Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Nerf Rayven: One exists!

Popular Australian-based blog Urban Taggers got a hold of another picture of the "rumoured" Nerf Rayven CS-18 and posted it up today, asking their community, "does it still interest you?". This post (which can be viewed here) has attracted tons of comments speculating about it's function and internals, and some have criticized this blaster already over the main speculation of it being a flywheel powered blaster.

Picture from Urban Taggers

The main thing I got out of this is that if a real version exists, and the image landed in the hands of Urban Taggers, that means at the very least, Nerf has completely finished a working design for this blaster, sent it away to a rapid prototyping company that works with plastics (or more likely, their usual manufacturer), and a prototype or even final concept has been made. Now, a lot of time, money and effort goes in to progress like this so, it's likely that if the Rayven has made it this far that it will probably make it to store shelves.

Now, of course there'll be those who will tell me I'm wrong, but after seeing a photo of the blaster as well as the box art, here are my predictions about the features of the Rayven CS-18:
-It's a flywheel blaster. Think about it, it's semi auto, and there's no space behind the darts for a plunger, nor is there a priming handle. Furthermore, there's what looks like a toggle switch for spool-up present under the trigger, similar to that of the flywheel powered Vortex Nitron, and there are some interestingly placed bulges in the shell under the scope rail.
-Battery box on the clip is used to power some kind of light to charge glowing streamline darts. The box art states that it uses "firefly tech" and "clip charges 18 glowing darts". That one is obvious.
-Battery box on the blaster powers the flywheels. what is interesting however, is that it requires 4 batteries, unlike the Barricade's 3. This could mean it's feeding more power to the flywheel motors for more power, or there is some lights in the blaster as well.

One thing that has everyone stumped, including me, is how the darts move to the front set of flywheels? The bulge in the case under the front of the scope rail I'd say almost definitely houses a flywheel, but if this is the only set of flywheels it would be almost impossible for the darts to make it that far from the clip via the usual "pusher rod" mechanism, so is there another set of flywheels inside that bulge at the back of the scope rail? seems like a strange system for flywheels, but perhaps it's a way of gaining power without sacrificing accuracy? Who knows. Either way, it looks really good and I'm sure when it's released we'll see plenty of repaints, mods and re-casings.

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