Hi, I'm Luke. Today on Out of Darts:
It's been nine months, but I finally got my hands on the Payara!
I have been privileged to watch this hobby grow over the last five years, and Drac starting a nerf
shop was a very logical step for him. I bought this Payara blaster on Drac's website Next Level
Nerf about nine months ago. He's since rebranded to Foam Pro Shop, so you can find them over at
foamproshop.com This is his original blaster. It is a bullpup, solenoid-driven flywheel blaster,
and it's got some really great features, and it's kind of a nice looking mini package. I do
have some complaints and some design critiques, so that's what we're here for today. Full disclosure:
I paid full price for this blaster. It was $400. It came assembled, so I did not do the wiring.
Drac and I are, of course, friends, colleagues, and competitors all at the same time. So I always
think it's fun to see what other people are doing, and I love spotlighting other creators
even if they're bigger than me. I'm going to start with some of my favorite features of this
this is the tiniest little bullpup blaster I've ever seen it is just itty bitty and and fun to
play with and it really um has a nice compact feel I think it's going to be really great for
close quarters battles and running around I don't really see running it as a primary in a outdoor
battle for instance because I'd probably want something with a little bit longer of a stock
or at least a longer blaster overall that said if I really got into that I
could certainly design a longer stock with maybe some more curve to go with it to hold
my form Drac chose these colors for me they are pretty close to other colors that I love and I
think it looks really really slick it's sort of a turquoise blue with of course orange accents and
sort of a galaxy black like sparkle black here I don't think it's actually galaxy black
because I do have that over here so I think it's something by Filamentum as that's one of the key
brands he uses inside are his Howler wheels which are based on the Daybreak geometry so
it does get quite good performance we'll put that up on the screen now the chronograph
numbers aesthetically I really like the look of the blaster I think these sort of teeth here are
a nice play on the fish motif I think you know the picatinny is nicely styled up top with a dish out
of the center as far as the design itself it's got a very minimalist form factor which I very
much enjoy though I will say I'm not that huge of a fan of thumbhole stocks in general just for for
comfort reasons but they are you know pretty much unavoidable if you're going to build a bullpup at
least in any standard configuration the only way I think to make it more comfortable would be to
make a larger blaster and I do not think that was the objective of this blaster there are not a lot
of bullpups out there so when Drac first listed this I thought I had to jump on it and see what
he was up to it doesn't sound like these are going to be available for general sale but he might do a
few here and there as a special order or just one offs when he feels like it so keep that in mind
this isn't a readily available product which is kind of all the more novelty of having one myself
I really like seeing what other designers do how they approach assembly and design and how they
put their components together and this one is a very interesting blaster on that note
and that's where we're going to get into some of my sort of critique of the blaster
this is Drac's first blaster so I don't even think my first blaster would remotely compare
to this but certainly the first one we sold which is Jupiter would have a similar level of polish
that said Jupiter is now about three years old so the design is not as polished as our current
capabilities could allow it to be but some of the things I'm noticing kind of right off the bat
ergonomically I have to be really careful not to hit the firing trigger when I when I pull
down the rev um the way that my fingers tend to fall I keep hitting this little nub here
for me personally I'd probably need to adjust this a little bit just shorten that trigger and
that's probably just personal preference as far as sizing of hands but I know Drac's got pretty
large hands so I would think it would be the same for him but for me I have to be a little careful
I also find that because this is all exposed up front it's very easy to have this hanging and
activate on um your body or on your clothing or your tactical gear so something to keep in mind
um when you're playing with the blaster like this I think I probably if I were going to use this for
extended period of time and you know throw it on a sling sling point you know possibly right
up here I would probably look at adding a switch for a master on off just to be able to toggle it
on and off I also might consider adding some smart controls to this we are working on a board that I
think could go in this very easily and I think that's something we'll play with in the future
there are a number of sort of oddball tolerance things I can see air all the way through this
center line and this vertical line this gap here seems a little large and I can see through
into the battery compartment on both sides or rather into the solenoid area
which is moved by this opened here it levers open I'll open it here but then the other thing there
is it seems like this hole is off center so for whatever reason this screw is not straight
this screw is a little tight to get out but this is not your battery compartment your battery
