Sunday 5 June 2016

Mod: Quad Rocket Lanard Shotgun


The Lanard Shotgun/Air Zone Tripleshot is an older pump action blaster that had a turret of 4 sets of 3 darts, and it was intended to shoot out 3 darts at a time. Though in stock form it was pretty awful, a huge plunger tube and surprisingly strong stock spring gave it massive mod potential, and there are a huge number of examples of modded LSG/AZTS's that can be found with a simple google search. I wanted to do something different in the same vein as my triple rocket Titan - a pump action quad rocket blaster.
Do note that my particular model is specifically a Lanard Shotgun, I don't know how different it is to the similarly coloured Air Zone Triple Shot.

The blaster uses 4 rocket pegs made out of 16mm and 20mm UPVC/electrical conduit. The 16mm with a few wraps of tape fits Demo rockets nicely, and sleeves tightly in the 20mm which makes for a tougher piece. Note that the rocket pegs are spread out further than the turret is couplered - this is because the couplers are far too close together to fit 4 rockets on.
Naturally the rocket pegs aren't perfectly straight, but they're good enough for my purposes (read: goofing around, not serious combat use). Since the rocket pegs are 16mm UPVC/electrical conduit, they *can* be used for firing darts, however the rocket pegs are far shorter than the ideal barrel length for firing single darts.
Loaded with rockets. Rocket performance is not especially good as the plunger to turret seal is not very good, and the spring load is not particularly strong for an LSG build (just stock + stock LS). Ranges can be anything from 8 to 15 metres, depending on how the rocket behaves in flight. Accuracy is non-existent, there is absolutely no consistency at all. I wasn't going for accuracy though, and the range is good enough for me to consider this thing a success - it fires rockets sufficiently far for my goofing around purposes.
The LSG uses a set of cut down 20mm UPVC couplers. I didn't install them, they were already on the blaster when I purchased it second hand, which made my job a lot easier.
Naturally being couplered, the LSG can be set up for all kinds of barrel systems. I decided to build a set of multi-dart firing attachments, a setup fitting of its Shotgun design and name.
I was originally intending to build 4 dart absolvers, however the spacing didn't work out nicely and the airflow into each barrel was going to be very small, so I settled on 3 dart absolvers. These aren't anything special really.
The stock LSG/AZTS was originally set up to fire 3 darts, however its barrel system was incredibly poor resulting in extremely poor performance. This setup gets reasonable ranges with both Kooshes and FVJs, anywhere from 10 to 15 metres depending on the darts. Spread is also dependent on the exact darts used.
I intend to try this setup out at Equalz Dee events, where it gets pitted against things like stock Hammershots and Strongarms. The relatively long and heavy prime does slow it down considerably compared to anything stock, so I'm hoping it won't be significantly, if at all, overpowered. I might also give it a go at MHvZ for a bit of fun, maybe in the dart sweep round or as a semi-goof blaster in Secret VIP or something.
Since the couplers are universal, mix-and-matching attachments is perfectly possible. Since the turret rotation is linked to the pump, pumping multiple times will prime the blaster as well as rotate the turret multiple times. It would be perfectly reasonable and rather easy for me to build a set of longer barrels for my LSG, but that doesn't suit my style of play.
Overall this mod project was mostly successful. While I was hoping to have 4 dart bursts, the 3 dart absolvers work very well and the rocket firing works well enough. I'm pretty happy with it overall, it's a lot of fun to use.
As a semi-related final note, this is how I'm currently marking my rockets, pending getting a good template to colour with or a nice stamp or something.

EDIT: Now with firing vid.

2 comments:

  1. How's the seal between the torrent and plunger Tube? I couldn't get mine to rotate well while maintaining a good seal.

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    1. Fairly good actually, if I plug a rocket barrel with my finger and dry fire, the plunger takes several seconds to return to rest. Far from perfect obviously, but I don't need a perfect seal and this seal is good enough. If I put my hand over the coupler and dry fire, the plunger takes a lot longer to return to rest.
      I used the stock rubber plunger->turret piece and propped it further forward and sealed it better with some e-tape, teflon tape and some spare o-rings, which works nicely. Have you made sure to glue together the slip clutch? That part will probably give you problems if you have a better seal.

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