on and off. You can render the gun harmless by shaking
all of the ammo out of the tank, of course, but cycling the firing mechanism with nothing loaded is
bad for it. So being able to completely disarm the tank when you hand the controller over to
someone you don't trust to leave the red buttons alone is nice.
 
You get one of these red rubber barrel plugs with the tank, as well; the gun doesn't have enough
power to dislodge it, and it makes the thing obviously safe so you don't feel nervous about looking
at it.
Shootin':
When you've loaded some ammo and you hold down both fire buttons with the firing switch turned on,
the firing motor buzzes and a red LED on the front of the turret goes on to warn you that the
shooting mechanism is winding up. Then the tank goes ka-POP.
- And then there's a series of tick-tick-tick noises as the shot bounces around your house.
- And then you say "Jesus H. Christ!"
- Well, that's how it worked for me, anyway.
Marui are not whistling Dixie when they tell you to wear eye protection; ricochets are dangerous.
And they are not exaggerating when they say the tank has 25 metre range - aim high and you can
probably shoot quite a bit further.
Hold the fire buttons down and the mechanism cycles. The rate of fire is a bit less than one round
per second - I counted ten rounds in 11.5 seconds.
The little plastic BBs may only weigh 0.12 grams, but they fly fast enough that you will not see
them leave the gun barrel. Peer past the tank and you can clearly see the BB fly, but looking at
it from the side you've got no chance.
The balls don't carry much energy - hang a plastic sandwich bag over the gun and it'll only be shot
off about six inches - but the pellets are nonetheless perfectly capable of hurting someone.
Getting shot in the eye by one of these things might not blind you permanently, particularly if
you weren't staring right down the barrel when it happened. But you would not enjoy it.
I got an amount of spare ammo with the tanks which could fairly be described as One Quantity.
The BBs are very cheap.
If you can find BBs you've fired (which is a fairly large "if"), you can re-use them, as long
as they're clean and undamaged. Competition Airsoft players never re-use BBs, because they may
have scratches or chips or other deformations that'll damage the seals in their guns.
What guns, you ask? Quite serious guns, actually:
Airsoft
As far as I know, the Typee 90's the only Airsoft product that isn't a handgun or rifle.
Tokyo Marui, and a few other manufacturers, make accurately modelled Airsoft replicas of pretty
much every popular firearm in the world, not to mention various special custom guns and sci-fi
weapons. A catalogue comes with the tank, and features exceedingly butch hardware from cover to
cover.
The cheapest electric Airsoft guns are cartoonish "minis", scaled down $US30 comic-book guns made
to vomit pellets as frequently as possible in the general direction of the target. This sort of
thing:
But the rest of the Airsoft range often look just like the originals. Some feel pretty much like
them, too, though they're usually considerably lighter. They're even used for training by some
military and police groups.
Accordingly, various countries classify them under some combination of their air-gun
and replica-firearm laws, and here in Australia you need a gun license to own one. The same might
also, technically, apply to the "mini" guns, but nobody's likely to be able to rob a bank with one
of those.
Real Airsoft guns come with a plethora of stern safety warnings, not least of which is that
playing games with the full scale guns should be done out of sight of the public, lest someone see
a load of maniacs with assault rifles, apparently very happy about the murders they're about to
commit, and call out guys in uniforms with no sense of humour, who'll very professionally show
the alarmed Airsofters some genuine people-killing guns.
Firepower
Airsoft guns lie right on the line between "toy" and "weapon". The Typee 90 is a low powered
Airsoft, but it's still not a kid's toy. I shot at some pieces of ordinary 80gsm copy paper, and
the tank had no trouble punching holes in it at ranges up to four metres (13 feet). Firmly support
the paper on all sides, so it can't flap when it's hit, and it's easier to puncture at greater
ranges.
By way of a manly experiment, I shot myself in the sole of the foot, at short range.
