The Hive Mind: comparing LTX to Light Strike

A new blog popped up recently relating to Laser Tag, run by an author going by the name of Skurj. There haven't been too many posts just yet, but they've all been quality and quantity. The latest post, I think will be of great interest to those in to the laser tag side of things. Skurj has written an extremely in-depth comparison between the popular LTTO/LTX laser tag system which is very popular among laser tag enthusiasts, and the newer Light Strike system. Light Strike has not received many great reviews so far but as far as a comparison goes, this post is a must read.

The Hive Mind: Light Strike vs. LTX - Pure Opinion

OMW Black Friday sales

The Orange Mod Works sales for Black Friday are now live, and offer one deal a day for 7 days. about now is a great time to pick up an OMW mod kit. Dates and sales are as follows, going live by 2am CST (Houston, Texas):


November 25th: Recon Metal Madness
November 26th: Stage One Stockpile
November 27th: Spring Fling
November 28th: Orange Bucks and Trigger Raffle
November 29th: Cyber Monday Mystery Gift
November 30th: Massacre Medley
December 1st: Longshot Bonus


I'll probably be picking up a kit for myself at some stage during these sales, they do look pretty interesting. for more information, see the link below:
Orange Mod Works Black Friday Sales!.

The long awaited: OMW Longshot kit available for pre-order!

I'm sure there have been a hell of a lot of people hoping to see an Orange Mod Works mod kit for the Nerf Longshot since OMW went public with their Recon stage 1 kit, and now those people (including myself) have had their hopes fulfilled. The Orange Mod Works "Massacre Immortal" kit for the Longshot is now available for pre-order on the website, expected release date is to be some time in January.

I am absolutely stoked on this kit, because while others have made some replacement parts for the Longshot, this kit is an almost full overhaul of all of the internals. Included in the kit will be:

-Trigger catch
-Double strength trigger catch spring
-High performance main spring
-Bolt sled and bolt sled pin
-Plunger rod and plunger face
-Plunger tube and plunger retention plate
-Breech
-O-ring
-Metal trigger
-silicon grease

So, needless to say it's a pretty epic kit for $59.99US. The only things that it doesn't include are things like safety locks and cosmetics. I'm a little interested to see if the kit comes with the breech and plunger tube assembled or whether it needs to be put together somehow, and whether they've just straight copied the original with polycarbonate or redesigned it to be free of the dead space that the original has.

The kit also comes with a limited edition collectors tin box. I, for one will definitely be ordering this kit as soon as I get back from some time away (I've been working far too much lately...) Anyone wanting to pre-order the Longshot kit or purchase any other Orange Mod Works kit, should visit the link below:
Click here to visit Orange Mod Works.

New lens

Just a quick post, I am now back in action with my camera. I've now got a decent close end lens that I've bought from a good friend of mine to replace the lens that was stolen. So I may re-do the photos of the "Gear Up" Recon later tonight, to replace the ones taken with my old-school Pentax lens.

For the other camera nuts out there, it's a canon 17-40mm F4L USM. For the non camera nuts, it means I can take sharp, close range photos with a nice depth of field (subject clear, background out of focus). Now all I need is some sweet tagging gear to take photos of!

Nerf "gear up" Recon review

The brightly coloured "Gear Up" series of Nerf N-Strike blasters are *Finally* hitting Australian stores, so the other day I went and picked up a Recon and a Maverick, which were the only two available locally that I've heard of so far. I've been meaning to get this review done for a few days, but the main camera lens I use to take decent quality photos for this blog was stolen on friday afternoon, and I can't replace it for some time. In the meantime, I've cleaned up an old Pentax lens and used an adapter ring to fit it to my camera body, so I apologize if the quality isn't up to standard, but it's all I've got.

The first thing I can say about this gear up Recon, is that it is orange. And by orange, I mean the kind of orange that's so bright it'll burn the retinas of your enemies. I have seen photos of these before and just thought they were over-saturated, but no, it's REALLY orange. But, I think it looks pretty good. These photos just don't do it justice.

