Paintball Journal

Todd Ferrante's Paintball Journal

My friend Steve Burkey keeps a windsurfing journal to remind him of all his sailing experiences. I thought it would be fun to keep a paintball journal, since I am just starting.

9/04/99: My sister held a paintball birthday party for her husband at the indoor paintball field at Central Ohio Paintball - the Splatterdome. This was my first time ever playing PB. I had sort of avoided playing in the past because I suspected I would get hooked, and my wife keeps reminding me that I do not need another expensive hobby. We played speedball for about 4 hours and had a blast. Regardless, I remained steadfast in resisting the urge to get hooked.
9/25/99: My wife and I took a day trip to the Serpent Mound, in southern Ohio. On the way back home, we stopped in a bookstore / deli for supper. We both picked up some magazines to read while eating. My spur of the moment choice was 'Action Pursuit Games', a paintball mag. Perusing the adds and seeing the gear prices listed, I realized that I could pick up a higher end starter gun package for less than I would spend on a close-out windsurfing sail. As it is getting chilly outside, and will soon be too cold to windsurf, I began contemplating paintball as my wintertime activity to keep in shape. Started checking things out on the net.
9/30/99: After several trips to the paintball store this week and a lot of internet searching, I purchased a gun package from C.O. Paintball. They have this great price matching deal where they will match any price you can find. I did some extensive web searching, used their match any price policy, and bought a Piranha STS gun and Brass Eagle Xtreme Vision Pro Mask. I ended up choosing the Piranha over a Tippmann model 98 or a Spyder because I really liked the rear-cocking bolt over a slot in the side of the gun. The first time I played I did a lot of crawling in the dirt and I was sure I would muck up a side slot gun design. Plus, the beaver tail sight mount on the STS keeps the rear bolt from dinging up your mask. Got a 20 oz tank to use with the bottom line setup on the STS.
10/02/99: On vacation in Virginia, I got my wife, her brother and his wife to help me go through almost a whole bag of 500 balls trying out the new gun. We shot at trees, then at their plastic trash can. The trash can made quite a satisfying plop when you would hit it.
10/03/99: On Sunday I played a walk on game at Paintball Plus, in Fishersville, VA. A group of players from a company that made wooden trusses was playing and I joined up with them. Most of them had rental pump guns, so I found myself at an advantage even though it was only my second time playing. Played capture the fort 3 times with the attackers (we won) and once inside the fort (lost). First game not too eventful. Second game worked around back of the fort and right up to a loophole. Waited for a chance, jumped up, and sprayed the inside of one tower with fire. Took out about 3 before someone ran in and grabbed the flag. Third game went around right and worked in close. Got a great long range shot to the face mask of a defender on top of one of the towers. Then we played a game of assassin. There were 5 assassins who could hide anywhere but in the fort. I hid behind a bunker to the left of the path into the fort. The "secret service" managed to run the "president" into the fort, but I took out about 4 by rapid firing right outside the door that they had to run through. We then split into four teams and played games on the speedball fields.
10/04/99 to 10/05/99: Found a store in Harrisonburg, VA that sold paintball stuff. Made several trips to the store, checking out their stuff and buying back issues of paintball magazines. Eventually bought a surplus camo jacket and a camo head wrap. Never thought I'd see the day when I would actually own a piece of camouflage clothing.
10/09/99: Purchased Sure Shot sight at C.O. Paintball. Mounted it on my gun and found the gun would no longer fit in the box it came in. Since the sight needs reset every time it is remounted I'll have to find a way to store the gun fully assembled.
