Nerf/Laser Tag Hobbyist with a tactical sweet tooth
Just finished up our annual Halloween Laser Tag game and, despite the cold, we had great turnout and played for a little over 3 hours! Thanks to a full moon, the park was well lit even at full nightfall and we made good use of this to get lots of great games in before calling it a night.
What an awesome set of games, though! We experimented with a few different settings for team, zombie, and Alpha Zombie games that were all a lot of fun. We also got to debut a lot of newer customized gear. From a sight mounted on an LTAR to the Tactical Tag 200,000 Pageviews blaster to my Captain America LTAR, there were quite a few new ones running around. Costumes ranged from Mass Effect to Dr. Who. While we had our usual "I'm in camo" costumes that don't quite count in my books, it was still a fun time. Actually, I was probably one of the more easily spotted players in the whole group thanks to my primary colors. To the left are a few of my favorite shots taken during the games. 14 total players made it out and we didn't have any gear malfunctions thanks to the Mod Night held the week before to prepare the battered LTX armory.
My costume held up quite well too, and it was really easy to move around in. The UnderArmour kept me plenty warm and I didn't get any snags at all! The Shield kinda helped me power through some tough branches and bushes and I kinda wish I had worked on my blaster a little more (could've used a better iron sight) but in the end, Captain America did pretty well considering how easy I was to spot during the games! I'm looking forward to getting some more use out of this costume in the days to come.
So I'd say the whole evening was a huge success. Fun costumes, great games, no problems, and some decent photos to prove it all! On November 1st I'll have an announcement that most of my readers should enjoy. Until then, I've got a few busy days ahead, so I'll probably take it easy on the hobby side until then. 
Weather for our annual Halloween Laser Tag game looks to be a bit cold. I specifically designed my Captain America costume to be more lightweight this year which, on the surface, seems like a bad idea. But underneath I'll be armed with my trusty UnderArmour Cold Gear that should keep me more than warm for the evening's festivities. 
On the plus side, it means that for the indoor parties I'll use this costume for in the coming days, I won't be getting cooked inside a thick leather jacket (like I was last year). I'm really excited to do this game tomorrow not just because I look forward to seeing everyone in costume having a good time, but because I'm anxious to see if my efforts to make this year's costume more "agile" will work in my favor. Last year, even though I was plenty warm tucked away inside the motorcycle jacket-based costume, it was tough to move around in. 
What I'm most worried about is the durability of the new lightweight "Avengers" version of this costume, as I fear that the materials might snag on the bare branches at the park we'll play at. The leather jacket from last year not only negated any snags, but gave me a little more confidence to rush through cover that I would otherwise think twice about jetting through. On Monday, expect a full report on the game, how the costume held up, and an announcement that Tactical Tag faithful should be psyched about.
Our goal for the Mod Night was to get the 18-unit LTX Armory in tip-top shape for our upcoming Halloween Laser Tag game. Myself and 5 other volunteers went through checking batteries and fixing reload switches in anticipation of the turnout expected for this event. Once we were all done, we had a little fun watching some episodes of our favorite web series as well as having a bit of a Nerf war. Nothing serious, quite the opposite! Below is a quick clip shot when one of our guys was holed up in a storage room while 3 of us waited for him to come out. He got some unexpected help!
Worked up a nice simple paintjob on a white LTAR just in time for my Halloween costume. The upper reciever is all blue while there's a red arc following panel lines to break up the rest of the stock paint job. I also swapped out the orange reload bar for a white one off of the orange LTAR set to give the lower portion of the blaster a striped look that mimicks the Captain America costume it'll accompany.
In any case, I'm pretty much ready for our Halloween Laser Tag game set for this Sunday, October 28th. Tonight the MLTA has scheduled a "mod night" that'll allow us to get the general armory up and running in tip-top shape as well as fix a few of our member's customized blasters. Should be a good time!