compartment's back here you've got a single screw which is nice and easy and then a nice little
design here where that comes off this slides up and you've got easy access to your battery
and I think that's a you know very simple simple way to put it together
it's nicely balanced because it sits back nice and low at the rear of the blaster
I think that's fabulous it definitely helps with the overall balance and feel
and while back here we've got plenty of room to actually screw this
thumbscrew in this one up here is quite quite difficult to actually reach now
this is more about servicing your blaster or getting access to the solenoid and it's part
of assembly but this screw does seem to be off tolerance I think I would maybe look to reprint
reprint this and and scoot that hole forward so it lines up with the brass insert below um
I'm not exaggerating the struggle to get this out it's a little tight I think because of the angle
I believe this is going into a threaded insert as well
I'm just going to try to do this without getting a tool out
ah got to show you the insides
but overall I mean this this thumb screw shouldn't be this tight there should be no reason for it to
be this difficult um to to get out so I think it's just probably a tolerance issue or design
design tweak oh and I forgot I also have to take
the battery off because they're kind of a unique little hinge mechanism here
so this opens up and you can see the solenoid inside with a 3D-printed pusher and you can
kind of see how everything works in there now some other odd odd choices inside I see is
that we've got brass inserts up here that aren't actually attached to plastic given that this part
this plate here was printed on the bed like this there's no reason that we couldn't just mound up
some plastic around there in the design it would take no more time to print and it would give those
a lot more purchase I would be careful about putting anything too heavy but it'll probably
hold just fine I have seen those inserts rip out if they are not connected to plastic all the
way because they are designed to take the first portion here doesn't have nearly as much holding
power as those two lips the two bottom barb lips have the majority of the actual holding power
and we've done a series of different tests to get the exact fit and dimensions for these holes
because we're using them extensively in upcoming products and we wanted to maximize the amount
of force that could go on those so I think if I were to change this personally I'd probably mound
add some plastic there just so those sit sit more firmly it looks like this part was probably
adjusted it's not maybe a final production part and now I definitely can see where the alignment
for that pin that brass insert that's inside here holding this is definitely further forward
than the actual hole so it's kind of coming in at a bit of an angle making it a little funky
and again this gap here I think could be reduced substantially there's no reason for it to be
two millimeters I think it could be quite a bit less and overall there's just maybe a few more
gaps than I would expect on a blaster at this price point but this is their very first initial
offering so I think it's a pretty good first off blaster it's certainly more polished than anything
I did as at my as my first and it's kind of a quirky fun assembly I like the minimalist design
I like the flywheels kind of jutting out to the sides here it makes it so you've basically made
this blaster as compact and tiny as possible and speaking of again activating that trigger
it's really easy because of just how you would hold the blaster it's it's it's difficult to
hold the blaster without accidentally revving it um due to the the back weight and everything
but it feels very nice I'm going to have a blast plane with this inside I hope we get to go back
to the airsoft indoor arena in Oregon and play with this because I think it's going to make a
killer blaster for those really cool close quarter battles and should be a lot of fun
up front we've got a worker metal barrel here to help with accuracy and in my initial testing here
it's been very accurate it looks like a very very pinpoint blaster as far as
flywheel setups go so I'm very happy with the performance overall there my final big complaint
is the magwell and Drac I'm sorry I don't know what is going on here
but this mag well you might have heard it earlier here's a standard talon mag
it rattles in every direction and I can't figure out why um I've tested every type of mag it
it wobbles forwards backwards side to side not only forwards backwards side to side but it also
it has um I'd say eight millimeters of play up and down maybe six
and I'm not too sure what's going on there I also have another magazine which I'm not going to
show on camera here that seems to be incompatible altogether despite working with every other talon
mag we'll have a little more on that later but it's just something that seems a little bit off
I'm definitely going to do something to tighten up this tolerance because it seems like there's both
a little too much play left to right front to back and up and down once it's actually
locked in place I just don't know quite why that is you know if I take that same same magazine
here and put it in my hummingbird there's you know there's no the mag mag release holds fine
if I grab that magazine and throw it in a talon claw of course it's you know just fine not making
there's a tiny bit more slop there but this has got a shorter a shorter vertical mag wheel
