Saturday 29 August 2015

Mod: Bullpup Rapidstrike (complete except paint)

Several months ago I embarked on a quest to build a full-auto bullpup blaster, as I love bullpup and now love full auto. I began with an Autorayven as I wanted to make my Elite Rayven special, however lingering Rayven-related issues caused that project to be scrapped. The next best of course is a bullpup Rapidstrike, so I took my remaning spare Rapidstrike and got to work on that.
Here's the internals, besides the masses of epoxy and epoxy putty and obviously the handle in front, it's a relatively standard Rapidstrike circuit.
Running 3 Falcons off of a Turnigy 3S 1000mAh 45-90C LiPo, which goes in the stock.
The LiPo fits in the stock snugly without any wriggle, and both sets of wires are easily accessible.
The stock fragment and LiPo plug into the back of the Rapidstrike's remaining shell, and the stock is secured with 3 screws (two pictured here).
The iron sights in the carry handle have been preserved, but are pointless as they're too low to actually see through, and are blocked by the front iron sight anyway.
It's rather back heavy as expected, though not uncontrollably so.
Since between the back of the handle and the back of the magwell there's not a single screw port, I fashoined one out of epoxy putty. Not pretty but it works.
The screw port actually broke after applying too much pressure to it, so I'll be reconstructing it later when I get more epoxy putty.
Hole covering on the bottom of the handle. It's not pretty but it does the job.
The cheekrest plate I'm particularly happy with, it's smooth and covers the gap quite well, though there is a small gap through the middle.
The hole where the handle used to be has been patched up decently well, but the slot for the trigger I left alone as I'm too lazy to plug it up, and that one wire runs right through the slot anyway.
I retained the original muzzle and the portion from the Rayven's underbarrel area so that it will still accept barrel extensions.
As such the Bullpup Rapidstrike has similar tacticool ability to a Rayven, except with one extra side rail. I particularly like the way it looks with an extended Retal barrel, Tactical Scope and 25 drum as above, though the side of the drum does dig into your wrist.
As the magwell is further forward than a Rayven's though, 18 and 35 drums are usable if you're right-handed.
Size compared to a regular Rapidstrike. It's quite a lot shorter naturally, even with the Rapidstrike stock retracted.
Size compared to a Rayven, it's a few centimetres longer, but not significantly so. It is a fair bit bulkier and heavier though.
As it turns out, the stock of the Bullpup Rapidstrike is actually a little bit longer than a LightningStorm/Worker stock.
As clearly obvious the Bullpup Rapidstrike is in dire need of a paintjob, the obvious green Rayven part needs to be painted over and I also botched some of the cuts and so had to fill in gaps with epoxy putty or just epoxy. However that will have to wait for a while, I want to try it out at some upcoming events including MHvZ, and I haven't settled on a paintscheme yet. I'll have to do more research into painting first, though I'm leaning towards vinyl dye for convenience.
I also plan to add some sling points, though that requires first getting said sling points and picking locations for them.
Overall I'm quite happy how it turned out, it performs just as it should, is quite comfortable to use and shoulder, and I like the shape of it overall.

I took heavy inspiration from Torukmakto4's awesome Vulture build, so I'd like to thank him for that.

EDIT 30/8/15:
Epoxy putty screw port is now fixed. Smoothing of that general area has commenced, starting with some 5 minute epoxy to fill the holes.
Preliminary sling points have been added:
They will hopefully be replaced with a more elegant solution like proper sling points for rifles, but for now they work well enough.

EDIT 31/8/15: Now with 100% more homemade lever clip (mag) release!

EDIT 31/8/15: Video is done.

5 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. It's no different to how you would do a regular Rapidstrike, and there are plenty of resources on the internet on ways of wiring a Rapidstrike.

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  2. Replies
    1. Yeah I could have done much better work if I'd measured properly and taken more care. I'll be cleaning it up more when I get around to painting it...if I do ever paint it.

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