10/10/99: Played at the Drop Zone "Big Game 2". It had drizzled all the previous day, so I put a fresh coat of mink oil on my boots before leaving. I got to the field at about 10:20, just missing the morning briefing. It didn't matter, though. We didn't actually start playing until about 11:30. The first thing I learned was that 75 people on a side make a lot of noise when they are shooting at each other. The other thing I learned is that camouflage REALLY works. Especially when your mask with "antifog coated lens" fogs up completely. Once I ended up having to leave the field just so I wouldn't run into a tree. Even guys with thermal lensed masks with fans were complaining of fogging in the 100% humidity. I wiped out my goggles a few times and they just fogged back up. I finally decided the only way they were not going to fog up was to leave them on until they warmed up to the temperature of my face. After that, I didn't have any trouble if I left the mask on. I was glad I bought the camo jacket and head wrap. The people without camo stuck out like sore thumbs. With that many people playing, staying alive was largely a matter of staying hidden. Once you were spotted you could count on getting fire from at least 4 or 5 people at once. With camo, you could just get down and freeze, and you almost disappeared. I noticed that even camouflaging guns helped a good bit. I spotted a number of people by the shape of their shiny black loader with the white translucent cap on top. And those shiny stainless barrels - forget it. I felt bad for the team with the armbands. I chose the team without armbands because I didn't like the idea of walking around with a neon orange tape wrapped around my arm. It turned out that I was right. Several times I was bunkered down watching teammates take fire from out of the bushes. You could hear the shots and see puffs of CO2 condensing the humid air, but you still couldn't see a target to shoot at. Then you would get a flash of that orange armband, and pop, pop, pop, they were out. Little wonder the guys with the bands got creamed. It would have been fairer if we had bands of a different color putting us at a similar disadvantage. To start out, I went up the right tape line and found myself in a beaut of a position. I was behind a bunker with good protection, and off to my right, right on the tape, was a bunker made of a 1 ft dia tree and a 2 ft piece of plywood. This bunker was held by one opponent. What he/she didn't know was that there was a gap about 1 1/2" wide between the tree and the plywood about half way up the bunker. I had just sighted in my red-dot sight on the range, and here was my golden opportunity to use it. I would wait until I saw movement behind the gap and put a couple of shots through the gap. I easily took out my first guy of the game. Not thirty seconds later someone else from the other team moved up to replace the first guy. He lasted about as long as the first one did. Sweet. My goggles started to fog up and I figured I better get moving to see if I could get some fresh air in my mask. Shortly thereafter I was shot by someone I couldn't see through the gray haze 2 inches in front of my face. I looked for that sweet bunker position the rest of the game but never found it again. The cool thing about this game was you had unlimited lives. When you got shot, you went out, re-chronoed, and came back in. This was my first real game where almost everyone had tons more experience than me, and at least half had much more expensive guns. I must have got shot half a dozen times in the steep learning curve of the first hour I played. Of course this was largely due to the fact that I like to be in the thick of the action. I think it's a hoot to sit safely behind a bunker or tree and listen while three opponents pour paint at the front of your bunker. This gives your teammates plenty of targets to shoot at. When the patter slows down, just stick your head back out for a second, and it starts up again. You can almost hear the money wasted on paint balls piling up in front of your cover. I would eventually get shot, but not before baiting at least a couple of the other side to get hit. I would go out to rechrono, look down and find myself covered with a fine mist of paint from all the balls that had splattered on my bunker. I had a lot of fun the rest of the day and ended up leaving at about 5:00, tired, and very covered with mud. When I undressed, my wife agreed that I looked like I had been making out with an octopus. The paintball welts didn't hurt nearly as much as my sore muscles. It was three days before I was completely pain free. I knew this would help keep me in shape. I can't wait to play again.
10/13/99: One thing I noticed during the big game was that my gun was awfully back heavy with a 20 oz bottle on the bottom line. Given that I can get refills for 50 cents at C.O. Paintball it might have been wiser to get a smaller bottle, but at the time I wanted to be sure I didn't run out of gas unexpectedly. On the Piranha Owners Group (POG) web site I found a picture of a drop forward I thought might improve my gun's balance, that also looked pretty good. After work I went to CO Paintball and checked out what I would need to add the drop forward. A kit for a shorter bottom line would be $15 and the drop forward would be $30. I thought this was a bit much for a simple bracket. I went back to work and designed my own drop forward bracket. I plan to make it myself.
10/15/99: Picked up the bottom line kit. I also picked up my Xtreme Vision Pro mask that was on backorder. When I bought my gun, they gave me an Xtreme Vision 280 because they were out of the Pro masks. I now have the mask with the visor and flexible face armor. Speaking of the face armor, it doesn't come down far enough to protect my neck. I'm going to have to add something for more protection. I also want to add a mask fan to help keep down the fogging.
10/17/99: Bought some camouflage fabric with which to make coverings for my gun. I also bought camo tape and the stuff to make a shoulder strap for my gun. I made myself a shoulder strap based on the "shock cord through nylon tube webbing" method used to make windsurfing uphauls and kayak paddle leashes. The shoulder strap attaches to the gun at the back of the raised sight rail and on the barrel just behind the porting holes. It is held flat against the gun by the shock cord when not in use, and easily stretches to full length when I want to put the gun over my shoulder. It is made of dark green webbing and nylon line, so it will blend well with the camo gun coverings I want to make. Materials: 3 ft dark green 1" tubular webbing; light green 1/8" line 15" long; light green 1/8" line 17" long; 1/4" shock cord 3 1/2 ft long; 1 piece of camo fabric tape about 3" long.
10/18/99: It was killing me to try to wait until Saturday (my last machine tool certification class) before making my drop forward. I poked around a scrap bin at work and found a piece of 1/4" x 7/16" x 6 5/8" steel strip. I drilled clearance holes for a #10 screw 1/4" and 1" from one end, and drilled and tapped #10-32 1/4" and 1" from the other end. I clamped the end with the threaded holes in a vise 1 1/4" from the end and bent it one way. I flipped it around and clamped it at 1 1/8" and bent it the other way. I used #10-32 x 5/8" button head cap screws to attach to the grip and #10-32 x 1/2" socket head cap screws to attach the bottom line ASA. The drop forward just clears the bottom line kit elbow at the base of the fore-grip. The bottle just clears the BHCS at the base of the grip. When I attached my just filled 20 oz CO2 bottle, the gun with empty hopper weighted about 6 lbs. The balance point is behind the trigger and in front of the heel of the grip. It is simply amazing what a difference this makes over the bottom line setup. Before, I had to use both hands on the gun grips and usually had to brace the bottle on my shoulder as well. It was that back heavy. Now I think I can probably shoot one handed with no trouble. I can't wait to try it.
