I've also been curious to try build to the same thing out of weed fabric. Its on a roll and about the right height.

We need some of this for our yard anyway. I will snag a roll when I go for the PVC. I will get the stuff ordered so we have it in time for the war.

Some other members of my family have expressed some interest. My brother and brother-in-law have some stock blasters. Is there enough loaner blasters that fire stefans for me to bring 4 people? My son probably won't come if I bring all these guys. My brother is engaged, so it would kind of be an unofficial bachelor's party. He is getting sealed in the LDS temple, so strippers are out. We might be able to get some to come out again. Let me know what you think guys. Thanks.

That sounds awesome! I'm sure we can come up with enough blasters - even we have to resort to blasters firing stock darts. (I don't think we will though) Just let us know how many people you can get to come, and we'll do our best to arm them. Best case scenario - they love it and will want to join us for other wars!

I recently provided 95% of arms and ammo for a 45 person war at a singles ward FHE night for my sister in law. Blasters may perform in varying degrees of awesome, but I absolutely think we can cover it. I even have a large group game type that works fantastically well with mixed performance blasters. BTW, the only real modification needed to make a blaster fire steffans is removing the peg from the barrel. Blasters with "smart AR (air restrictors) systems (ruff cut, triad, zombie cross bow...) depend on intact AR's for their auto- barrel select function, but it is possible to remove the peg without damaging the AR's - it's just more difficult.

It looks like I will be bringing about 5 guys. I think I could ask them to donate some money to the bachelor's party. Maybe $10 from you two with some stefans kicked in? I ordered the tarps. I will snag the shower rings, PVC, and barrier paper this weekend. Do the shower rings work for the top or do we need S-rings? I am also modding my 18 rd clip to take stefans. I am going to replace the stupid plastic rifled barrel with some brass tube in pvc or other plastic. Do you guys know what works best with flywheels? I got some trustfire batteries and I have a 3 cell Lipo. I think the Lipo will work best and easiest, so I will probably go that route. I have a red dot sight coming for it too. I even got a 35 round drum. I am going to attempt to make that stefan compatible as well. How long are the stefans that you guys make? I am really happy to find a group here. This seems so much better than paintball. Much cheaper too. Let me know if I am missing something. I am down to make gumdrops with you guys anytime. Just let me know when and where. Thanks.

5+you? That's awesome!
Drums are very difficult to steffanize. Straight clips are the way to go.

I like my Stefan to be 1.5" in total length, but that's all purely personal preference.

The only mobsticle I own is a tetrahedral built by a retired nerfer TaerKitty. I've never actually built any of my own. I've got quite a bit of weed cloth we can use, so hold off on that purchase.

I simply slap some trustfires in my rayven and spam stock darts, but a logo would probably be better. Our group kinda lacks an electronics guru.

My goto barrel materials are flo-guard-gold cpvc for spring powered blasters (the Lowe's on 9000s & ?00 East sells it) and petg tubing for air guns (that's a McMaster.com order). If its a flywheel blaster you want no contact with the dart after the fly wheels. Barrels are purely ascetic on fly wheel blasters.

I'm organizing a carpool to this years Gordon in California. The more people we can pack I. The value. The cheaper costs get. Might want to give that some thought too.

Guessing at a clarification here, but are you asking about a dual bladder reservoir system? If so I can see your concern. I've been wondering the same thing. It seems natural that one bladder might be slightly weaker than its partner and that it might fill to burst pressure before its partner starts to fill.

I've been told that when a bladder fails, the sudden release of air can sound like a shotgun going off. The resulting calls to 911 about a gunshot at a public park would be some bad press for a nerf war.

I'm hoping Doom still lurks this site. He knows more about bladder systems than anyone I know. Anyone else tried dual bladder reservoirs?

I've put a screwdriver through the side wall of a barrel while trying to pound out an ar. What ever method you choose, make sure you do it in a safe, controlled fashion.

Speaking of 12mm or 13mm FBR, I was surfing the internet and I came across this Green FBR. I don't know much about it... and I won't be able to buy it anytime soon to see it's quality, so if one of you guys want to go check it out, go for it. just give me some feedback on the stuff because I am planning on buying some.

