been thinking about alternative mortar idea's , the two stage mortar charges seem to be rather expensive and unreliable at best so i thought i'd start the ball rolling with my idea's and see what other people' thought's were .
i.ve begun experiment's with moscart shell's as the lofting charge , as seem with the exploding moscart shell's that i posted up earlier ,they have the required power to launch the rounds , my guess is that the propriety one's will be expensive and may not remain on the market long.
so far i've found that by making an easy cylinder capped at one end of thin cardboard (cereal box)slipped over the end of the moscart i can get quite good range , i'm going to have to do more testing on the range as my garden is no where near long enough .
what i'm hoping for is a round that can launch any flash/bang or smoke round upto 40mm die , hopefully i can fix the pyro onto the top of the cardboard cylinder that is then slipped over the moscart , using a mortar tube that is wider than the base of the moscart shell and has a firing pin fixed at the bottom ,what i'm hoping for is to light the pyro and drop it down the mortar barrel , when the moscart hit's the firing pin at the bottom then it should launch the cardboard cylinder pyro and all , you will then have to retrieve the moscart before another shot but that's easy enough .
ok so that's the plan , all it requires is some easy to make cardboard cylinders an whatever pyro you have to hand, you'r view's are welcome.
armoury
m1a1 Thompson,sten mk2,mp40,stg44,sterling,mk2 bren gun,lee Enfield no4 mk1,Mauser Kar98, Walther ppk,smith and Weston m10 and Mauser m712
Give me a big enough hammer and a place to stand and I could fix the world.
i'll kill a man in a fair fight or if i think he's going to start a fair fight or over a woman or.......
a problem shared is a problem halved ,but an advantage shared is no advantage at all
if a job's not worth doing then its certainly not worth doing well
What gas is in the moscart?
Propelling a lit pyro with a burst of flammable gas is not going to end well, though would be fun to watch... from a distance.
As a site operator I know that anything that has been 'home made' would not be permitted for use at our games.
(Professionally manufactured products, designed for airsoft use will have data sheets and the company will have their own insurance. This is what our insurers (and therefore we) look for before agreeing their use in games.)
i think Co2 or would be optimal in power and be patently safe ,the whole point is making a safer simple option of launching highly dangerous explosives at each other 
as the moscarts are a manufactured product and they can be used in conjunction with any piece of tube plastic or otherwise as a barrel , the worst case scenario is the pyro exploding in the barrel , with a sufficiently strong steel pipe and as long as the pyro is not a tight fit and there's space for expansion then i think it could be safely done , certainly safer than an exploding lofting charge !
armoury
m1a1 Thompson,sten mk2,mp40,stg44,sterling,mk2 bren gun,lee Enfield no4 mk1,Mauser Kar98, Walther ppk,smith and Weston m10 and Mauser m712
Give me a big enough hammer and a place to stand and I could fix the world.
i'll kill a man in a fair fight or if i think he's going to start a fair fight or over a woman or.......
a problem shared is a problem halved ,but an advantage shared is no advantage at all
if a job's not worth doing then its certainly not worth doing well
Dadio, i was looking at the russian moscarts as well with rifling but they are expensive and I too was looking for an alternative.
Green Gas (propane) will have a very bad effect with a lit pyro. I have seen one launched out of an M203 in a ball of smoke and fire at an open day. Looked great 
but not very safe. 
I would agree with the CO2 unless you could get a strong spring unit and build it like a springer. (I guess like the PIAT, but without a charge)
I was thinking about making containers for smaller pyro like the thunderflashes to cut down on weight. On the off chance that a pyro hit another player.
I liked the motrar used at the gunman games with a trapdoor system which was used to take out any remaining pyro. Although I believe you was at the Crete game and might of seen the Blank Firing mortar which was used to propel rounds for short distances.
Good luck with the project!
Stu
The issue will be that you are potentially sending pyros where you cannot see or predict that they will land somewhere safe. Nerf footballs or Nerf Rockets might be a safer option.
If you must have a bang when it lands, maybe these may be the answer http://www.amazon.co.uk/Plastic-Bang-Ro ... ocket+bang?
I had been wondering about combining a stomp rocket
http://www.amazon.co.uk/TKC-806004-Orig ... b_cs_img_y
with a small moscart http://www.patrolbase.co.uk/airsoft/pat ... wo93eN_u0Q
to make various antitank weapons/mortars. For a mortar you would just connect the moscart to the bottom of the launch tube, rig a trigger mechanism and stick a tube over the whole thing.
there is another option , a flower bomb 
but as there's no noise you might not know you were hit
armoury
m1a1 Thompson,sten mk2,mp40,stg44,sterling,mk2 bren gun,lee Enfield no4 mk1,Mauser Kar98, Walther ppk,smith and Weston m10 and Mauser m712
Give me a big enough hammer and a place to stand and I could fix the world.
i'll kill a man in a fair fight or if i think he's going to start a fair fight or over a woman or.......
a problem shared is a problem halved ,but an advantage shared is no advantage at all
if a job's not worth doing then its certainly not worth doing well
The springer idea, using compressed air, might be easier to achieve with the CO2 or HPA tank from a paintball marker. Put the tank in a nearby "ammo box", connect it via remote coil to the mortar, and then simply have a nice large pressure chamber in the mortar. The trigger for firing it could either be an external lanyard, or an internal switch that trips when the bomb slides over it.
