LightSlinger
Forum Moderation slingingsport
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All things in Moderation... Except for Slinging..
Posts: 611
Hanford, California
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Since I've been working on Funda Ball I've written up some rules and measurements and such. At the moment, a game of Funda Ball calls for the use of tennis balls as the ammo.
I'm not super fond of this idea because Tennis balls are for, well.. Tennis. I've been noodling an idea that I would like to use ammo actually a bit smaller than a tennis ball, biconical (or at least egg shaped), that is about as heavy as a tennis ball (if not a little heavier) and is softer and easier on fleshy tissues.
I could use some input on this one and I know that there are many devious and clever minds out there.
I'll start the festivities...
When I was messing around tonight I hit upon the idea for a slightly modified Rusty ball. Normal Rustys are NOT a good choice for this game because they can probably still kill you. MadSlinger once offered to stand downrange and catch one of them for me to which I stupidly agreed. To his credit he almost caught the darn thing. Downside: It hit one of the fingers he was trying to catch it with as it went by. By the way it swelled up, we both thought it was broken... And it's not like I was throwing that thing very hard. If it would have hit him in the head he might still be in a coma... Rustys are great when you are throwing them at hard targets. Even windows stop them with no damage. But they sure do transfer a lot of their energy to fleshy targets...
So, my modification was this. I got a 12’ balloon and filled it up about a little over a quarter of the way full with Silicone. I tied that balloon off, cut off the tail and started wrapping that up much like a normal rusty. After I got to the last one, I used some clear scotch tape to secure the last balloon. Then I got the bright idea to wrap some tape snugly around the middle of the balloon. This caused the balloon to take on a (roughly) biconical shape.. I would show you a pic but alas, I lost the ugly thing on the roof of my building during testing.
Test Results: Out of the few times I got to throw this Prototype Funda Ball, I was amazed at how heavy it felt. I’m sure that it was lighter than a tennis ball, but the weight seemed much Denser (which it is I’m sure). There were absolutely none of the release issues I imagined there would be and in fact I managed to hit my targets about 8 out of ten times from 10 meters. That’s a huge jump in accuracy for me. The only main problem I noticed was that when I threw it with a lot of power, it did curve easily. I assume this is because since the projectile is kinda squishy, it is deformed a bit as it travels and therefore ends up with terrible flight characteristics. I hadn’t had the opportunity for human testing yet, but we’ll get to that (Yikes!). After all, the point of these is to hurt a bit less than tennis balls might…
So anyway, let me know what ya’ll come up with!
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