We don't need another flywheel Nerf gun!

Flywheel guns are all the rage,  they are the powerhouse of a Nerf battle.  With the exceptions of a Zing-bow, a modded Stampede, a Shotgun Titan, a very nice modded Longshot, or some Sniper gun from Some asshole who was willing to put a 88 foot-pound spring in a Nerf Rebelle Star Shot and mount it to a 12" barrel.

Flywheels simply OWN!  The main dominance force, the rooks on the chessboard.  Yesterday we talked about the Queen on the chessboard, however, most games don't have a queen in their games as chess would relate. 

There are only a handful of Chris Cartaya's in the world of Nerf, Chalk it up to lack of interest, mod limits, lack of kamikaze bravery that the damn Nerf gun doesn't explode in your face while modding it.  Usually you have to stick with Flywheels and springers. Even then, and no matter what, 1 player with foam screeching by you over 50 yards away is somewhat intimidating, but he can't win the game himself.  You need to use your other pieces as team captain to win big!

Flywheel players are the Rooks on the Nerf battle board, and most worth mentioning because the are the dominant force on the board, a queen is 9 points, 2 rooks are 14.  They can charge and unload on the enemy like a lawnmower is to grass.  They have the most effective means of laying down fire and the best means of closing in for the kill.

Another property of a flywheel nerf gun, simplicity.  One only needs to rewire it, give it more voltage and you are out the gate shooting.  This is where I play, not the Crazies, I cannot conceive even shooting a blaster without at least a Semi-auto function available. 

Let's face it, did you grow up saying I want to shoot one shot at a time, or did you always fire your toy gun in rapid succession at any thing that moved.  Yes we are all still inside us a boy, Nerf is where we are kids or kids again, we want to shoot hundreds of rounds a game.  We are the future!

So it is natural to keep making flywheel semi-auto's,  However the new wave coming out of Nerf is not only dumb, to say it nicely, but also expensive.

First off the Nerf Cam 12, ok it has a webcam....so what, that does not justify that it should cost up to $75-$80 that only maybe $9 in extra electronics and integrate circuits that are added to it.   In addition, the people who have this blaster don't ever use the camera.  My son has one, he never used the cam because the first time he did, the image shook everywhere because when the gun moves, so does the image.  Knowing how anal retentive I am about video quality, he never used it again.  Nothing a Stryfe can't do for $20 here.

Second the Rhino Fire, Sharing 1 set of RS-130 motors for 2 barrels, No Coop 772 hade the best idea, not only go with the Rapidstrike, minimized it like a submachine MAC 10!

With 2 of these, Frank Cooper modding them with 2-180 RS motors none the less, why do you need a Rhino-Fire when you got 2 of these?

And now Awesomely Nerf, revealing the Modulus, another flywheel nerf gun, this time cashing in on accessories.  What I liked about the past was to get most of the accessories you may need, you only needed to get the Stampede and the Recon, if you like the Raider stock, you can get that too.  The Stampede gave you the flat 18's, the recon gave you the stock, barrel, light and rear sight, the raider gave you another stock, collapsible and a 35 round drum.  After that, you were Mr. cool, you owned everything you needed as a Nerf player, I just don't see that here with this Nerf gun.

It was a good marketing scheme rather than overpriced gimmicky toy guns and bogus range claims making everyone think the XD line was different by making it look official.

The Modulus




What's so great about this? the accessories do not enable a Nerfer to gain anything.  The pack with the hidden blaster in the stock is a good idea but front grip, got it, Retaliator, barrel got it, Retaliator magazine, got it Demolisher, scope, got it Longshot, stock, got it, Retaliator.

Nothing special here, the marketing of lets say the Raider and the Recon were based off of necessity.  That is the only way one can sell Nerf guns that sucked that bad.  I have seen 1 person build a good Raider back in the day, that was Chris Cartaya, look at him now.  Every other one sucked and couldn't even shoot from downstairs to upstairs.

One other thing concerns me, is that it probably used a barrel tube from the flywheel, less range there like the Rayven and god knows how much this white piece of shit is going to cost.

X

The dirt on Cartaya.