It stung like a bastard. Despite the tank probably having only about 0.1 joules of energy per shot,
or less. It didn't leave a bruise.
I would have been less keen to try that trick with any of the higher powered Airsoft weapons.
The high-rate-of-fire Airsoft Minis have about 0.2 joule projectile energy, tops; actually, 0.1
seems more likely. Joules, for the physics-impaired, equal watts times seconds. Run a 100 watt
light bulb for one second and it's emitted 100 joules of energy.
Gas powered Airsoft pistols, charged from a spraycan or equipped with a paintball-style
pressure fitting, generally manage about 0.4 joules, or maybe more for the ones with a fitting
that you can run from very high pressure air. Most of the bigger Airsoft guns still manage less
than 1 joule. Apply various options to the bigger single-shot rifles and you can make them into a
gas powered five joule weapon. But you'll be paying a few hundred American dollars for the
privilege.
For comparison, quality air rifles can commonly manage 25 to 35 joules. The airguns used to knock
down yellow tin ducks in a sideshow probably do about 10 joules. A paintball gun firing at
the international speed limit of 300 feet per second muzzle velocity has an energy of about 17
joules.
All of this is chickenfeed compared with real firearms, of course. A humble .22 Long Rifle cartridge
is good for about 190 joules, Harry Callahan's .44 magnum's maybe 1320 joules, a 7.62mm NATO
cartridge is 3320 or so - about the same as a 12 gauge shotgun shell. And in order to impart the
same energy to a target as a single .50 BMG round can carry out of the barrel, you'd apparently
have to fire more than 150,000 6mm BBs out of your Marui Mini MP5.
For further firearm geekery, knock yourself out on the table and links here.
The 0.12 gram BBs used by the Typee 90 are the lightest Airsoft ammunition that exists - most
Airsofters fire 0.2 gram, or heavier, ammo.
Lighter projectiles fly faster, but also slow down faster because of air resistance, which
increases with the square of the speed. Heavier BBs have a lower muzzle velocity but hold their
energy better, because they're not being so mean to the air molecules they encounter. They're
blown off course by the wind less, as well.
I don't know whether firing heavier ammunition in the Typee 90 would hurt it, but it wouldn't
surprise me if it did, eventually. You'd get better range and maybe a bit more accuracy. But if
you're shooting for relatively small targets, like for example a piece of Styrofoam lightly
attached to the top of another tank, you've really got close to no chance of hitting it at longer
than indoor ranges no matter what ammo you use.
There's a cardboard target included with the tank, by the way, but printing a target on a piece
of paper is better - the tank can knock holes in that, which is far more satisfying than putting
a little dent in some cardboard.
Driving:
Driving around, the Marui tank's not very impressive.
Its rubber tracks, like all rubber tracks, eat a lot of its meagre motor power, and the lack
of proportional control means you have to do fine lateral gun aiming with the turret traverse.
Which, by the way, you can do while driving - the radio system can handle multiple commands at
once.
If you press two steering buttons at once (one forward right, one backward left, say) you can
pirouette in place, driving one track forward and one track backward. Normal steering just locks
one track and drives another.
You can't really drive the Typee 90 anywhere but on a flat, clean surface. Rubber-track tanks never
have a lot of power, and this one's no exception; it'll bog completely on grass of any real length,
and a leaf is enough to jam a track. It can climb an incline, but not a terribly steep one. It's
an indoor toy, folks.
The tank only does about 1 kilometre per hour in normal mode, or about twice that, straight
forward only, with the Boost button pressed.
Inside:
You only need to remove four screws (one inside the battery compartment) to get the lid off the
Typee 90...
...but there's not a lot to see, immediately, when you do. Motor assembly at the back
(containing two weeny little blink-and-you'll-miss-'em brush motors), electronics box at the
front, hole in the middle for the turret assembly to stick down into. You can see the black
turret rotation ring gear.
 