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| Elite Firefly Tech Clip (on the left) compared to the normal one |
Captain America's gloves have an armored gauntlet on the forearms that I really like. At first, I attempted to repaint an old pair of shin guards and adapt them for being worn on the forearm. As it turns out, the plastic doesn't like to hold paint very evenly (has lots of spots and such show up, regardless of the exterior finish). 
I've resorted to covering one of the shin guards in some left-over fabric I have from making the jacket. Turned out pretty nice, so I'll be doing the same to the other one. Should be ready to rock next Sunday. Next up is my blaster, a modified LTAR. Gonna try a few things like disabling the Beacon in the dome and perhaps a stock. We'll see!
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| Color inverted to reveal detail |
Made QUITE a bit of progress on my costume! A lot more than I was expecting, too! As of right now, the shirt/jacket is complete minus a few tweaks I need to make. The guards on the gloves are nearly complete too, so I should be ready to rock 'n roll with this costume pretty quickly.
I sanded down the shin guards I'm using for the armor on these gloves. They've turned out pretty well, but the plastic used for these has been a bit of a pain to work with. I had to redo the first one I did, and it took a LOT of time getting the Krylon Fusion off of it to do a clean retake on it. These paired with my red gloves and some red fabric left over from the stripes on the torso should look nice.
Probably the most tedious work was the stripes along the front. Getting them measured and coming up with a way to affix them without stretching the fabrics I used was a bit of a pain. In the end, it was easier to just turn this full-zip jacket into a 1/4th zip at the top and close things up where the red stripe goes through the center. Not what we had originally intended, but it works. It also means the top left half of the star in the middle is only velcro-ed on, with the right side stitched to the jacket. Getting in and out of this is a bit of a challenge, but it's a welcome change from the heavy leather jacket in my TFA costume from last year.
Broke a lot of ground this morning getting things ready for Captain America's modernization. There are a lot of different parts from his World War II-era combat suit seen in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) and the new revamped uniform in The Avengers (2012). Since I'm using this in a laser tagging event on October 28th, I wanted to make the costume accurate but also keep mobility in mind. That being said, the heavy leather jacket used in my costume from last year has been replaced with a lightweight track jacket. I also don't have to worry about mounting any sensors on my costume since we're using LTX and LTAR blasters for this match. The white blaster above is what I'm working with. I've already swapped the orange reload paddle for a white one off of the other Orange/yellow LTAR I had. I have a few mods in mind for this blaster, both aesthetic and electronic in mind. Those will likely get hammered out next week. 
The big parts I'm trying to finish before that is the jacket and gloves/gauntlets. Here you can see a shin guard that I'll be re-appropriating as an armored gauntlet for Cap's gloves. It'll be painted red and should work nicely for that solid armored look that I love about them. Major work still needs to be done on the jacket, but I'll post some progress pictures for the build on it.
Last summer, I came up with the idea to integrate a hydration pack into a clip-system Super Soaker to give the user nearly unlimited ammo. I called it the "Endless Thunderstorm", and it's made it's way around the web once or twice. Later, Super Soaker released it's massive drum magazine that pretty much trumped my original idea, but it was very front-heavy as a result of this. Now Urban Taggers (with the help of Chenanio) has spotted something that I can't help but feel is oddly familiar to my idea last summer. You be the judge.
Urban Taggers noticed it with the "more powerful" versions of the Dart Tag gear being identified by their Blue Triggers and now we have another way to see the difference between the US Release of Elite blasters and the "watered down" versions that they had reported. You'll recall that Nerf announced that lower-range versions of the Elite blasters were slated for international release for safety reasons, and now it appears there's an aesthetic change on top of the power difference.
Gray triggers on Urban Tagger's Australian-based Elite Blasters are the surefire way to tell what kind of blaster you've got. Personally, I like the gray plastic trigger better. Using a gray trigger in a repainted blaster would look better than painting a trigger gray or black only to have the paint wear off. 
So it looks like we've got a basic visual way to tell the difference between different strengths in blasters. Blue triggers on Dart Tag gear are better while Orange triggers on Elite gear denote the stronger performance. ...interesting!