Many questions are abound about this one, so here are a few answers from what I can tell about this Nerfer. Even in this pic, what shocks me the most is that where everyone else has a Milsim loadout while he's being different.  Waving a scoped Firestrike with a penloaded brass barrel, long hair and a getup that makes him look something like a Jedi.  He represnts a new way of playing, a new focus of Nerf battle where one tries to pick off other players from relatively vast distances and defensive tactics like one would use in playing chess. Unlike a camper like most people would play with his armament, he is mobile at the same time boxing in the opponent closing in for the kill.  If the Flywheel players are the rooks, the Rampage/Retaliator/EAT players are the bishops, the large ammo format player are the Knights then Chris is definitely the Queen on the board when he plays modded stock or milsim.  

Lets start with the most asked Questions first based off of my research.



Question #1. "Do Chris Cartaya's blasters Really shoot that far?"

Answer- Within reasonably 10 feet or so yes.  He, like everyone else, is reporting peak averages with new darts and little or no wind and the best possible conditions to fire a Nerf Gun. 

His velocities however, are lower than your average NIC blasters, Only the Bird Of Prey can possibly cross 200 fps.  He uses a method of better ballistics rather than homemade ammo slugs with flat felt heads.  The results are blasters with better effective range and better use of power.  But they may be easier to dodge @ 100' than an air-blaster for the simple reason that at firing #6 slugs though an airblaster go faster but die off around 90 feet rather than chris's system slower, but single prime-able, smaller, lighter and have a father die off at 130-150 feet away because of less air resistance of domed dart heads and light aerofoam.

Question #2 "Why doesn't Chris use a tape measure while range testing?"

Answer- He "claims" that neighbors and HMA's fuss about him laying down tape but I believe it more these reasons.

*Stubbornness.  When your parents for example shove carrots down your throat when you are a kid, you tend to not eat carrots later in life. 

The same I think, goes for Chris, he got picked on hard by the NIC about his Retaliator and people shoved "tape measure", "levels", "elites are too wild" and everything else conceivable to try to defeat his claims that he just doesn't give a shit anymore.  I measured his new sharpfire, He does sincerely pull around 120's-130's. I happened to have saw him fire one the other night at an Indoor war, clear across an auditorium, so why not buy a tape? a level? or a chrony then?  I did, 131 feet! Why Chris WHY? 

IMO? Because "nothing he feels is good enough", "why bother", "people will always crap on it", as the NIC is known to do when they hate a modders direction.  But how he says it is more like, "I'de rather a person fire one in person when they buy one so that they know what they are getting."




Question #3 "Why are his video's so bad about such decent content to do a video about?"

For example, a sharpfire (that sucks right out of the box) doing over 150 fps, that with no doubt deserves better coverage, better use of online reach and attention, has gotten very little explanation on Chris's YouTube how to do it.  Why?

Answer- Self esteem.  He claims he simply does not have enough money coming in to invest in equipment is his excuse, but I feel it is far deeper than that. He just doesn't feel that he can make a run with it. 

*Very little confidence, disenchanted and disenfranchised from good YouTube practices and video standards.  It's surprising and to a degree worry some because from such a visual engineer/problem solver type person, you would expect him to just climb right on.  I want to convince him that it is not as far off as making music demo's.  He has spent thousands of dollars on Guitar, amps, mixers ect, but won't spend $120 on a decent camera.  He loved music productions, laying down tracks and editing them for weeks on end, but when It comes to video, I feel he just gets frustrated too fast and settles.





Question #4 "Does Chris Cartaya work at Plant 42 or the Dugway Proving Grounds?"

Answer - Not sure, Chris is secretive about may things, and he has consulted about things requiring an NDA for him to know about.  Personally I believe he just has a lose knit group of friends that happen to work on black budget projects.

What I do know is that Chris's former employer, his dad's company PB Fiberglass products was a vendor formerly of The Walt Disney Company which many of their works can be seen at California Adventures, Disneyland, Disneyseas, Epcot Center and the Magic Kingdom as well as other Production work on automotive and RV parts seen on the road everyday.  The company closed it's doors in 2006 and Chris has not had an official job since.