10/19/99: I pulled out the sewing machine and went to work on the camouflage cloth I picked up the other day. The first thing I made was a slip over cover for my 20 oz CO2 tank. It took a couple tries to get the elastic length just right. Now, the cover slips snugly over the tank and the elastic "mouth" stops just short of the brass fill valve. I next made a simple tube to cover the ball feed on the STS. It covers the complete feed up to the top of the hopper elbow. It is snug over the elbow to keep from blocking the field of view through my red-dot sight. I then worked on a cover for the VL200 ball hopper. One thing I didn't like about the neoprene covers I have seen is that they leave the white translucent cap uncovered. At the Drop Zone big game these caps were how I spotted more than a couple hidden players. I used some scrap muslin to work up a pattern for a hopper cover. The cover has a hole in the bottom for the tube to stick through and elastic to draw the sides tight on top. This leaves a 2" x 4" opening on the top which is covered by a flap of cloth tucked into the opening. This works the same as the flap on the mouth of the compression bag for my backpacking sleeping bag. It isn't hard to pull the cover back to load the hopper, but players who quick load tube after tube of balls into their hoppers in the field probably wouldn't like it. Personally, I don't play that way. For me, I could play for an hour or two on a single hopper of 200 balls.
10/20/99: Picked up my second case of 2000 paintballs.
10/21/99: Using the pattern I made, I whipped out another camo hopper cover for my spare hopper. It took about an hour. I think I'm going to try to find a cork to put in the hopper tube. Then I can fill both hoppers with balls at the beginning of the day, shoot the first hopper empty, pull the cork on the second hopper, switch hoppers, and keep playing. That solves the problem of having to mess with the camo cover to refill the hopper. I also came up with a gun wrap that covers pretty much all my gun but the 45 grip and sight. It is a short "tube" of camo cloth that slips over the low pressure chamber and has two tails (strips of cloth). The first tail, 1 1/2" wide, wraps down the fore grip. The second 1 1/2" wide tail wraps around the gun body, through the openings in the sight rail, to the back of the gun. It changes to 1" wide about halfway back the gun. If you wrap it right, you can cover almost all the black metal and still leave the quick strip pin exposed for servicing.
10/23/99: I had my last machine shop training class today. I fabricated the drop forward I designed last week. I went over to Drop Zone after grabbing a bite for lunch, and got there about 1:30. The field was split in half for open play and the Nationwide Paintball League (cool). I was able to get into a walk-on game for $5 since the day was almost over. I played for about an hour before quitting in disgust because I was breaking balls all over the place. I got rather good at field stripping and squeeging my gun, but by the time I left I was pretty mad. When I tore my gun down in the evening I found the ball detent had broken and I was misfeeding and chopping paint. At the time it went, the temperature was 45 degrees F. That might have had something to do with it. I got two good side shots on opposing players who didn't know I was there. It is pretty fun playing around the creek, with the hill on one side. Very interesting terrain variations. There was one time where there was a player across the creek on the lower side behind a tree. I was on top behind a bunker. We could just barely make it to each other with our shots. (I'm still amazed at how far this gun shoots.) He had a good command of the whole hillside above the creek, but the creek bed at the bottom of the hill would be a great place to shoot at him. I got someone to keep his head down and went down the hill diagonally left to the creek without getting hit. I distracted him enough to his right that someone else already hiding in the creek to his right was able to get him. I installed my new drop forward in the evening. The steel mockup I replaced weighed a good bit more. I played with the steel version today because I didn't get a chance to put the new one on. The improved balance was remarkable. No more tired wrist from trying to hold the gun level with one hand. Now it just sits in my hand nicely balanced.