anyway so but it's really really really solid and this one it's worth noting won't drop out
freely but the hummingbird will while still being tight it's tight and will drop freely so it seems
like some tolerances here could be fixed I know this is initial offering it's it's the very first
I know this is the initial offering for the product and it's the very first release maybe
the only release I suspect Drac has learned some of the same lessons with pre-orders that we have
learned and that is basically we don't offer them pre-orders are a real challenge when it comes to
running the business for for me personally we don't offer them anymore and one of the reasons
is this exact problem where you release a product people are really excited about it
and then you know you deliver it fairly late and people kind of lose lose interest lose excitement
and you lose passion for wanting to work on the product um we didn't take pre-orders for
the proton pack and we are finally getting that out but that's kind of a similar thing I'm glad
I didn't take pre-orders because there were a lot of hurdles that we ran into as we reached
production and printing and actually getting them out in the wild so I think this is probably
something that he won't do again as far as a pre-order I would expect next time he's selling
blasters they'll probably just be available as as he's got them you just can't hold it anywhere
without that's really not that big of a problem you just need to be aware of it the rev trigger
it's just because it's pronounced it's on the front of the blaster it's really easy to hit
if you're just trying to hold on to it to show it off but this is not normal use you know you can
practice good fire control keep those fingers out there the battery compartment is a nice size it
can hold up to I would say about a 1500 milliamp pack but right now I've got a 950 Graphene because
ultimately if you're not going to be shooting a ton of shots I'd rather go with a lighter weight
another sort of interesting quirk on the wiring and I don't think I would wire this this way but
this is wired so that the solenoid will always go even if you haven't revved
and that to me is probably setting yourself up for trouble because if I were to just
pop this in and not have good fire control I've loaded one
oh now I've probably jammed it yeah so I think personally I would wire that so that
you've got current running through the main rev switch first and then the firing switch
can't activate unless the rev is already activated that way you're not um risking clearing things but
that's ultimately just a personal preference and it's just a simple wiring change it wouldn't be a
big deal to actually get in there and do do that I expect unless I'm not understanding the wire
paths inside of here but I think that would be pretty easy to do I've certainly done
both with a variety of different blasters one interesting design choice is that the Payara logo
is only on the screw side quote-unquote which this is symmetrical blaster in virtually every
way except the pi r logos only on the side that a right-handed person would put to their body I
probably would have put it on both sides but maybe jack's got a reason for not wanting it
on on the left side I maybe it's just to make this side more subtle and less name flashing I
mean we all either love hate or don't like this thing you know so maybe they're trying to avoid
logo heavy outside and keep it cleaner I'd love to hear from jack what the actual idea was there
another thing that I noticed and Drac warned me about is that the hardware does seem to be
a variety of different hardware um I've I think there's both metric of multiple sizes and you got
Philips screw back here and then pretty sure that's a us standard screw there with with um
a larger I don't know if that's a quarter quarter inch screw but it seems like it's
not a very unified hardware setup I would expect that if he decides to produce these in a larger
scale instead of just a one-off batch he'll probably look at getting the hardware to all match
when we design a blaster we like to have the same tool if it's a hex driver we like it to open
everything on the entire blaster unless there's absolutely no way to accommodate for it because
if you don't it just makes it way more inconvenient to field service and strip
the blaster. Overall I think the Payara is a really tremendous first offering from Drac.
I love seeing something new. Everybody else is doing short flywheel blasters, little mini,
you know, magazine-in-grip blasters, and there hasn't been a lot of variation. The Bulwark is
the only other flywheeler I've known recently, but due to the Bulwark's interesting assembly and feed
mechanism with the magazine being horizontal it's not the most accurate, where I think this really
excels when compared to the Bulwark. I think I'm gonna have to do a bulwark next. because I'd love
to compare the two in a future video, and the Bulwark just looks amazing too, so I think it's a
worthy worthy opponent. I'd love to hear from you in the comments what you think about the Payara.
I think it's one cool fish and I always love seeing something new. Would you like to see
him make more of them? I know that's one of the big requests he's probably going to get
in general as these start getting out in the wild, but it seems like he's pretty busy with all of the
other designs at this time. Let me know in the comments, and until next time I'm out of darts.
...and I feel like they set people up for disappointment
in this case. I'm going to put that down.