tl;dwr – An okay 21 round HIR flywheel blaster.
This may seem familiar…
Some of you may remember last year when several channels got their hands on a new to the States Blaze Storm HIR blaster, the 7109. A few of us had been aware of this curiosity for a while and waiting for it to show up, though I think I may have been the only one chasing it down. Sadly, I didn’t get it reviewed before it became available in the States via Evike and other sources and ended up not completing the review. If you missed it, here are a few other’s thoughts on it.
Walcom’s Video
Lord Draconical’s Review
American Foam’s Video
2020 brought some new designs, riffs, and clones. I’m still waiting to get my hands on a couple of them – most notably a mini-Prometheus. I did, however, manage to import this blaster, the 7117.
Overall Description
The 7117 follows all recent Blaze Storm blasters’ common aesthetics—a deep blue, rounder edge space gun design with interesting but not voluminous shell sculpting. A gunmetal grey is used as a complementary color, either as paint or additional parts. Safety orange is present on the nose and trigger as expected, along with the jam doors and grip sling point. Lastly, the line logo is in white, and what could best be described as circuitry meets tribal tattoo on both sides of the blaster. Typically, I find their paint clean, but this particular unit had both overspray and some bad linework. The build quality is surprisingly solid, with no appreciable creak.
Mechanically this is nearly the same as the 7109 in a sleeker body. A right-handed favoring toggle switch activates the flywheels and the agitator while the trigger pull moves the round into the flywheels via a very typical – if long – manual pusher. The trigger pull and return are nice and smooth, better than many recent blasters. Interestingly, though this is an eight battery tray, only the last seven batteries are needed. The only electrical lock is for the jam door.
Operation is simple. Load HIR rounds via the sliding door on the blaster’s top center as you would a Quantum or a Nemesis. Toggle the rev switch into its on position and pull the trigger to fire a round at a time. I did not have any jams during operations, but I did find that some rounds could be forced around the flywheels ( between the cage and the name door ) if I played with the trigger pull while it was off.
The included ammo is super squishy and, frankly, not worth bothering with.
Upgradability
The blaster comes apart easily, though I needed my longer bit drivers. There is a tone of room inside for someone interested in trying to make it full auto or a rewire. Though if you go that route, you may want to consider keeping the agitator on the 2 AAs it uses now; otherwise, the agitator might go bonkers.
Conclusion
Honestly, there’s not much to say about this blaster that wasn’t already said about the model before it. The performance is a little underwhelming, as is the capacity, and the difficulty in acquiring makes this a suggested pass unless you see a project for it. Simply, it doesn’t do anything newer, better, or cheaper. You’d be better served with a Dart Zone Velocity or a Rival Hera that operate in roughly the same space. But if it does speak to you, there’s a good bit to work with.
Purchase Options
These are the available locations as of this writing. These are non-affiliated links.