10/24/99: Played open play at Drop Zone from 11am to 4pm. They started using two colors of armband tape, pink and yellow. This made identifying your teammates and opponents much easier. It also put both sides at an equal disadvantage as far as stealth was concerned. Just before the second game, I was test firing and started multi-feeding and breaking paint again. I stripped my gun and found the second detent broken. I only got two with my gun, so I was pretty mad that I had paid $10 for one game. I thought I was done for the day. As a last resort I cut a spare tank O-ring and clamped it under the detent plate with about 3/16" sticking into the barrel. This worked as a detent for the rest of the day. I checked the temperature later and found it was 41 F when the second detent failed. The first game I played after repairing my gun was a blast. I hooked up with some experienced players who worked well together. We gave each other cover and moved right up the right tape line. I was working closely with one guy the whole way up, and he grabbed the flag. We started running back toward our flag station with me escorting him. We didn't get far before he decided he either couldn't or didn't want to run all the way back. He passed the flag to me and I booked the whole way back and hung the flag. It was very cool. Also very tiring. I panted for the next five minutes before getting my wind back. The gun can feel remarkably heavy when you are running as fast as possible through the woods and are carrying it with only one hand. After that, the rest of the games passed by much too quickly. I made a number of stupid beginner mistakes (like leaving my head stuck out around my bunker and getting hit in the goggles), but am coming along. My biggest problem (?) is that I just can't stand just sitting behind a bunker and trading shots with someone else who is just sitting behind a bunker. Eventually someone gets unlucky and goes to shoot just as a ball is coming in and gets hit, but what is the fun in that? I tend to want to make things happen, so I'll usually get a partner to set up on someone hiding behind a bunker and then make a dash for a closer bunker with a better angle. Hopefully my partner can get the guy while I am providing a distraction. Sometimes this works, and sometimes not. Once I thought I was working toward two guys behind trees. After getting hit in the hand (lucky shot), while walking to the safe zone I saw that there actually were five of them against the two of us. Oh well. Man, does it hurt getting hit in the hand! I see why people wear those paintball gloves with the hard backs. My thumb stung for 15 minutes after. There was also one time late in the day when I was sliding into a bunker and my sight took a hit directly in the front lens. I wiped the shell fragments off, and it seems to be completely unharmed. Good things: Both pink and yellow armbands. This one guy I watched from the safe zone working all alone, almost half the field, almost to the opposition flag station. My shoulder strap (got a lot of comments and questions about how I made it). Hanging the flag. Working with a group. My new drop forward. The Piranha quick strip pin. Bad things: Crappy hot pink paint. Broken ball detents. Way too much time between games, especially early in the day (one 20 min game in 50 mins). Cold weather causing gun and paint problems. Things to do: Get more detents / make better detent using tank ring. Sew pockets on sweats with velcro for barrel plug. Also, arm pocket for gun guts during field squeeging. Make camo coif to cover neck and hide shape of head.
10/25/99: Picked up three replacement ball detents at C.O. Paintball. They cost me $1 each! I thought this was a bit much for a dinky little piece of rubber. I started on a goggle bag made of a double layer of polar fleece. Fleece is very soft and won't scratch the lens. The double layer should be great protection. I worked up a miniature pattern for the bag on paper before making it. That way I can share it with people.
10/26/99: Finished the goggle bag with a drawstring and cord lock. I also made a little flat bag with a velcro closure for the visor. That way I can keep the visor in the goggle bag without it scratching the mask lens.
10/28/99: Received replacement detents from PMI in the mail. The new ones are clear. Installed one of the C.O.P. replacements in the gun. I'll use these up before I go to the new clear ones. Through experimentation, I came up with a couple of pockets for my paintball sweats. I made a pocket on my left thigh that holds my quick strip pin and the hammer/bolt of my gun when I strip it for squeeging in the field. With these pockets to hold the parts, I can strip, squeegie, and reassemble my gun, while on my knees behind a bunker, holding the gun in my right hand the whole time. I also made another pocket right next to the first one that holds my barrel plug while I'm playing. There is a pocket with a long flap. I put the barrel plug in the pocket and the "wing" on the plug velcros onto my leg. Then the flap folds up to cover the plug and keep it from snagging on brush. Now, when I get hit, instead of digging in my sweat pants pocket for the plug, I just rip the flap down, rip off the plug and jam it in my gun. It takes about 5 seconds.
10/30/99: Got a 50 cent air fill at C.O.P. in preparation for playing tomorrow in Newark. Picked up a card advertising the C.O. Paintball "end of season big game blowout". They are charging $10 admission and you have to use their paintballs @ $20/500 balls. I think I'm going to pass on that one.
