8 replies to this topic

[pat 1st Lt]

Dear Forum-Goer,


This is my first posted modification. Generally, I do not post modifications, as there always seem to be ones that are so similar there's no point taking up space on the forums.

To gein with, I've never heard anyone talk about this gun: The Lanard Sonic Bazooka
If there are write-ups for it, I have never seem them, nor found any in my preliminary searches before I posted this topic. Sorry if one already exists.


Anyway, I went to Ocean State Job Lot yesterday, and to my surprise I found a hefty stock of Lanard products: about twenty LBBs, a dozen Max Shots, three or four First Shots, several Blowguns, and an odd contraption resembling a GyroStryke (I cannot recall the name). However, on the back of the shelf behind the LBBs were several small guns labeled 'Sonic Bazooka!', for 5 dollars a piece.

I called up HQ and requested permission to purchase and mod them with the Clan Funds, and they appropiated 13 dollars for me to buy and modify them.


I don't have a camera, so I'll describe it:

It is light blue, with a yellow handle and pump handle, a grey trigger, red accents on the front of the gun, and a silver area on the top back half of the gun.

It is 15 inches long

6 1/2 inches tall

3 inches wide

the handle is four inches tall

the pump range of motion is 3 1/4 inches

The pump handle is a miniaturized LBB handle

The trigger is upward-rotating, like a RF20, or Powerclip

The 'missles' are 6 inches long, and are yellow with red tips. They ahve small fins, and the missles 'whistle' much like the whistling arrows that Nerf had out for a while

The missles are loaded over the 3 inch barrel stub, much like the LBB

There are two yellow air restrictors in the first inch of the barrel

The barrel is a tiny bit more than 1/2 inch wide.

Just to give you an idea, the gun's dimensions are about the same as a Maverick plus a LBB pump handle.

The handle and trigger of the gun are halfway on the gun. That is to say, there is a 15 inch cylinder with a handle 7 1/2 inches in from either end




Ok, now that's over with and you have a very vauge idea of what it looks like, onto the gun.

The box proudly flaunted that 'this product is fitted with a safety relief valve!', yet the box also claimed that it could attain ranges of up to 60 feet with the stock missles. This was very promising, as 60 feet with very prominant air-restrictors I could see without even opening it is amazing.

I found that on the very rare occaison that the missle didn't go into a crazy death spiral straight to the ground, it attained an average distance of 57 feet (Taken from 20 shots, on flat astro-turf in a football field, fired from about 5 feet 10 inches off the ground, with little to no wind, and measured by a yard stick measuring the distance between the yard lines on the field).

However, the missles were incredibly inaccurate, and that standard Nerf arrows could not fit on it, due to the small opening in the casing surrounding the barrel post.

The very first thing I did to this gun was to cut off the first 4 inches of casing, so as to expose the barrel post. This did not impede the function of the gun, since there is a built in 'wall' that seperates the 'firing chamber' section from the internals.

The gun now could shoot Nerf Arrows, and got them around 60 feet also, though they were much more accurate.

However, I was, nor am I now, interested in the Missle/Arrow capability of this gun, so I shall now move on to the internals.


The Sonic Bazooka is very simple to open up: very large screw holes, with screws very similar to those found on Powerclips (large headed, short, stainless phillips heads). There are 9 screw on the main body, and 7 screws on the pump handle.

When the gun is opened, it is a very simple layout.

The pump handle is attached to a pump rod, which is very heavily lubed with some kind of organic oil-based lubricant (Lard). On the head of this rod, is a fairly heavy-duty o-ring, and three over-pressure release holes.

I plugged all three with hot-glue, making sure the glue was flush with the top of the holes, so the head was still flat.

The pump-rod on mine already had stress-cracks in it, and I had only fired it around three dozen times. I took some very thin strips of metal sheeting, and bent it to fit on the pump, without interfering with the pump guide (The thing that keeps it from falling out), and epoxied them on.