Question #5 "Is Chris Cartaya an Alcoholic"

Answer - I hope not, he's a heavy drinker that is for sure however.



I will end with this, There will never EVER be another Chris Cartaya, just like there will never be another Jack Kerouac Or Dean Martin.  Whom I more associate Chris as rather than a Steve Mcqueen or a Hunter S. Thompson or James Dean as most people that have met him associate him as since he has a rebel/drifter/loner type lifestyle.  He's just not a "King of cool" enough, more a "King of Character." 

Hang in there Nerfers, he is a good man, a great modder, a true and wise friend, he's just complicated. 


Do not tell them who I am Cartaya.


X

An afternoon with Chris Cartaya.

In a world of Flywheels, HvZ, Homemade NIC mods, aggressive paint, Cpvc barrels, Hopper and RSCB feeders there come a guy who says "Fuck all that noise."

At first he seems foolish, loud, cocky, old and isn't it strange that a 39 year old plays Nerf?  "What is he trying to do? Pen feed his blasters, that's so dated!" I was doing that back in 1993 and who wasn't, single shot ABS barreled blasters, why take us back Chris?  His video's are full of such frightening manic alcoholic dysfunction that the first time I saw a Chris Cartaya video I could not sleep the whole night. I was awake partially out of fear and partially wondering "What happened to this cool guy I met back when he was a Mormon?"  But there was a reason, let me explain.

I first met him back in 1998, back when I was working offsite for an aerospace company waiting at an airport.  I ran into this kid, round 20ish, coming back home to Christmas from Utah wearing a Big, loud green "I'm obviously a Fucking Mormon" BYU tee shirt.  "Hahh a Moonie" I thought! "Lets fuck with him, he's really asking for it."   So he gets something to drink at a bar, a coke of all things, obviously following the LDS church word of wisdom that pushes memebers not to drink alcohol or Coffee.  And I sit down the bar 2 seats away.  "You should get something that will put hair on your chest boy, let me get you a beer!"

After that it was his big speech about his grandmother who was an alcoholic, how "He never wants to go that route." He was a square, unconfortable short brown hair man, just under 6 feet tall and somewhat annoying at times.  Really out of place in Las Vegas, but I could tell that he knew and that he was trying to just get by. 

"So how about red stripe airlines" he said continuing with a quick blurt "know anything?"  I laugh, knowing I was waiting for one of those planes to go work on a project that had gone over-budget, delayed, changed 3 times by 5 generals and all and all will never work.

"Ha, don't get me started"  I said he quickly interrupts saying, and this line I remember word for word to this very day.

"Oh no-no, I don't believe 51 is about aliens or some conspiracy, it's just a working environment to build things unwise to build in the public or for the public but is needed to avoid the scrutiny of others for it's best use and success.

Wow, he gets it, so I told him to leave the red stripe planes be, none of his business and we talked for a few hours, fascinating kid, wanted to be a Engineer, lots of experience in molded parts and complex projects growing up with Dad.  He actually met my old boss and the only guy we knew in common that he could describe in detail, the late Lockheed Cheif engineer back when I started working at Skunkworks.  I was floored! He knew so much from meeting him one day when he was a kid.

So after a few hours and me tossing a few Corona's, it was off to Burbank Airport Chris went, we shook hands and I wished him well, I felt he had a bright future ahead of him, "Nice kid, Cool guy, Needs go get drunk, bad!"

I felt wrong, the guys life appears to be a disaster, I have yet to ask why, but the contrast of who Chris was then and is now in mind-boggling.  Can life indeed get that shitty?

So I see nothing of Chris until the infamous "PVC Nut-bags" statement made while he was fighting about a modded Retaliator.  "It's can't be him I thought"

Yep, it's him, what the hell is he doing? I have been following him ever since, a reminder perhaps that certain rules in Nerf, truely can slide and that it is all about fun and personal preference.  He get's one thinking?

Were Captain slug and Kane wrong in the direction of Nerf and if so why?   Why not push a Firestrike or a Retaliator?  Is a home-made that much better and if so why?  Why hasn't Nerf moved up as fast as airsoft? 

Next post, hopefully more of the story and a true evaluation of Chris's blasters from my standpoint

Nerfer X.