Ha! I saw the same stuff Wednesday! I do like how they package and ship it in strands instead of on a roll. I imagine that would skip the pre-strethcing I had to do with the Hot Rod foam. They also have pink. I'm quite curious to know if it's the same manufacturer Kane (if i'm remembering correctly) gets his foam from. If it's anything like the pink in density and size, Neon green would be 'friggan tempting!

In my noobier days I loaned an ar and locks removed raider to an even noobier nerfer. Naturally they double primed and stuffed a down the back of the barrel and into the PT. Instead of flagging me for help the kept trying to run it and eventually realized that if they push really, really hard they could get it to catch. When it got back to me and I noticed the difficulty, i took it apart. That was the flattest dart i've ever seen.

 

I've also had a dart fold in half inside of a cpvc barrel. Still not sure how that was physically possible.

I really like how easy it would be to reload the unused mag while nerfing away. It looks much more manageable than dump pouches and tac vests.

1st edition panthers. They're a small pistol with a decent internal air tank. Later editions were neutered with smaller tanks. Look inside the barrel. If the barrel id is black, put it back. if the barrel ID is white, it's right. I put a 3 dart RSCB on mine and it's my favorite NIC primary due to it's super small size and decent power.

The only thing I've ever done conceptualizing of, but never developed that is close to this, was having two hopper tubes that had a two way valve that could be alternated between the two tube magazines. Maybe there's a way of applying this electronically and having a motor switch over a panel that exposes the two tubes individually?

Mechanically, it sounds very much like the internals of a Razor Fin (derpy max force pistol, 2 barrels, over sized jolt firing mech, spines pop up when shot). It has a wheel  with holes in it plumbed between the plunger tube and barrels. The wheel increments with each trigger pull so air is alternated between right and left barrels. It's not as intelligent as a smart AR system. It doesn't care if theirs a dart loaded in the barrel receiving air, but it's also not AR dependent so it could work with longer barrels and more power behind it.

Your drawing looks almost exactly like a scout. Perhaps you could rob the cocking slide off the top and mod it to fit over your NF? you'd save a bundle on filler material and hours of sanding.

That's something I've been considering for years but have never actually tried. I've thought about putting in some kind of pulley system so the travel is doubled but the priming force is halved but attaching the pulley directly to the plunger rod would have rope screaming through the pulleys when a shot is fired. Not only would it slow the plunger travel but it would be a big risk of injury if the rope grabbed skin as it retracted.

I then considered having some type of carriage in front of the rear priming plate with springs to retract it so the carriage is retracted to the front after priming. That would require holes drilled through the rear priming plate, and I'm not sure if it would survive the forces once compromised.

I then considered a third option. Weld a bar to the back of the priming plate and cut slots out the sides for the bar. This seemed the simplest and most viable. I eventually scrapped the concept though. I'd had my Ultimator since Christmas morning - straight off the store shelf. It's one of my more precious blasters and I didn't want to do any major shell work to it. If I was to pick any of the modifications that's the one I'd go with, just be sure to brace and reinforce the handles. I don't think they would last long if you were pushing against one of them while pulling a priming bar. Installing a shoulder stock to brace against would also move the priming force off the handle and into your shoulder. Try to keep the added priming bar light weight. You don't want to add any more mass to the priming bar than you have to. It's already got a lot of mass in play.

Good luck. I don't think i've ever seen anyone single pump load an ultimator but i'm pretty sure it would rock. Oh, and btw if you ever want to make a slip on shotgun attachment - they do pretty amazing things with long loose fitting barrels like petg and sch 80. It doesn't like tight barrels.

This is a small front loading blaster that also has the plunger facing forwards. It should play well in a mod. It's older though and might be tough to find, but it would be cheap once you do track one down. Pull the plunger to prime, nudge the plunger towards the blaster to fire.