The tube itself is 1 inch wide by 3 3/4 inches long, meaning that at 8 pumps (When it gets very difficult to compress further) it holds ~ 74 cu inches of air.

Using my amazing abilities to determine barrel length, I decided that I'd use 8 inches of 17/32 brass (Somewhat longer than what I have on my SplitFire).

I cut off the first 1/4 inch of the barrel stub, and found I'd cut off one air restrictor, but that there was another, slightly larger one farther down. I ended up cutting the first 3/4 inch off the barrel.

I tried to nest the 17/32 in the barrel stub (which, coincidentally, fits stock Megas rather well), but it was much too loose. I rummaged around my supply of various tubes, and discovered some 1/2 inch thickwalled copper tube, that fit well around the 17/32, and fit decently in the barrel stub.

Just to be sure the air would go into the barrel, not around it, I took a random o-ring I had lying around, and epoxied it to the nested brass/copper, and it turned out to fit rather snugly, with no need for any other spacers, like electrical tape, or anything.

I then expoxied my barrel assembly into the barrel stub, and held it tightly in place in a vice for twenty minutes, to let it get a good hold while it continued to dry.

While it dried, I just went fiddling around with the trigger valve, and found that there was a leak around it: when the tank was pumped, it would hold air fine, but when the trigger was pulled, the valve the trigger engages would leak a fair amount of air, before the vavle in the barrel would engage.

I fixed this small leak with some epoxy that had not yet dried from when I epoxied the barrel in place.

Once this all set, and was in place, I tested out the the trigger vavle, and it worked beautifully.

As a final touch, just because I could, I placed all the internals back in, and filled the shell with some of this expanding foam insulation I had recently picked up.

It does not stick to the plastic in most guns, and when it dries, it is a perfect cast of all the internals. When I removed the two halves of the shell, it was a perfect mold of the inside. I took an exacto knife and cut this mold in half, and hot-glued a half to each side. It now acts as a stabilizer (which is good: the pump tube is sort of shaky and not well attached on these things), and sort of a muffler.


I went outside to test ranges, but it started snowing. Yes, snowing. On april fifth. In Rhode Island.... I didn't want to stay outside with no shirt or shoes on (I always mod half naked. I don't know why.) and only got to measure three shots, and they were all in the mid-90's. 97, 93, and 94, which averages to 94.6.

In my oppinion, being 10 feet short of a LBB for half the price and half the size, isn't too shabby.


As I said before, I've never seen these or read of these before, but that doesn't mean that this isn't a copy of someone elses write-up. Sorry if it is.

So, if you've got $5 and want two guns that rival a LBB for the same price, go for it.



Sincereley,
Pat

[sam]

where are you located and how much would it take to get one?

[pat 1st Lt]

Sam,

Eastern CT, and some of us are in Western RI, and one of us is from SE Mass.

What do you mean? You want to buy one?

I do not know: I'd have to consult the counsel, but the guns were 6.99, but were marked down to 4.99 when I went there. There were about 7, and I bought two, so there might be a couple left.

I've no idea what shipping costs are to wherever you're located, but i'd probably say $6.99+ shipping would be a decent price, as they were 6.99 before they were on sale.

[hokiefan0705]

I am interested in a LBB i will pm you.

[Pineapple]

Hmmm...

I wonder if it's a Lanard knock-off of the old AirBazooka from awhile back.

You really ought to get a hold of a digital camera, Pat. Some of your modifications and especially your SCAR rifle are worthy of some pic-age.


-Piney-

[davidbowie]

I called up HQ and requested permission to purchase and mod them with the Clan Funds, and they appropiated 13 dollars for me to buy and modify them.

I honestly mean no offense, but that made me laugh. You guys sound like some sort of secret society. I guess it keeps you from getting all spend-happy, though, which is good. Quite good.

Pictures would be great right about now. I'd like to see this.

