It's AALIVVE!!! Well, almost. Tornado grenade video posted on my site!

[Styrak]

Originally Posted by MadMax

Short loading doesn't appear to present much of a danger. The grenade is designed to prevent overblasting a shortload or even single heavy pellets to very high velocities.

Still, short loads kind of suck. The pattern will be a lot less dense and you'll find that the scatter may be less even because the grenade may only rotate a partial turn before depleting the pellet load. In the vids, the grenade only seems to make one or two full rotations before it's out of pellets. A partial spin could have the grenade blasting out bbs in two sectors.

Imagine Rambo with twin Mac11s twirling in a room surrounded by baddies and his guns run out after he makes only 45 degrees of turn and they make full auto clicking sounds for the rest of the turns.

Ahhh, I see. Alright, no half loading then. Doesn't make sense to.

[DarkAgent]

how does one in the states get one of these?

[The Saint]

Originally Posted by DarkAgent

how does one in the states get one of these?

Order it from the manufacturer's website?

http://www.airsoft-innovations.com/Grenade.html

[Styrak]

Just a note, I think it's been said before maybe by Carl himself:

You have to wait more than a minute or two after you fill to have the proper timing. I put the pin in the 1.5s position and about a minute after filling it, threw it up, and then it came down and hit the ground, and then exploded.

Fun times though

[DarkAgent]

Originally Posted by The Saint

Order it from the manufacturer's website?

http://www.airsoft-innovations.com/Grenade.html

just wondering if these dreaded customs people are gona give me a time.

[Endymion]

Where are you located that you'll have to deal with customs?

[Styrak]

He's in the US

[MadMax]

US shipments seem to be going thru US customs just fine. The Tornado is manufactured in Canada so hooray for NAFTA. No duties!

[Styrak]

Originally Posted by MadMax

US shipments seem to be going thru US customs just fine. The Tornado is manufactured in Canada so hooray for NAFTA. No duties!

Just curious, what's your approximate Canadian/US sales % if you don't mind?

[MadMax]

Right now there's a lot of Canadian grenade sales. Maybe 1/3 of them in total which isn't too surprising since a lot of Torontonians got to blast them during the user testing period and my assembly staff have been bringing them to games to snake the early grenade advantage.

Canadian airsofters have always been good to me. I launched my propane adaptor here starting with in game sales which moved a lot of adaptors. Players at TTAC3 have been throwing prototype grenades for months now. I usually leave a prototype or two of upcoming products for his player base to test and give feedback on. Over a year ago I brought a very early proof of concept grenade to TTAC3 we called the "tentaclenade".

I'm expecting that Canadian airsofters will pick up on the grenade a little quicker than the rest of the world. We play a particularly expensive brand of airsoft due to our higher cost of importation which bumps the average player age due to a need for a higher disposable income.

Even HK is becoming inundated with very low cost Chinasoft. I was surprised at that prevalence of very low cost airsoft stuff in HK. It seems to point to a younger average player.

My total customer base is pretty US centric though. I've built a decent name here on ASC which gives my company a good reputation with Canadian players. My profile in the US isn't as developed. The web based discussion of airsoft in the US is significantly more fragmented than here in Canada. There isn't a national forum which really pulls together the whole country and I'm a bit of a nobody in the US. I have to work a lot harder marketing in the rest of the world because I have to compete for attention against a lot of retailers and an abundance of new products.

I'm a small fish in a small pond here in Canada. I get to have a big enough profile that I can get enough attention with a new product that is decently interesting and there are a lot of players here who really like stuff that functions well. The older player base makes game play testing easier because I receive feedback from ppl who have passed Gr. 9. The higher income user testing base provides meaningful pricing feedback on my higher end product interests. China has cornered the market on low cost airsoft. I wouldn't be able to compete with their negligible costs of labor and willingness to take a very low profit margin. My only chance is to leverage careful engineering and put out innovative stuff that fills a good niche in a way that is sophisticated enough to confuse and stymie an Asian copyshop.

All that makes Canada a surprisingly not bad place for me to develop products.

[Styrak]

Thanks! Nice information.

[Endymion]

Ahh, the tentaclenade. It's amazing to see how far that idea developed in such a short period of time. Hats off to you good sir.

[MrEvolution]

Originally Posted by MadMax

I've built a decent name here on ASC which gives my company a good reputation with Canadian players.

Because you are an inventing GOD. Please never stop the ingenuity.

[diamond_SEA]

Ive already noticed that the tornado is up on redwolf for pre-orders. If they review it, im sure there will be a massive surge in sales.

Now that the lack-of-reliable-airsoft-grenade gap has been filled, time to move outdoors and develop a reliable and useful mortar.

[Lakonian]

Oh man.. Hope to grab some soon. Verrrryyy soooooon. Muahaahahaah.