 

http://nerf.wikia.co...i/Wrist_Blitzer

 

Nerf also produced a wii compatible Nstrike blaster called the SwitchShot. It's more recent and would be easier to find. The beauty of that blaster is that the shooting portion (barrel, spring, catchplate, & piston) detaches so a wii remote can be inserted into the blaster shell. That detached portion is a fully contained cylindrical  blaster - sans trigger. You might be able to run some shrowded bike cable from the catch plate through the shell and to a thumb accessible pull ring.

 

http://nerf.wikia.co...witch_Shot_EX-3

 

You could also look for a spiderman dart tag blaster. Its a 3 barreled pneumatic wrist blaster that triggers via a pressure plate. They were very popular among nerfers a few years ago. I had one stuck to my baster as a back up to my primary. Since it's air powered, you can simply run a string from the trigger plate to what ever digit you want to trigger it with.

We should probably be just as picky about the shape of the board as the material. It's a rough sketch, but if we have something like this, we might be able to tune the shape of the board so reflected sound waves are only hitting the probes once and most of the secondary waves are either reflected away from the probes, or are absorbed behind the probes.

 

 

I should have clarified, when I was talking about differentiating air sound from board sound, I was talking about sound of dart hitting board travelling through air vs. sound of dart hitting board travelling through board. Not sound of blaster vs. sound of dart impact, those two spike will be miles away at the scale we are considering. If your SOS through the board is close to that through air, you are going to have real problems differentiating the two unless the peaks of the spikes are sufficiently different i.e. different volume.

 

What I'm advocating is measuring sound of dart hitting the board through air with a sufficiently high SOS board material.

 

Ah, Thanks for clarifying. That makes a lot more sense. I guess I'm so hardwired into the theory of ultrasonic properties, that i had somehow forgotten that sound still travels through air at a constant and measurable rate, and that a dart hitting a board makes a significant sound. It would definitely be easier to go with the much slower velocities of air conduction rather than overhauling hardware for ultrasonic speeds. Measuring through air would also let us pick up the sound of the blaster firing to establish dart speed and drag if we wanted to get the extra data. 

Visual tracking has a whole other host of complications. The camera has to be able to recognize and follow the dart, the accuracy would be limited by frame rate and recognition.

 

Theirs another direction I'd like to suggest for this problem. Acoustic emission and Ultrasonic time of flight.

 

I work in NDT (non destructive testing) and specific technologies exists to track the active progression of cracking and erosion in pressure vessels is Acoustic emission. It basically involves epoxying multiple microphones onto a surface and listening for the object to make noise and then triangulating the location of the noise by recording the time it took between each microphone to pick it up. I'm told the industry was pushing the technology pretty hard in the late 90's but it never really took off because it was so specific in it's use. You had to know a crack was present before you would bother listening for it. Acoustic emmision is a spin off of Ultrasonic testing. Ultrasonic testing uses a transmitter to induce an ultra sonic sound into the wall of a part and times how long it takes for that signal to travel to the end of the wall and bounce back to the transmitter. It can measure thicknesses down to the .001" of an inch and is widely used in the industry today. (especially in the medical industry). 

 

Instead of a complicated video set up, maybe 3 microphones and some slick programming can duplicate the same result? If professionals can "listen" to a crack growing in a vessel, maybe we can track and plot the location of a thud on a dry erase board with a few piezo electric elements? Heck, we could even add a fourth element onto a blaster barrel attachment and pull a fps by knowing the distance between the blaster and the white board and timing the travel between the first thud (blaster firing) and second thud (dart hitting the board). Knowing the actual time of flight between barrel and board would also measure dart drag. Most of our chrony values are measured at the barrel (where we can reliably hit the chrony window), which is great for grading a blaster, but poor for grading a dart. Knowing time of dart flight would introduce a whole new way to grade actual and specific dart performance beyond accuracy. 

 

Such a set up could even keep up with blasters in full auto mode and plot data instantly. 

 

Sound travels through different materials at different speeds so there would need to be some calibrating involved, but that would be as simple as "thudding" the board next to one microphone and carefully measuring the distance and time to another mic. Once we establish that sound travels [x] fps in what ever material is being used, the rest is programming and math. 

 

Sound waves also bounce inside solid materials so there might need to be some sensitivity adjustments or sound deadening channels behind each microphone as well. 

