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Friendly Fire Rocket For Airsoft & Milsim Games On Kickstarter

Logan

It's always good to see airsofters who tinker in their bedrooms, garages or workshops to come up with nice ideas to elevate our airsoft game experience. Well, many world-changing innovations in the world happened in the garage, just ask Apple, Hewlett Packard, Google, and many more. It’s also good to see them looking into crowdfunding to get their projects from dream to reality. But so far, we have not seen an actual airsoft project that have achieved its target funding at crowdfunding websites.

DHCustoms Friendly Fire Rockets which is now Kickstarter may perhaps be the first airsoft project to achieve this. That is, if the airsoft community will believe in the project and put their money into it.

Before you think of "Friendly Fire" rest assured that the project is not aimed at blasting your own team mates with the rockets. These are foam projectiles, or rockets if you want to all them that way, that are safe to use, and can be fired at longer ranges than existing safe projectiles used for training or airsoft.  It's "friendly" to use it for games.

Dayton Holt, the man behind the DHCustoms Friend Fire Rockets, has designed  two types of Friendly Fire Rockets foam projectiles. The 40mm version is designed for the grenade launcher types while the 50mm version is for rocket or mortar launcher type training devices. The launchers should be pressurized to be able to lob the rockets at greater distances.

But before he designed the Friendly Fire Rockets, he designed a pressurized mortar-style launcher, with off-the-shelf foam rockets that can be bought from toys stores as the projectiles. Going through several types, he decided to design his own as he was unhappy with their poor availability, not fit in launchers that can be used for airsoft games, lack of durability, and high cost. Further research led him to design the 40mm and 50mm versions as there are no foam projectiles that can used with M203-type launchers and other launchers (mortars and AT4-types). After going through several designs and tests he finally settled on a design which has the following features:

  1. Blunt nose. Increased impact surface area to reduce impacting force and increase rocket durability.
  2. Over-sized Seal Band with tapered leading edge and sharp tailing edge. Maximizes air seal to barrel. Tapered front reduces drag, sharp tailing edge decreases air-blow by during launch and increases launch stability by keeping launching forces near the front rather than the tail.
  3. Reinforced and tapered tail stem. Thicker than previous designs, this extra thickness reinforces the tail to Increase durability and inflight stability by effectively transferring rotational and drag forces from stabilizing tail to forward mass.
  4. Canted Tail Fins. All 4 tail fins are canted to maximize accuracy and inflight stability.
  5. Mass Placement. The majority of the mass is kept as far forward as possible, further increasing the inflight stability of the rocket.
  6. Overall Aerodynamic Design with slight air drag points placed strategically to increase stability.
  7. Neon Orange Color. Bright colors allow maximum visibility for in-flight tracking, and easy recovery for re-use. (more colors may be available in the future depending on interest)

Checking out the videos, the Friendly Fire Rockets sure have a great range that I've never seen in other similarly-designed launchers designed for airsoft. While some of you will be disappointed that these are not pyro-types to produce that explosion effect, these projectiles are safe to use that they can be allowed for use in most, if not all, game sites, as compared to the pyro-types.

Satisfied with the design and range of the Friendly Fire Rockets? Then prepare to help Dayton Holt to produce the foam projectiles and even the launchers so we get to see more of these in action in airsoft games and milsim events. Depending on what you need, you can pledge from US$1 which only gets you a "Thank You" from Dalton to US$2,500 where you get to be a Beta Tester, get the DIY kit and the DHC Launcher. But if you make your own pressurized/pneumatic launchers then it's best to get the DIY kit to make your own 40mm or 50mm Friendly Fire Rockets at US$200. But if you can spare another US$200, then you get  a 3D printed DHC Standalone M203-style launcher so you don't have to make your own and some extra 40mm ammo. I guess the AT4 and mortar-type launchers are not part in the packages so you better design and build your own  pneumatic launcher to use the 50mm foam rockets.

As of this writing, the project has raised about US$1,500 which is still way off the goal of US$16,000 with 26 days to go. That amount as requested by DHCustoms, is a modest amount for a project like this. If you are an airsoft retailer, you might be interested in helping fund this project to ensure that a supply of high performance foam rockets that can be used for airsoft games is always available. With the DIY kit, you can make your foam rockets to sell without waiting for DHCustoms to supply you.

With still a long way to go to achieve its funding goal, if you believe in this project, it's best that you pledge what you can as based on the packages. If the Friendly Fire Rockets project is successfully funded on Kickstarter, it will encourage others who are doing other airsoft projects to put theirs on crowfunding sites, and spurring more innovation in airsoft from the players themselves.

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