Think about it: if a MOSCART-sized gas charge can throw a Nerf up to 60-70m, using something with a 1L capacity should give much better range.
i'd say 40-50 meters would be enough let alone 70+, we have already used a two stage pyro that had about 60 meter range and that was fine.
armoury
m1a1 Thompson,sten mk2,mp40,stg44,sterling,mk2 bren gun,lee Enfield no4 mk1,Mauser Kar98, Walther ppk,smith and Weston m10 and Mauser m712
Give me a big enough hammer and a place to stand and I could fix the world.
i'll kill a man in a fair fight or if i think he's going to start a fair fight or over a woman or.......
a problem shared is a problem halved ,but an advantage shared is no advantage at all
if a job's not worth doing then its certainly not worth doing well
I see TLSFX are now making and selling their own 2 inch British Para mortar for use with their 38mm rounds.
[link]http://www.tlsfx.co.uk/introducing-the-38mm-para-mortar/[/link]
Looks pretty good and the price is quite reasonable but its a pitty they seem to have got the foot facing the wrong way!
I think the ideal distance for a motar to project rounds is about 75m, you want to be able to exceed AEG range.
Also round do need to have some weight to them otherwise any slight head or crosswind will have the round going miles off course or even landing back on the launcher! Even with the TLSFX pyro rounds that can happen.
The main problem with Nerf rockets is players probably wont realise the round has landed, even with the TLSFX bang rounds player are often unsure if they are in the kill zone or not which is why the smoke rounds work best as players can clearly see where the round has landed. As a bonus they create a nice battlefield smoke effect.
Gunman do use Nerf rockets as AT rounds in their Co2 powered Bazooka which works pretty well but only against vehicles.
The issue I can see with using moscarts or Co2 to launch a pyro is getting a good seal in the tube. Nerfs work really well as they get a perfect seal. Pyro's wouldn't. You'd probably need to make up a Sabot of some sort to help get a good airseal.
“I wanted to come to the Volga at a specific location at a specific city. By chance it carries the name of Stalin himself. So don’t think I marched there for this reason – it could carry another name – but because there is a very important goal... this goal I wanted to take – and you know – we are very modest, we have it already."
Adolf Hitler, November 1942
"Comrades, Red Army men, commanders and political workers, men and women guerrillas! It is on your perseverance, staunchness, fighting skill and readiness to discharge your duty to the country that the defeat of the German-fascist army and the liberation of the Soviet land from the Hitlerite invaders depend! We can and must clear the Soviet land of Hitlerite vermin."
Joseph Stalin, November 1942
a sabot is what i had in mind , or at least fixing the pyro to the sabot , below are pictures of the sabot i had in mind ,you can see it will get a good seal as it slides over the mascart , filling the moscart with Co2 should give reasonable range , my parents have a 2 acre field i can test in .
armoury
m1a1 Thompson,sten mk2,mp40,stg44,sterling,mk2 bren gun,lee Enfield no4 mk1,Mauser Kar98, Walther ppk,smith and Weston m10 and Mauser m712
Give me a big enough hammer and a place to stand and I could fix the world.
i'll kill a man in a fair fight or if i think he's going to start a fair fight or over a woman or.......
a problem shared is a problem halved ,but an advantage shared is no advantage at all
if a job's not worth doing then its certainly not worth doing well
Yeah, I did this originally with my 2" mortar, worked ok, if a bit flakey and time consuming with loading the moscart each time, so I eventually converted it to the 2-part pyro.
I've since made a moscart with a sleeved tube on the end for launching pyro and smokes from my NI riot gun.
looks good Gavin, the only potential issue I can see is when you drop it down the barrel, the cardboard sabot could get stuck near the top and the moscard drops to the bottom on it's own.
“I wanted to come to the Volga at a specific location at a specific city. By chance it carries the name of Stalin himself. So don’t think I marched there for this reason – it could carry another name – but because there is a very important goal... this goal I wanted to take – and you know – we are very modest, we have it already."