 

Edit: : Might be needing to use trilateration (not triangulation) since trilateration also involves distances from known reference points. Wikipedia refference:

https://en.wikipedia...i/Trilateration

Even though the math, science and technical level is well above my experience level, at least I can google. Here's some ground work discussion already laid by others...

 

https://forum.sparkf...hp?f=14&t=24738

 

https://electronics....ection-position

 

https://playground.a...n/Triangulation

 

https://en.wikipedia...i/Trilateration

Here's the sound velocities chart from the inside of my clipboard. Obviously, it's not complete but might be helpful as a point of reference for some ball park values. For this project we should probably be looking for slower values, but not so slow that we loose too much volume due to attenuation. I'm attaching it just to show how wildly values can change between materials. And because it's geeky cool. It's always surprised me how much variation there is between materials - and even between metals.

 

Base line: sound traveling through air: only 343 meters per second. Wacky, but sound travels through solids waaaay faster than through air. Hopefully this is still within the realm of an arduino.

 

Of the values listed, Plexiglas might be our best bet with a pretty reasonable 2800 meters per second. I'm still curious about the viability of MDF/pressboard/dry erase board (because of cost) but theirs a very real chance that the pressed construction of the material might fail to transmit sound at a reasonable distance. Plexiglas is also tempting because epoxy resin is also 2800 meters per second. The identical transmission speed should be crazy helpful getting sound from the board into the probes. The bigger the difference in transmission speeds, the more loss there is as it passes through boundaries.

 

In respects of differentiating between a pulse from the blaster firing to the dart hitting the board, it's not something we will probably have to worry about. As sound is passed from air into a medium most of it is reflected back instead of being absorbed into the part. Even with ultrasonic couplant (a specialized jelly with the viscosity of snot - which also works as a couplant (it was cold, i ran out of couplant, had 2 readings left and was NOT going to climb back to the top of that 85' tower!) only 11% of the energy from an ultrasonic transducer actually makes it into the test subject and the other 89% is reflected back into the transducer. We should be able to do much better with an acoustic driver like a nerf dart smacking into a target and shouldn't have to worry at all about the board picking up the sound of the baster firing. Though, holy crap that would be cool if we could! With a carefully measured distance from the blaster to the target, if the board could "hear" the blaster firing, we could use that initial pulse to establish a chronographed measurement of the dart and establish dart drag - without a 4th listening element wired up to the blaster! In all honesty, I think we'll have more trouble with picking up multiple instances of the initial sound wave bouncing back and forth within the sheet  than external interference like ambient noise or blasters firing. 

Bump! This saturday = go time! hope to see some new faces there!

[edit] switched alternate location to primary location. Go to murray park first - wheeler historic park second if organized sports are being played at murray park.

Bump!

Date, time, location set! See Everyone there!

Salt Lake City JUNE Nerf war:

Place: Date: June 25, 3 pm
If you can't make it, don't complain. You had your chance.


Location:
I'm changing this location to be our alternate. I'm told it's quite busy on the weekends.
I'm actually looking at Wheeler historic farm - 6351 South 900 East, murray ut

It's semi central to everyone, easy to find, and I don't' think they have dedicated sports fields. They also have 3 or 4 small parks ("lawns") segregated out by trees. It could be a great, semi-central location. I just don't know how available it will be. I'll try to scout it out before hand, and if it works - it could be come our new home. Right now I'm looking at their South east "lawn". http://www.wheelerfa.../mapOfFarm.html open, then click the pdf link - look at #3

Upgraded to primary location:Alternate: Murray park - 202 Murray Park Ave, murray, ut This park is stinking huge though. We may have a tough time meeting up, but we should be able to find a place to play - even if we have to contend with organized sports for a field. I'm looking at either the soccer fields on the east section, or the fields behind the ice center (south central - theirs a side walk wandering around the one I'm looking at)

(Brair park has been suggested - but it's a very, very small park, and is as far on the east side as is possible. We might go war there eventually, just not this time. )

Safety glasses are required!

Bring water too!

No singled titans (with a barrel longer than 3"), or plugged bbbb's.

