When I discovered Brian Davis's projects, not only did I find his Zamor launchers, but also his Zamor launching tank. Ogre, his tank, is armed with a Hurricane launcher and has sprung plastic treads. Needless to say, that thing is awesome.
Ogre
After I invented the Tornado Launcher, I finally had a good one-motor weapon to put on my own Lego tank. Because this was during the Robotics season where I was building BogieBot, I wasn't content to give my tank a simple tread base. I wanted to give it awesome suspension. Naturally, my first design used rocker bogie suspension. That turned out terribly, because my tread base was too small and my center of gravity too high. That is, it tipped over really easily. Here's a picture of my original design without its treads:
Original design:
After that design failed, I had a stroke of inspiration. Suspension should allow the treads to bend around the terrain without breaking the frame, so why not just make a bendable frame? You may know this suspension style from Maelstrom, but this came first, and this was where I invented it. Tempest turned out awesome, and although I didn't show the Tornado Launcher firing in the movie Tempest had it and could use it.
Tempest movie:
It's kind of incredible (as in unbelievable) that I left this thing unposted, because it was awesome, but I think I know why. Shortly after I built this, my robotics team realized that BogieBot needed to be revamped, and I spent nearly all my time for a few weeks on rebuilding or reprogramming it. During that time I posted 4 YouTube videos of BogieBot. No wonder Tempest got lost in the rush!
