Archive for the ‘Q and A’ Category

What hurts more to get shot by, paintball or airsoft?

Or is it about the same? - GoAway

Basically it comes down to Mass x velocity = Momentum. A paintball has a mass of roughly 96 grams where as an airsoft bb is 0.12 up to 0.45 grams. Even if using the “high” weight bb’s and putting the velocity WAY over the limit at 550 fps it is still no-where near as much force as a 96 gram paintball traveling at 300fps.

Even the heaviest airsoft bb is 1/200th the mass of a paintball so it will take a very high velocity to hurt the same as being hit by a paintball.

Momentum IS used to determine the pain factor. In the case of a paintball, the collision of the ball with the your body is mostly inelastic, which means most of the force is transferred into you. In airsoft, the BB bounces off causing an elastic collision – some of the force is transferred back to the BB.

Paintball impacts with roughly .27 kg*m/s of force while an airsoft bb impacts with roughly .02114 kg*m/s. This is based on a zero distance shot, so basically the barrel touching the target. Distance decreases the force of impact because the velocity is decreasing. Due to the greater mass of the paintball the rate of decrease in velocity is less than that of the bb, so the further away the greater the difference in force. From point blank a paintball hits with 12 times the force, from 30 feet it hits with 200 times the force of the bb.

Tips for paintballing?

I am going paintballing for the second time ever on Saturday. Last time I went I had MEGA visor fog problems, but I have found a solution – clean visor with washing liquid before the match. Now I just want to know if there are any good tactics for me to use? I cannot run too much as I am overweight, but I am kinda fit for a fat guy after being sporty when years ago. However, there are around 10 of us going so I will be fighting with friends. -Alex

Answer – My best advice for new players is stick to the edges aka move the flank aka play the tape. The idea being, go down one boundary of the playing field. This does several things, it guarantees there is no one on one side of you, and because most recreational players look straight in front of them and rarely check their flank it means they won’t see you move. As you are doing this look towards the center of the field, not straight in front of you. You do not need to shoot as son as you see an opponent, I often move until I have a clear, easy back or side shot on them. If it is an airball/speedball field, you will need to shoot your gun a lot more but moving the tape is still very effective.

When trying to shoot a moving opponent shoot where they are going not where they are. The balls take a few seconds to get to them make sure you are leading them. Shoot, Move and communicate. Many people do the first two, but the third is just as important. When you see an opponent let your team mates know where they are and make sure they do the same.

Does a 14 inch paintball gun barrel increase accuracy drastically compared to using a 9 inch barrel? - Adam

Adam, the short answer, is not really. The long answer is more complicated but I will give it to you anyway.

The most important aspect of accuracy and barrel for paintball is not the length, it is the correlation between the inside diameter of the barrel and the diameter of the paintball. Shooting quality paint is important because you want the paintballs to be consistently the same. Because the balls are made of gelatin, humidity and heat make the balls swell, on a hot humid day the paintballs can get up to .695 and on a cold dry day they can shrink down to .672. That is quite a large degree of change… So your barrel needs to be adjustable, that is why barrel kits are such a good investment. Realize though that just because one insert/sleeve/back works great in the morning for that paint does not mean it will work all day, if the temperature changes etc, the ball size changes.

The best barrel length is dependent on the gun being used. The higher the pressure of air at the front of the bolt when fired the shorter the barrel needs to be. High pressure guns (Almost every gun on the market) only need a 6″ barrel for the paintball to reach effective velocity, anything longer is just adding drag. However because these HP guns create a tremendous amount of distortion on the paintball, and wobble, you need more than 6″ of barrel to calm the ball back to normal-ish. 12″ is the sweet spot. Anything longer is just increasing the odds of a barrel break.