Steffans must be padded (with felt, 1/2" pom-pom's, or silicone. (no bare hot glue domes))
No blasters that can top 120' flat.

I'm also looking for a name for our group. I'm looking for something non-threatening or too intense. I'm currently thinking of going with: "SLCNA" (Salt Lake City Nerfers Assoc.). Thoughts, suggestions, flames?
I'm open to all suggestions here - even from those not local to the salt lake area.

So, due to a scheduling conflict on my part, we're bumping the war to the following Saturday, same time:

[b]Saturday March 15 [/b]8:30 set up/geek out, foam flies at 9.

We'll be adapting dodgeball to a smaller crowd. Don't miss out!

Woot WOOT! Season opener! Looking forward to it. Thanks for getting things going nice and early.

Another cool notable:
S.L.A.N.G. is planning a road trip to this years 'geddon in California (currently 3 attending). If you would like to join our carpool save $230 for your share of gas and lodging (I hope we won't be using that much - theirs just some safety buffer calculated into that figure) We'll have 2 supervising & participating adults attending.

I might be interested as I'll be on my way back from a Doctor Who Convention in Los Angeles.

Nice! I hope it works out. Always happy to nerf with new faces!

My favorite advancement has been back pressure style of air tanks. Pull pin tanks brought the power but their placement was a little more restricted - and if that pin wasn't pulled directly backwards, it would squish the o ring and start leaking around the pin. Back pressure tanks can be dropped in anywhere which makes for easy integrations. Sure, that style of tanks had a rough leaky start with hornets and secret strikes but by the time panthers came along the industry had the tech all figured out and ready to rock consistently. 

 

The scenario brought up in the poll was actually play tested a couple of times at the last Armageddon. (with the exception of modern NIC'ers vs super stock instead of the speed loader/crayola barreled NIC nerfers of '06-'11)

 

Freeze tag: hoppered NIC vs Super stock. NIC was out numbered 4:1. Super stock was too big of a horde for the NIC'ers to keep frozen and whenever an NICer got frozen, they were able to be "shot back in" by a team mate from across the field. Super stock spent an exhausting amount of time chasing NIC'ers around the field. The round was eventually declared unwinnable by either side and declared a draw.

 

During a more traditional lunch time speed round (single elimination, teams of 5v5), Langly single handily owned the field for two rounds landing all 5 tags for two rounds consecutively against two groups of super stock teams.

 

So in a slightly more traditional engagement a single skilled modern NIC nerfer can absolutely dominate a team of super stock nerfers. But if we were compairing classic NIC vs super stock, I think the ROF of the current LiPo'd blasters might grant the edge over the slow long game of the speedloaded/crayola barreld blasters of '06-'11.

To clarify the battery capacity question -
6D batteries are like a team of Husky dogs. They can pull a sled and run for miles and miles.
A single 9V is like trying to pull the sled with a team of greyhounds. They might be able to pull for a little bit, but you'll be pushing the sled once they're exhausted from sprinting.

Everyone here starts modding at the beginning. It's a lot more rewarding blasting away with something you improved yourself. I can nearly promise you'll toast a blaster or two while you're still learning the basics but once you get there its so addictive.

Most beginner mods fail because the blaster they chose to start with is too complicated. I would suggest starting with something extremely basic - a Nite finder or a fire strike. Front loading, no stupid locks, few moving pieces. Very tough to screw up (but not impossible). Find a good write up and read it 3 times before even opening the blaster.

If a pre-modded blaster breaks mid war - you'll be out for the rest of the day if you don't understand what's going on in there.

To molest the famous quote buy Sun Tzu: Know thy blaster, Know thy self.

Can we include links when we reference purchasable darts? It'll make keeping it all straight easier.

 

 

As a christmas gift I took a risk and bought two 200ct  bundles (400 friggan darts!) of blue suction cup darts from amazon:

 

http://www.amazon.co...ailpage_o08_s00

 

Shipping was weeks faster than it predicted and the foam was denser than nerf's. The 10 I randomly picked shot without complaint from the rampage I had laying around. Some of the tails were squished from the packaging - but that should be fixable by a ten second tumble in a pre heated dryer. (test a small sample of darts first). The heads *seem* well attached, I haven't tried pulling on them to find out.