Adolf Hitler, November 1942
"Comrades, Red Army men, commanders and political workers, men and women guerrillas! It is on your perseverance, staunchness, fighting skill and readiness to discharge your duty to the country that the defeat of the German-fascist army and the liberation of the Soviet land from the Hitlerite invaders depend! We can and must clear the Soviet land of Hitlerite vermin."
Joseph Stalin, November 1942
How about a water balloon mortar powered by compressed air ?
You could pump up the pressure with one of those stirrup bicycle pumps or a foot pump. The rounds are soft and will do little damage if they land on someone. A player also has a reasonable chance of knowing if they have been hit due to the water element.
Bloke has some plans available here http://www.myaircannons.com/waterballoonmortar.html
Nerf footballs or Nerf Rockets might be a safer option.
Not the Nerf Balls, but on the Nerf Rocket front:- Indeed safer, but firing any fin-stabilised projectile from a barrel (yes, even Nerf 'bombs') is actually illegal in the UK.
I recall a [supposedly true] story on this very forum from the owner of a Nerf firing bazooka who had it confiscated by the Old Bill because it fired said finned projectiles from whithin a closed barrel.
A Proud Member Of 'Team Spleen!' who play mainly at Gunman Airsoft, Tuddenham, Suffolk.
The issue will be that you are potentially sending pyros where you cannot see or predict that they will land somewhere safe.
Well, that is true of all the existing devices people have made or bought which fire pyros. It is also true of people who throw grenades over high walls without looking where they are going to land (like in your lap when you are lying down 'dead' at Crete, ta very much 
)
Occupational hazard of the hobby.
Cheers
Martin
"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" Helmuth von Moltke
Toys: AGM MP40, Cyma M1A1, TM M14/G43/SVT40, TM VSR/K98, SnS No. 4, ASG Sten, Ppsh.
Arnhem3,Gumrak,Campoleone
It is also true of people who throw grenades over high walls without looking where they are going to land (like in your lap when you are lying down 'dead' at Crete, ta very much
If it's any consolation, I had a MkV land about a foot away from my head when I was 'dead' at the last Cold War game, but the other guy didn't know. It was a *great* throw, but I couldn't hear properly for a week. Just one of those things. 
Well, that is true of all the existing devices people have made or bought which fire pyros. It is also true of people who throw grenades over high walls without looking where they are going to land (like in your lap when you are lying down 'dead' at Crete, ta very much
If you continued to play dead, with a firework fizzling on your family jewels, you are the forums official 'hardest man'.
I'll send Danny Dyer round for an interview. 
Not the Nerf Balls, but on the Nerf Rocket front:- Indeed safer, but firing any fin-stabilised projectile from a barrel (yes, even Nerf 'bombs') is actually illegal in the UK.
I recall a [supposedly true] story on this very forum from the owner of a Nerf firing bazooka who had it confiscated by the Old Bill because it fired said finned projectiles from whithin a closed barrel.
Paradoxically, if it was a lit pyro, it would be exempt as pyrotechnics are specifically excluded (or firework rockets would be illegal).
Then again, it could also be argued that Nerf rockets don't fit the description of the prohibited projectiles either.
Section 5 (1) (ae)any rocket launcher, or any mortar, for projecting a stabilised missile, other than a launcher or mortar designed for line-throwing or pyrotechnic purposes or as signalling apparatus;]
Then later:
Section 5 (1A) (g)anything which is designed to be projected as a missile from any weapon and is designed to be, or has been, incorporated in—
(i)any ammunition falling within any of the preceding paragraphs; or
(ii)any ammunition which would fall within any of those paragraphs but for its being specified in subsection (1) of this section.]
So, that being the case, if they confiscated the bazooka because it fired a fin stabilised projectile, that projectile would also be classed as Section 5, so they should have immediately raided Toys R Us, etc. and removed all Nerf "rockets" from sale...
PLUS, I have been informed by HMRC that MILSIM Labs' foam rockets are legal to import.
Then there are these:
http://www.airsoftworld.net/mad-bull-xm ... enade.html
A compressed air cannon/mortar is probably the only way to get enough control and consistency for repeatable shots.
As for sabot rounds:
Http://www.legioviferrata.com/sitebuild ... anammo.doc
There are launchers used by the gun dog community which fire tennis balls. I believe you can get air powered ones and ones which are powered by a .22 blank. They don`t look much like a mortar but fabricating some kind of tube around the mechanism might be do-able.
I intend to use an extruded steel tube with a hinged cover on the bottom with a hole in the middle. you take a shell which would be a smaller piece of pipe to fit down the barrel and put a banger in it with the fuse poking out the bottom. you then pack the top of the shells either with bbs or a solid shot then drop it down the tube. If all goes well the fuse will be poking out the hole at the bottom of the pipe and you can light it and when the bang goes off you open the hatch at the bottom and take out the shell.
before I go and build this and blow myself up anyone got any Ideas for improvement?