On Low Pressure guns (Most of the High End guns are LP) there is less distortion of the ball, however the air needs more time to get the ball up to speed. The sweet spot for LP guns is a 14″ barrel. That is the reason 14″ barrel’s are so popular and considered ideal, They are for the high end uber paint sprayers. But for 95% of people a 12″ is better.

internal Rifling has ZERO positive effect in a paintball barrel. In fact imparting spin is a very bad thing. Paintballs act like a water-balloon in flight rather than a bullet. When you break a ball in your barrel and every shot after that spins off in random directions, that is caused by spin being added to the paintball because of the uneven distribution of paint in the barrel. External rifling such as with the Smarts Parts barrels (Holes drilled in spiral pattern) allows the air to escape from the barrel which helps quiet the shot and does help decrease the distortion of the paintball but not any more than straight line holes.

How to make my paintball gun have less kick?

Paintball Gun Kick

What causes the “kick” in a paintball gun is the reciprocating mass. What this really means is that your issue is due to the weight of the hammer and bolt in your marker. By making this “mass” lighter the kick will virtually disappear and your accuracy will increase noticeably.

It is important to note that when replacing the hammer with a lighter one you will also need to replace the spring and valve spring, to keep the same velocity, and while you are at it you might as well replace the valve with a high flow one as well.

Using a Delrin bolt, with a lighter spring set and a lighter weight hammer will all but eliminate the “kick” for your paintball gun.

Another option that is somewhat counter-intuitive is to get a heavier barrel. By adding weight to the front of the gun you limit the amount of rise in the barrel, which is the primary issue with “kick”. A nice stainless steel 12″ barrel will help heaps. A better barrel will also increase the accuracy of your paintball gun.

Do nitrogen tanks hurt more than co2 tanks for paintball?

Does the Nitrogen shoot the balls out harder/faster than regular Co2? – CanMan

CanMan you ask a question that many new to paintball ask after they have played a few games against players with high end equipment. The simple answer is No, not directly. However there is a much deeper answer that has lead to this common mis-belief.

CO2 is a liquid in the tank and must expand to a gas to fire the ball from your marker. The transition from liquid to gas creates a rapid rise in pressure. Because this expansion takes heat and time to occur, the faster you shoot, the more liquid that will make its way into your marker. This liquid co2 in your marker will do two things 1) It will do serious damage to the seals and o-rings on your paintball gun 2)It will cause shoot down, where the balls go less and less distance with each subsequent shot. The colder the day the more pronounced this shoot down issue.

So while chronoeing your gun, because you are shooting just a few balls, and slowly, you are not drawing much liquid CO2 into the gun, and therefore your velocity stays pretty high. You, consequently are adjusting at the peak velocity. Also do to the unpredictability of the expansion from liquid to gas, it can spike and you will always adjust to below the field limit (300fps or whatever).

With HPA (high pressure air aka nitrogen aka compressed air) the propellant is stored as a gas in the tank. hen firing the gas has to to leave the tank (which is holding the air at pressures like 1500-5000psi) it must first go through a regulator to drop the pressure down to the operating pressure of your marker (400-800psi). Due to this regulation of pressure the propellant is super consistent. You will rarely ever get spikes using HPA, and rapid rates of fire have little effect on the velocity.

With a gun on CO2 it is not unusual to have to set the velocity at 280 fps with it fluctuating from 260–300fps shot to shot. With compressed air you can set it to exactly 300fps and have shot to shot consistency of 298-300fps.

The net effect of all of this is that a compressed air powered marker can seem to hurt more because it’s velocity is stable at the maximum allowed while a co2 powered marker can have radical drops in velocity due to all the things I mentioned earlier.

You should buy a Barrel kit like the Freak kit from SP or the Stiffi.

The most important aspect of how well your gun shoots is the consistency of the paintballs, and how well they match the Inside diameter of the barrel. If you buy great paint and match it to your barrel every day before play you will notice much tighter chrono groupings which means better accuracy.

Once you have the barrel kit then you can look into other options, but at this point it should be your next purchase.