 

200 nerf-comperable sucker darts for $13 is a pretty amazing deal. 

Was there any organization or objective to the game play, or just a bunch of young adults running around shooting each other?

It's my own personal experience that when ever a group that large of casual nerfers gather - the result is lawless chaos and inconsequential shooting.

You can also identify the leak by dunking most of the blasters guts underwater and watching for bubbles while you pump. 

 

The super max tanks are pull pin types. That means the rod sticking out of the back runs all the way through the tank and a plug pushes into the inside of the nozzle outlet. You've got o rings at the plug tip as well as around the pull rod as the rod exits the back. you might be leaking out of either location. If you can verify that your tank is in fact leaking, you might be able to repair it but you'll have to cut your tank in half to do so. You'll also need a sleeve to glue both halves back together. Before you do anything you'll need to source a pvc pipe/fitting to repair it. You may have to heat and stretch the pipe over the tank to get it to fit inside (grease the tank so you can get it back out too) then cut the tank in half with a pipe cutter. Replace the o rings if you can find a good replacement (don't bend the pull rod). Fit up the two halves with super glue then use pvc primer and cement to glue both halves into the sleeve you prepared earlier.   It's a long shot but with some luck you might be able to repair it. - worst case scenario, it's already leaking now so you might as well risk breaking it worse trying to repair it.

Mod partys are just as usefull for noobs as they are for experienced modders. Even the most seasoned modder can be shown something new, and be inspired. It's amazing what a fresh perspective can provide. Granted new nerfers will benifit the most, and many nerf wars disolve into them anyway.

Crap. Double post. Apologies.

I'm gonna look for a lock n load or a splitfire but I'm an fng so I can't post in trading

Heh. Well then, sounds like you're starting out with the two most lustable pistols. The LnL is older, but rugged enough to still have survided, the splitfire is cool but prone to leakage with use giving them a limited life.

I'm not sure how old your siblings are but I'd suggest digging a little deeper. If they're all grown up, maybe you could find out what they actually owned, played with and loved when they were younger and nerfing. As stupid silly as it may sound, my brother ran with a missile storm and used it till the catch had worn down to a dysfunctional stub. It was one of the most inaccurate blasters ever produced, but he loved it dearly, and partied like a maniac when he got lucky enough to score a hit. He was beyond thrilled when I found a nearly new MS, and swapped that catch into his old beloved blaster. He was happier than if I had given him an NIB X-bow. Long story made short: You might get more mileage by helping them re-discover a sentimental favorite than simply buying an "everyone elses'" favorite.

I'm sure YOU would appreciate a LnL or splitfire, but you aren't shopping for you, and in all likelihood, as new or even non-nerfers they probably wouldn't appreciate the significance of either of those two blasters, and might not give them the proper care attention and respect they deserve. If they're just starting to nerf, perhaps you could overhaul some NF's or firestrikes for them? Owning a 'Squirtle Special' - something you've opened, touched and modified would be far more personal than a soulless piece of vintage plastic, worlds more useful too.

It'll work, but you might have to be a little picky about the darts you feed it. My RSCB'd panther feeds just about any cone tipped darts (elites, some third party darts) beautifully but it wont feed suction cup tipped darts or straight sided darts like the now popular waffle tipped darts at all.

My panther has a CPVC barrel adapted to a 1/2" pvc TEE on it - i did have to ream it to a smooth taper on the cpvc and pvc though.  

Thanks blue, I'll try that. Oddly enough this is the only time I've had problems like this with a backpressure tank. Actually drafting up designs to make splitfire internals, just trying to figure out the cheapest and easiest way to test them out jic it doesn't work out. It would actually be rather fitting if I managed to muster up homemade splitfire internals because of the plan that I have for this thing.

Home made back pressure tanks can be tough. I've opened up every style of back pressure tank I've owned for science. One constant I've noticed is that the outlet nozzle size (the surface the piston seals against)needs to be a smaller OD than the ID of the tube the piston rides on. If the outlet meets or exceeds the tube ID the piston won't slide back and all the tank pressure will vent back out of the piston stem.
Just something to keep in mind as you build.