10/31/99: Got up and realized that it is going to be pretty warm today at Ground Zero. I don't think I want to wear the camo jacket I've been wearing. I sewed another cargo style pocket on the left rear of my sweats to hold my squeegie. That way I really don't need the jacket. On the way out of town I stopped by Meijer and picked up a long sleeved woodland camo T-shirt for $9.50. They have all their camo stuff on clearance. I found Ground Zero without any trouble and paid my $5 to play. Their field runs along a dry creek. The near side is level for about 40 yards, then there is a 60 yard hillside. There are bunkers scattered throughout. The woods are not as dense as at Drop Zone, and there aren't quite as many bunkers. Also, all the trees had dropped their leaves, so there was quite a bit of visibility. This was especially true if you were on the hillside. It was odd being up there and seeing opponents running around below that you couldn't hit. At Drop Zone, it seemed like if you could see someone, you could hit them. Having that hillside really threw some strange dynamics into the games. We played from noon to 5pm with the first 3 1/2 or 4 hours being elimination games. It seemed like 80% of the time, whoever held onto the hill won the games. Usually, there would end up being two separate fire fights: one up along the upper slope of the hill, and another across the creek along the tape. Whoever won on the hillside pushed past the lower fire fight and could come down on the other team's flank from above. Once I realized the importance of the hillside, I headed that way almost every game. Once, I ended up on the line heading east with decent concealment but very little cover. I just kept very still until an opposing player headed west about halfway down the hill. When he stopped behind a bunker, I had a decent shot, if a little long. I took a couple shots before he finally spotted me. Instead of hitting the deck, he started yelling and coming up the hill. I knew that could only mean that he had lots of help. I headed forward towards the closest fallen log, then realized that was where he was yelling to. There were at least two, maybe three of his friends already there. I tried to retreat, but it was too late. I got hammered by two fairly close range shots, one on the belly and one in the cup. Judging by the nice bruise next to my navel, I would have been very, very unhappy had I not been wearing the cup. Let this be a little lesson to you all. The one bad thing was that the upper border was badly marked on the east side. Once, I ended up starting up the hill on the east and moving along what I thought was the boundary toward the west. Once I engaged the other team, they let me know I was out of bounds pretty quickly. I called myself out without ever figuring out where I had gone over the line. Up on the hillside, there are some mega-bunkers made of old dead trees. You can get 5 people behind one of these 3 foot dia. fallen trees, and it's practically impossible for the opposition to get you out. After the first couple games, the elimination games weren't quite as fun because people would just hole up in the mega-bunkers and sit out the game. The last few games ended with half the people playing still alive after going through tons and tons of paint balls. I heard one guy say he used 600 rounds in one game. At about 3:30-4:00, we switched over to center flag capture the flag playing on half the field. This changed things a bit as far as tactics went. I enjoyed this a lot more, as I like to have a defined goal. My previous entries probably leave this as no surprise. One of the games came down to just one guy on the red team against 4 guys on the yellow team. The yellow team had the flag with 5 minutes left in the game, and still couldn't win. Only one of the yellow guys was willing to leave protection of a bunker way back by the yellow flag station. He carried the flag all the way up to the single red player and got stuck yelling for help for his teammates. As the clock ran down, no one would come out to help him. He finally ran for the red station with a minute to go and got shot in the back just short of a hang. I don't think the other 3 guys ever did come out until the game was over. Unbelievable! In one game, I had a whole bunch of support up on the hillside when I ran out of balls. There were a few opposing players scattered about on the hillside, so I moved up to a good close position behind a tree and just kept firing away like I had ammo to burn. I held off two players until one of them charged up the hill from my left. I let loose with what sounded like a barrage of fire. He turned away from the bunker he was heading for and headed off to his right, and got taken out by my backup. I got into a fierce "fire fight" with the remaining guy. He eventually got me out by shooting through a tiny hole in the bunker he was in. Just after that, one of my teammates took him out. I walked down the hill and told him I had been out of balls for the past 5 minutes. Sweet. One cool thing about this field was that they had a loudspeaker set up to announce time to game start. They kept things moving right along, too. It was very cool to do a lot of playing and not so much sitting. Sometimes, they were even pushing to start games when not everyone was ready. The guys with the simple blow-back guns would be standing around the entrance to the field, ready to play, while the guys with the expensive, complicated guns were trying to get them working after the previous game. Definitely a cool place. One of the things that surprised me was that it was not clear when and where masks and plugs were required. Some signage would definitely be helpful. I was surprised to see people on the field walking to the flag stations to start the game with their goggles pushed back off their faces. And right next to them are guys test firing their guns into the woods at trees. I finally just started wearing my goggles everywhere but behind the netting by the cars. I also liked the little "safe zone" between the tape and the netting that is on a little hill face. After getting out, you could join everybody else watching the game progress with a great view of the proceedings. At the very end of the day, the remainders played a couple of 3 on 3 games of speedball. My team lost both games. The first game I was the first one out and didn't fire a shot. The teams started out facing away from each other. On the count of three, we all ran for bunkers we had picked out. I dove behind mine, leaned out to shoot, and got a paintball right in the shoulder. Amazing. The second game I was the last one out on our side. When I finally got bunkered, I only got shot once. I thanked the guy who took me out for his restraint.
11/6/99: Took my tank down to C.O.P. to get a refill. That 50 cent fillup is just too great a deal to pass up. I doubt that I'm using half a tank each time I play. But, if if costs $2 or $4 to fill up at a field, why take a chance? I tried to get a second 20 oz tank, but the ones that had on sale for $24 are all out of stock. Oh, well. So I bought a remote line and bottle pouch instead. I had been thinking about doing this for a while and finally decided to spring. Tomorrow will be my first time playing with it, and I'm not sure how the coiled hose will do in the woods. If I don't like it, I can just put my bottle back on the drop forward.