[Forsaken angel24]

I have seen this thing in person. It looks like its more aimed at a younger nerfing market. This thing fires thin arrows. The arrows look like they mixed big salvos arrows with LBB rockets. They got whistler tips. It looks cheap but not as cheap as the airzooka but not as quality as the LBB.

[pat 1st Lt]

I have seen this thing in person. It looks like its more aimed at a younger nerfing market. This thing fires thin arrows. The arrows look like they mixed big salvos arrows with LBB rockets. They got whistler tips. It looks cheap but not as cheap as the airzooka but not as quality as the LBB.

Indeed it is not as quality as the Blast Bazooka, but it gets the job done for a $5 pistol.

davidbowie: yeah, we have a counsel that has to vote on all expendatures of clan funds before we're allowed to tap into our vast lakes of money (We've got an annual budget of ~ 7,000 dollars. That's not just for Nerf: we're also a scenario paintball team, which takes up a lot of money




Yes, Piney, it is relativley like that AirBazooka, only this thing looks somewhat shorter, and the handle on the Lanard one is much shorter.


However, the airtank on this thing is massive, about 1 1/2 times the size of my SS2 airtank. I've no idea how good that old AirBazooka thing is, but I'm getting tremedous results out of this Sonic Bazooka.




RANGE UPDATES:

After putting about two hundred rounds through it, it seems to have 'settled' into a very consistant pattern:

6 pumps:

65'
67'
65'
63'
62'
67'
64'
66'
64'
68'

Average: 65.1 feet


8 pumps:

78'
72'
73'
76'
72'
72'
75'
73'
76'
78'

Average: 74.5 feet


10 pumps (I very reluctantly did this, as I was very afraid the airtank would blow)

89'
91'
94'
93'
91'
87'
89'
96'
93'
88'

Average: 91.1 feet


The ranges seem to have gone down now that the gun has 'settled' and has gotten several hundred rounds through it. It now hovers on the edge of the 90' mark when pumped fully and loaded correctly.

The only thing I don't like about this gun is the fact that the handle is so dang small (much like an AT2K). Well, I guess that can be expected from a gun made for 6 year olds being used by a 6'5", 210 pound high school student.





Anyway, I've gotten several PM's from people interested in buying these 'Sonic Bazookas' from me, as this Ocean State Job Lot is the only place I've ever seen these guns.


The counsle's talked it over, and we've decided to sell them (if anyone's interested) for 8 dollars, if the buyer pays for shipping. This leaves us with a $1 profit.


Now, our only problem is seeing if the store has any more left, since there were only a couple when I went there, and this store always runs out of Nerf and Lanard stock quickly.

Right now, we've got two guns, one modded and one unmodded. If we can get to the store and pick up some more, we'll probably end up selling them to whoever's interested.



Sincereley,
Pat

Edited by {SF3G}pat 2nd Lt., 06 April 2006 - 03:03 PM.

[Jabs]

Just a small critisism about part of your mod -- "fixing" the air leak coming from the trigger valve -- this leak is actually essential to getting the gun to perform correctly. When you pump air into it the first time, a foamy plastic rod slides forward and seals off the main tank from the barrel, also allowing air to fill the tank up. The pressure is the same in the secondary tank right behind it. When you depress the trigger valve that was pushed tight by the pressure, the small amount of air behind it releases, creating a vacuum in the secondary tank. The low pressure causes the foam tipped rod to be pulled back, creating an opening behind the barrel and releasing the larger amount of air. This explains the 0.5 second or so delay in between the trigger being pulled and the dart firing. It is slightly annoying, maybe, and you are losing a small amount of pressure, but in my opinion it's a highly creative alternative to nerf's system. In other words, it sucks compared to an AT2k but for less than the price of a Mav, go buy it anyways. Believe me on this, I made the same mistake of trying to plug the trigger valve and partially destroyed my gun. Anyways, nice mod, decent ranges, I might do a write-up on this thing (with pictures ) if I feel like it/find time. -Jabs