In line clips are more air efficient than hoppers so, while theirs a chance (in theroy) that they'd work, I think the deal killer will be tipping the blaster downwards to seat the next dart and then bringing it back up and aiming will be nigh impossible while your fully automatic battery powered plunger is dry firing away at unseated darts in your inline clip.

Just a heads up, these tanks are notoriously cranky and leak prone - especially if you plug/swap the pump and over pressure them.

Pardon the insultingly obvious questions, but they needs to be asked.

 

Are you using fresh batteries?

Is the belt loaded in the proper direction with the nerf logo facing up?

Is the belt door completely and firmly closed? Theirs a switch inside the belt door that will prevent it from activating without a belt properly loaded. Try removing the belt, and reaching in to depress the pressure plate on the belt door with your finger and see if that gets things spinning.

 

Vulcan's are notoriously finicky and prone to breakage. The more common problems are stripped gears from people ripping the belts out instead of opening the door first, but even with a stripped gear, it would still clunk it's way into attempting to rotate the belt. A completely dead vulcan could hint at a bound gear, or serious electrical problem. An unresponsive trigger? Ick. That sounds like something is either broken or in desperate need of lubrication. Start with the easy and obvious first. Best of luck.

I've sucked at posting war announcements here, but in case there are some Utah members I didn't know about, here ya go:

When: Saturday august 25 Set up and geek out at 9:30, Foam flies at 10:00.

Where: Murray park Soccer fields (primary location - remember it's in the east section of murray park. The section that only has road access via vine st. If the road connects from state st to vine, you need to take the next park entrance to the east. The one that dead ends inside the park!

We've had a lot of luck being able to use the primary location. The massive hill there rocks!

Wheeler historic farm park, south east lawn as the alternate location.

Blaster restrictions: the common offenders... Plugged bbbb's, singled titans....

Eye protection is mandatory!

BRING:
WATER!!!!! Its still summer. It's hot. Don't get dehydrated!!!
A primary, a pistol, and a quirky blaster that just don't shoot quite right for the awfuls round.
(If you're lacking darts, steffans, primaries, pistols, or awfuls, don't stress it. I bring a tub full of loaners - just let me know you're in need so I can plan extra extras.
Friends, bring friends... We need more participants.
Your B+ game (we nerf for the fun of it, not so much the win)


And there ya go. I'm actually going to send out an e-mail to my nerfers group. That should help attendance...

Don't get discouraged. I think this is more of a "know your audience" situation. We're pretty familiar with what's out there as far as blasters go and are usually more focused on the finer details of altering the mechanics or aesthetics of a blaster. I approach Nerfhaven from the perspective of social media =highschool (maybe) & NH=college. Theirs less fluff and opinion. There's more polish and refinement. 

 

If you find yourself lurking through the much older pages you may notice that things were a little more lax and conversational around here, but the current established feel follows the model of a research paper. That split happened at about the same time the verbal/thought vomit that is social media came about. People started taking their opinions elsewhere, but kept the core knowledge continued to be deposited here. It's a semi accidental distinction, but it works.  

Keep it informative, keep it detailed, keep it on topic. Save the fluff for the social media outlets, keep the more substantial offerings for NH. Hopefully (as long as the photo hosting accounts stay active) the modifications on NH will be around in an easily searchable format for future generations of nerfers to pull up and follow. Social media doesn't offer that stability. Theirs a depth of coverage and an ease of finding here that can't be found elsewhere. A completed and well documented write-up is definitely appreciated. Solid grammar is appreciated (you're good there btw). Opinions, concepts or "what-if's..." not so much. 

 

Keep posting, but post with intent and with long term value in mind. Weigh your submissions by asking "will it matter in a year?" . Your "modding without tools" topic followed a pretty significant challenge and some good semi-forgotten approaches came out of it. It's a thread that future new nerfers might find useful. Again, don't get discouraged. It's a different purpose and format from what you're probably familiar with.