11/7/99: Had gorgeous weather today for playing at Drop Zone. I played the first two games with my new remote before deciding it was cramping my style. The gun just didn't feel right in my hand. I think the balance was a bit too far forward. I also found myself not running because of the bottle bumping up and down on my back. When I put the bottle back on the drop forward, I realized that I had been more "aware of my gun" when I had it on the remote. This is kind of hard to explain. When I put the bottle back on, the gun is so balanced I forget about it. I can just aim and shoot without thinking. With the remote on, it was a little front heavy, and I had to think about it more. There is a Peanuts cartoon (from years ago when Peanuts was actually a funny comic strip) where Linus complains to Lucy about being "aware of my tongue". She thinks this is the stupidest thing she has ever heard of and tells him so. Then she gets this wierd, surprised look on her face, comes back and tells him she should, "knock your block off!" With the remote on the gun, I was "aware of my gun". Other than that I generally had a good time. I did not, however, play that awfully well. There have been times when I've played and ended up on teams where there is a group of people who know each other, are experianced, and play well together. They usually drive the team to win pretty much all the time. This day I experianced the other side of that coin. I was on the side with the players who were generally inexperianced, and the experianced players didn't know each other. Although there were attempts to coordinate people and plan, it just never seemed to work out. I think we won one of about ten games all day. Personally, I was usually out of the games in the first five minutes. It was just one of those days you have in any sport where nothing goes right despite all your best intentions. I think my biggest gripe, and what soured my attitude for the day, was getting drilled by multiple shots after calling myself out. It was so incredibly frustrating and infuriating to stand up from a bunker after legitimately getting out, be standing there with your barrel plug in and screaming, "Out! Out! Out!". And getting pegged all over your body with shots from three different directions. From the comments I was hearing after some of the games, I don't think I was alone in my experiance. I don't know if the problem was an especially aggressive group of players, or if some people were hard of hearing, or what, but I got real sick of it real fast. I'm getting mad about it all over again just sitting here typing this. (I put off this entry until Tuesday night because I was just too disgusted by the whole thing at the time.) Just one last comment and I'll let it go. It is a good thing I was already hooked on the sport, because if I was a first time player and had the same experiance, I would never play paintball again. On the brighter side of things, toward the end of the day, I hooked up with a couple pretty cool guys, and we started sticking together. That made things a bit more fun. Even trying to execute plans that go horribly awry can be humorous when done with a teammate. We played two center flag games in a row, switching sides of the field between each game. While heading out to the flag station for the second game, I remembered something. In each center flag game I had played from the side we had switched from, there was a certain critical bunker that was always occupied first thing. This bunker covered the flag from being pulled by the other team. I decided to try to attack this bunker from the side. I got another guy to work with me. There was a dropoff to a creek on our left. We would push forward quickly along the ridge to a notch that led down. Going through the notch we would go along the hillside just below the ridge until we got to the critical bunker. Then we could pop back over the ridge and attack the bunker from the side. The other team almost always sent most of their force to our far right to attack along the tapeline, so we should meet relatively little resistance. Except this time they did not. Unfortunately, this time their team came up the ridgeline using a wealth of bunkers along the top for cover. We were caught on the hillside completely in the open and had to run for a bunker on the ridge for cover. From the starting horn, it took about a minute for us to run into the trap, and another 30 seconds or so to both get shot by the same colored paint. We never did figure out where it came from. It was just that kind of day.
11/9/99: It seems that some people on the Piranha Owners Group board are interested in my drop forward design. Here is a picture of a 20oz CO2 tank on the drop forward on my STS.

side view

dxf file

dwg file

11/11/99: Went to C.O.P. at lunch and bought a new case of 2000 hot pink PMI Premium paintballs for $50. Forgot to take along my tank for a refill.
11/12/99: Went to C.O.P. at lunch and got a tank fill. Headed to Columbiana County, OH for the weekend. About halfway there I remembered that I had forgotten my new case of paint, and had no ammo to play with.