Of course, the Nerf Recon has been around since the very early times of the N-strike series and has stayed available the whole time, which it's worthy of. It's the blaster that can be customized in so many different combinations it's hard to decide what you want it to look like! Thanks to having both a barrel adapter AND a stock adapter, you can put and Nerf barrel or stock on, so it can be a sniper rifle, a sub machine gun, an assault rifle, even a pistol. And on top of all that, there's 2 rails on the barrel, one on the cocking slide to attach scopes, lights, sights and foregrips, even a Nerf strikefire blaster under the barrel, AND an extra clip can be stored in the stock. That's a serious amount of stuff you can do with it straight out of the box! Unfortunately, not much will suit the bright orange colours, so if you don't like painting then you're probably better off with a standard Recon. If you do, most Nerf gear has some orange or black on it already, so it's just a case of painting everything else black (longstrike barrels work well).

Alright, so what about performance? Well, out of the box you can expect 30 foot ranges, nothing spectacular, and until recently modding was mostly cosmetic as there isn't much you could do with a reverse plunger style mechanism inside. But, Orange Mod Works has come to the rescue and started developing mod kits to get great performance out of the Recon, once again giving it more appeal. Cosmetic mods are also something that this blaster is a great platform for, I've seen the Recon turned in to an M4A1, a pulse rifle, small pistol and integrated in to other blasters, so you might say the word "versatile" is an understatement.

Honestly, I love the Nerf Recon. It's clip fed, can be anything you want it to be, can now be modded easily with a simple drop in mod kit by Orang Mod Works, and usually pops up at the price of $23AU quite often. There is so little I can fault about the Nerf Recon, about the only thing that stops it from being a perfect 10, is the fact that it's a little awkward cocking this blaster, but that can be solved with a mod to add a bolt handle. So, this blaster gets a 9.5/10 flying potatoes.

Quick mod: shortened Spectre stock

For myself and many others I've spoken to, the folding stock that comes with the Nerf Spectre feels a little too long to be comfortable, so I've come up with a way of making it much shorter that just requires a bit of cutting, filing down, and glueing. A Dremel tool would be pretty handy, but you can get by with a small hacksaw and sandpaper or a round file, but you will definitely need either a hot glue gun or epoxy if you're following my method. By all means, I'm sure there is someone that will or already has come up with a better way for doing this mod but this is designed as a starting point for ideas.

Anyway, step one take the back half of the stock apart. once the yellow parts are off, you may screw them back together straight away, it's just to take them off their mounting point.

 Cut the stock where shown either with a Dremel and cutting wheel, or your small hacksaw. I guess you could use a large chainsaw if you really wanted, but that's probably overkill and I definitely wouldn't suggest using an instrument meant for cutting down trees to mod your Nerf gun.

You need this piece that was originally forming part of the mount for the yellow pieces at the back to fit the section where the middle brace was, as the flat piece sticking out gives you some more area to glue to later on. to make it fit, though, you will need to file or Dremel down the two little tubes circled, as they're too big for the sockets in the stock. You can also use sand paper but that will take a while, but it can be done. Grind them down until they are gone, and also get rid of the little peg that the red arrow is pointing at.

Screw back together with the original back piece from the middle brace and your stock should look like the picture above (take note that the T piece sits on the inside). Glueing the yellow parts to the new shortened setup is fairly easy, just add some hot glue or epoxy to the spots pictured below (a bit messy, but you get the idea) and align the yellow stock pieces to fit.

Wait for it to dry and you're done! you now have a much shorter Spectre stock, which is probably a bit more practical for a "stealth" blaster. Hope you liked the guide, leave a comment or email pictures of your own ideas to cfb_rolley@hotmail.com if you've come up with a better way!

Urban Taggers: on a roll!

Delivering the goods once again, Nerf blog Urban Taggers have scored themselves a Nerf Rayven CS-18. Urban Taggers is generally a great source for all upcoming Nerf blasters, usually having their finger right on the pulse at all times but this time I think they've really outdone themselves. Not only have Nerf not even announced this new blaster, but within a mere 11 days they've sourced what seems to pre-production or even final model of the rumoured N-Strike Rayven CS-18, and even BETTER is they've done a full pre-review (I guess that's what you'd call it). It is a very good review as always from Urban Taggers so I do highly suggest you head over and read up. It also clears up tons of the speculations that people have had, but still leaves me wondering, "what's in the front bulge?". Anyway, Preview: Nerf N-Strike Rayven CS-18