The main electronics board is of better quality than many Chinese "hang it on the wall and throw
solder at it" fabrications.
A few more screws removed, and the turret's off and open.
The gun elevation mechanism's at the back of the turret. It's just another titchy motor, geared
down and turning this large gear with a profile-cut cylinder hanging from it. A tab on the back of
the gun assembly acts like a cam follower on the cylinder. The large spring visible in the
foreground pushes the gun back downwards (or upwards as you look at it here, with the turret
upside down) and keeps the tab pressed against the elevator.
 
This is the firing mechanism itself, but I couldn't get it apart without unsoldering all of the
short wires that tether it to the rest of the tank, and I just didn't have the energy. Especially
when I had visions of my efforts resulting in a spring pinging off into an invisible corner of
the room.
The operation of the mechanism's simple enough. The BB to be fired rests on an O-ring in front of
the cylinder, and the motor drives a partially toothed gear wheel which engages a toothed rack,
which is connected to a spring, which isn't actually the firing spring; a kind reader's actually
fully stripped his Marui tank's firing mechanism, and found the real firing spring inside the
piston. The one you can see is just a return spring.
Anyway, when the toothed part of the wheel turns past the rack and disengages, there's nothing to
stop the firing spring from popping back and pushing the piston with it, and one 6mm BB is on its
way downrange.
There's some more rubber in there, too, that's called a "hop-up" mechanism - it puts some backspin
on the ball to keep its trajectory up. You can see the effect if you're doing long range shooting -
the ball flies pretty much straight, then curves distinctly upwards before falling. The
upwards trajectory, by the way, makes it remarkably difficult for one tank to actually shoot the
other, if they're both on a level surface. It's better to stick a target-object on top of the
other tank.
The motor-and-piston shooting system doesn't fire the second you hit the fire buttons, unless
you've wound it up with little dabs on the buttons beforehand so it's right on the edge of
releasing already. There's a quiet click that tells you where that point is.
On the plus side, though, the fact that the spring provides the firing impetus means that the
tank shoots just as powerfully when the batteries are almost flat as it does when they're new.
Less battery power just means a lower rate of fire; you can keep shooting, and the spring has
just as much energy, until there's not enough juice to pull the spring back any more. Or,
more realistically, to run the receiver hardware while the spring motor's pulling.
This is the firing spring. It could easily be replaced with a stronger one, which would give you
more energy per shot but a lower rate of fire, as the motor laboured to pull back the stronger
spring. Stronger springs also put more strain on the firing gearbox.
[content by: dansdata]
Marui Type 90 Tank specs:
- 1/24 Radio-Controlled Battle Tank
- Automatic Electric Gun System for BB bullets
- Red light goes on indicating shooting action
- Maximum firing range of 25 Meters
- Vivid Simulation of Actions of Actual Battle Tank
- Turret can turn left and right 320º
- Gun barrel top to bottom angel ±20º
- three-dimensional firing ranges possible with different elevation positions and turret turning.
- All driving wheels suspension system
- 1/24 scale and 41 cm of tank length
- 1/24 scale and 15 cm of tank breadth
- 1/24 scale and 13,2 cm of tank high
- 3-level forward speed control
- Forward, Backward, Spin, Super spin
- Equipped with high gripping caterpillar tracks
- Batteries not included
Extra track sets:
The rubber caterpillar is superior the uphill power where Uphill angle differs with rubber
caterpillar installing which seriously considered grip power, maximum inclined uphill
power approximately 35 degrees (depending upon road surface circumstance)
- Interlinked movable tracks for the popular RC battle tank. Experience the power of running
tracks. The interlinked movable tracks appears finally as an option parts which improve the power
and the scale feeling. " Assembly is also easy. Just snap the track pieces together.
The assembled track provides smooth, exciting and realistic maneuverability on rough
terrain " This is the ultimate option parts for a RC battle tank.
 
- operational caterpillars (standard tracks)
 
Marui Type 90 Tank Battle capability:
6 band 27 mhz channels enables you to drive 6 Main Battle Tanks to run without interference the controllers (uses one 006P/9V battery). Simulation tank battlefield here we come!
Also Included in the Set:
- 100x rounds of ammo
- Tank operator and spare parts
- Full Instruction Manual
Usefull information + downloads:
- Typee 90 Main Battle Tank - 01
- Typee 90 Main Battle Tank - 02
- Typee 90 Main Battle Tank - 03
- Chinese Defence Today: Typee 90-II Main Battle Tank
- Detailed photo's of the Typee 90 Main Battle Tank
Extra photo's:
 
 
 
[Photo's are copyrighted by: bombs.nl or others]
Note:
Not for Children Under 12 Years Old. BB gun is in some countries illegal. So when you want to buy
or import one. Please contact your lokal custome service for more information.
Top | Back | Home
|
|
|