11/13/99: Got up early to go to War in the Woods in Columbiana, OH ($10 fee, BYOP). Realized that I also left my 3-ring binder of paintball info at home on the table. I ended up getting a library card at the Columbiana Public Library in order to use the computer to look up the address of the field. Finally found the field and got there at about 10:40. Luckily, there was someone there even though they don't run games until noon. At the field, they have a small office trailer set up as an on site equipment shop. They had a decent selection of guns, parts, paint, masks, etc. Their cheapest paint was Big Ball at $17 for a bag of 500. Since I had just paid $12.50 / 500 for my PMI Premium case I left behind, this made me a little ill. W.I.T.W. didn't have PMI Premium, but gave me directions to Paintball Sphere, in Boardman, who did. I cruised up there, decided there was no way I was paying $68 for a case, grabbed a sub for lunch, and headed back to the field. Talking to people later in the day I found that this is how much paint costs everywhere in northeast Ohio. What an incredible bummer! Thank goodness for decent prices on paintballs at Central Ohio Paintball. If I had to pay that much more, I wouldn't be playing at all. At the time I figured it was better to get reamed on one bag of 500 balls rather than on a whole case. So I went ahead and got the Big Balls. I quickly discovered that this paint is a little big for my barrel, the symptoms being curved shots and a few broken balls. Turnout was light, but play got under way at about 12:20 with two teams, 5 on 4. We started out playing a couple games of attack and defend. This field was unlike any I have seen before. It was made up of what I call "Ohio brambles". This is a 4 1/2 foot tall mixture of weeds and briars. While not impossible to get through, it is not very easy either. They had a maze of paths mown into the brush that the attacking team used to sneak up on the fort. The fort was in a clearing against the tape line. The back of the fort was open, and it could be attacked from the front or either side. By crouching or crawling, the attackers could sneak through the maze of paths almost right up on the fort. The interesting thing about the weeds and brush was that you could see through it, to a degree, but you couldn't shoot through it. The briars and weeds messed up your shots or broke the balls outright. Right away in the first game, a long distance lucky shot (right in the cup) got me out early. On my team's turn to attack, I was to go up the center by myself and attract the defenders fire. I was able to attract the fire of defenders, who could see me coming, but couldn't hit me through the brush. Being in the clearing, the defenders had to break cover in order to fire on me. I was able to get one guy out by setting up my aim through the weeds, and quickly leaning and firing around the edge of the thicket. He was firing a steady stream of balls at me the whole time, but the brambles were breaking them up. This was quite different than the "bunkers in woods" type of fields I have played on so far. Another tactic that worked well was running through the paths to one firing position, attracting fire, and running to somewhere else. I ended up getting out two defenders (my teammates got one) and pulling the flag to win the game. We then went back to a second field and played a couple of bridge battles. These were also made interesting and fun by a new twist in terrain. There was a smallish field of "bunkers in woods", but running down the center was a medium sized creek about 2 feet deep. There was an 8 foot wide by 16 foot long bridge in the middle across the creek. A flag was hung over the center of the bridge. To win, you had to pull the flag and get it back off the bridge to your team's side. The bunkers were set up along the sides of the creek so just about everyone was in range of everyone else. Also, no matter which bunker you were behind, there was almost always at least one enemy bunker from which you were not covered. The exceptions were probably the very center bunkers that could fire directly through the bridge. This made for quick and exciting games. The first of these games I pulled the flag for the win. Another time I took off from a bunker, got up to full speed, stepped in a 6 inch ditch and did a full length face plant. I broke a ball in my loader, and my ribs are still sore. Overall, other than paint problems, I had a great time. The people who ran the field were very friendly, and also very safety minded. They always made sure that all guns were plugged at all times off the field. I also think it is more fun to play in smaller groups like we had that day. When there are only 5 or so players on the other team, you can sort of track all their positions in your head. You can still get surprised, but it is nothing like playing with 25 on a side. The play is more fast paced and freewheeling and you get in more games in the same time. We played for about three hours before I ran out of balls, but in that time I think we had 6 or 8 games. That's almost as many as I play in 7 hours in Columbus. More play time for your money. I like it.
11/20/99: Stopped by C.O.P. and bought a rubber fingered grip for my Piranha. I installed and tested two grips, the Benchmark for $9 and the Hogue for $15. I tried the Benchmark first because it was cheaper, and I liked the diamond hatched texturing. It was molded flat and wraps around the handle. It didn't fit quite perfectly and needed stretching just a little. I then tried the Hogue. The Hogue is molded so it already is "bent" to fit the handle. The fit was almost perfect and the screws matched the holes very well. As far as feel, I liked the Hogue better. The Benchmark grip fit up snugly under the trigger guard. The Hogue tapers out immediately above the middle finger "bump". I have smallish hands for a guy, so I found the reduced diameter more comfortable. I found that this factor important enough to pay the extra $6 (though it almost killed me).