At one time paintball was on ESPN, OLN and ESPN2 every week, now, to the best of my knowledge there is only one show “Traumahead Sports”
According to their website The Paintball show will be available on both Dish Networks (channel 230) and DIRECT TV (channel 344) in the basic program packages starting April 2nd, every FRIDAY NIGHT @ 10:30 PM EASTERN.

So yes paintball is again on tv but I have never seen this show myself (Because I do not have tv). There are quite a few great paintball shows on the internet.

PB Live is one of the best online paintball tv shows, but there are literally hundreds including many that aired on live tv in the past.

Alex you ask a common question that is one of the biggest problems of most new paintball players. There are several ways of fixing this issue.
1) Buy thermal lenses for your goggles. These work great and are not that expensive.
2) Buy a Vortex fan from JT for your goggles, quiet, reliable and work exceptionally well.
3) The anti fog spray does work okay, you just need to re apply through out the day DO NOT USE WINDEX or any other cleaner than contains amonia, it eats little pits in the lens and eventually ruins them.
4) Remove a small section of the foam that goes around the edge of the lens on two sides. I have always removed the section of foam where the strap goes out of the goggles. This lets the out moist air from your breath out. However if you do not have ear protection this should not be done as it gives a place for paint to get in. So be careful and if in doubt don’t use this tip.
5) Chapstick works really well, but can be a bit messy, wax will also work.

So there are 5 ways of lessening the fog in your paintball goggles.

El Mejor, if that is your real name, there are actually a variety of factors that determine the best barrel for your marker so I will do my best to give you a simple answer with some of the known variables.

One of the most important factors for determining the correct barrel for your marker is… The pressure of propellant air at the bolt face… The markers can be dividined into two categories High and Low pressure.

Most “High Pressure” markers such as your Spyder Xtra only need 6 inches of barrel to get the ball up to speed, but if you have a large ID barrel with small paint you will need a longer barrel to reach full velocity maybe 8 inches. Anything longer than that is adding drag to the ball which can be bad but on the positive side it is helping to keep it in a linear path (Thus flying straighter), and helping to eliminate some of the wobble the ball takes from the initial impact of the air… On a high pressure gun, anything longer than 12 inches is actually detrimental to performance, and increases the likely-hood of a barrel break of the paintball, Especially during rapid fire…

On low pressure guns like the DM’s you need a longer barrel to achieve the same velocity and a 14″ is the ideal length.

More important than length of the barrel in regards to accuracy and range is getting an ideal internal diameter match to the paintball being fired. Because paintballs are made of gelatin they expand and contract based on the amount of moisture in the air. If it is hot and humid the balls can get to be .692 or even bigger. If cold and dry it can get down to .675. That is a large variance. Even during the day they can change considerably especially if it gets hotter and wetter. So buying good paint, and having a barrel kit with a large variety of ID’s (inner diameter’s) is the only way to get the ideal match of paintball to barrel.

Jake you ask a question that I hear all the time, and as I always do I will say you cannot go wrong with the Tippman line. I recommend a Tippman 98 or an A5. Spyders are cheap and are very upgradeable, however they are no where near as reliable as the Tippman line of paintball guns. Close in price is the Proto guns and they are pretty amazing, the issue with them is the need for compressed air and an electronic hopper. In the modern era of paintball there are many inexpensive paintball guns to choose from, and most are actually quite good in quality. When I first started playing there was no such thing as a “Great Inexpensive Paintball Gun”, they were either great or inexpensive but never both.

The Tippman A5 is the best inexpensive paintball gun

I have had this question asked several times this week alone. This seems to be a constant question so I wrote a full post, check out Choosing Your First Paintball Gun.

Tippman has been around since the early days of paintball and prides themselves are creating great inexpensive paintball guns. over the years they have always represented, durability and reliability. Their performance has never been on the top end. Regardless as a brand Tippman represents the best inexpensive paintball guns in the market and you really cannot go wrong with them.