11/21/99: Played at Drop Zone on another beautiful day. It got up to 68F at 3 pm. I know that all this warm weather just goes to show how badly we have screwed up the environment, but, man, I love this weather! I had more than one person ask how I liked my sight today, and tonight I found the same question on the Piranha Owners Group message board. I'll include my response here. What I have found is I have two different modes of firing. The first mode is when things are fast and furious, in a firefight with one or more people who know where I am and are shooting back. In this case it is important to pop out, get out 3 or 4 shots and duck back quickly. In this case, the sight doesn't help much. You don't have time to properly aim, you need every bit of your situational awareness. Follow your balls and aim by instinct. The second mode is when I can see a part (or all) of an opponent exposed, and they either don't know exactly where I am, or are distracted by other teammates firing. Especially when they don't know I'm there, I want that first shot to count. In this case, the sight helps a lot. It is true that you adjust the dot to be on target at a certain range. If the target is off that distance, your shot will be either high or low. You quickly learn to compensate. The key is that your horizontal aim is still right on. Given a few seconds to set up, I can usually hit a head sized target on either the first or second shot. For instance, today I was playing, and an opponent was standing behind a big tree. A teammate to my left was firing at him, so he was exposed along the right of the tree about two inches. By putting my dot just off the edge of the tree I was able to just catch his elbow while he was flattened against the tree. If the dot was on his head, so what? I knew that if the shot was lower, I had all the rest of his body to hit. The key is to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of the tool. When it can help you, use it. When it won't, don't let it distract you. End of editorial. Back to today's game... The last time I played at Drop Zone, it just seemed like I was just "off". Today was just the opposite. I played really well, shot out a bunch of people, and had a blast. For some reason, a couple of times I found myself leading / directing a group of 5 to 6 players on major pushes. What a rush! It works great if you do it right. Taking the lead and directing players on how to support you works the best. The best technique seemed for me to be the first to move forward in the center of the line. Then you could point out opponents and direct your people to move up on your sides to help you out. Later in the day, watching from the sidelines, I saw someone else doing the complete opposite. He was working with a group of about 5 guys. They had pushed up against a well protected line and were getting hammered in their bunkers. He was 30 feet behind them under good cover screaming at them to keep pushing. They tried and died. He got out shortly thereafter and came off the field all mad and cursing about the other stupid players who let him down. I just had to shake my head. I ended up having to stop playing about an hour early because I ran out of CO2. I hadn't really played all that long last weekend, and I was curious if I could play two days with no fill. Turned out the answer was, "No". Since there was only going to be two more games at the most, I decided not to go for the $2 refill, though that's really not too bad a price. Besides, I thought I'd make my wife happy by getting home a little early. On the equipment side, I saw a very intriguing gun today. It was a Tippman carbine with a custom bracket putting an expansion chamber running out under the barrel. It made a great grip for holding the gun more rifle-like. Also, all the lines were hard plumbed with metal tubing and swage-lock fittings. Very durable looking. I'm going to let the horizontal expansion chamber under the barrel idea rattle around in my head for awhile and see what pops out. In the mean time, I love the new grip! I was amazed at how different the gun feels to hold. Adding the drop forward was my biggest improvement in gun handling, but this comes in a very close second. It is now so comfortable to hold, I just want to carry it around with me. I may end up taking the shoulder strap off my gun because I would rather carry it around in my hand.
11/26/99: Went to Columbiana County for the weekend. Stopped by War in the Woods and picked up a Diamond Labs expansion chamber for $25. The last couple of times I have attached a full CO2 bottle, the macro line hose has leaked a bit around one fitting. There is a bit of a bend in the hose with the gas thru grip, and the thick plastic line isn't all that flexible. The line seals itself in the fitting after a few seconds with a bit of wiggling, but I wasn't very happy about it. The larger diameter of the expansion chamber and the rotating base allows the line to be shorter and almost perfectly straight going from the bottom line ASA elbow to the expansion chamber elbow. Another reason for this is that the line comes from the side of the base instead of out the bottom. To make for a better two handed grip, I moved the line from the left side of the ASA to the right side. Now, when I hold the gun two handed, don't even know the line is there. Another reason for the chamber was to see if I get an improvement in performance as I play in colder weather. I don't expect that much of a difference, as I never had any problems previously.
11/27/99: Had planned to play at W.I.T.Ws, but spent the day with my wife instead. The first weekend since 10/3/99 that I didn't play.
12/12/99: After missing two weekends, I got to play again. I got to Ground Zero, in Newark, around 11:45. When I connected my CO2 bottle to my gun, the gun started leaking at the valve. I ended up completely disassembling it and replacing the cup seal, one LP chamber O-ring, and one valve O-ring before it would stop leaking. Even then, with the guts out I could still hear a faint hissing from the valve. I missed two games and was not happy with the situation at all. Once I got the gun back together, I got playing and had a great day. I signed in, left my five bucks on the table, and got to the field just in time to catch the third game. Most of the games throughout the day were 4 on 5, or 5 on 6, no refs, call yourself out. I really enjoy playing with these smaller groups of people. Everyone just seems to have a better time, and tempers never seem to get out of hand. After the first game I played, one of the field guys gave me my $5 back and said today was a free day since not that many people showed up. Way cool!! I was playing great and on the second game was on a team of 4 against 5 or 5 against 6 (I don't remember which). In one of my better games ever, I got out 3 of the opposing players. This was only topped by a game later in the day when I was on a team of 4 against 5 and took out 4 of the opposing players. One of these was a daring (if I do say so myself) long-distance bunkering move. The game started out with me moving up the left tape line, a little up the hillside, running fast. I got to a stick bunker facing a big plywood-and-wire-spool bunker straight up the tape about 25 yards ahead. Two of their guys made it to that bunker and were firing on me. I was decently well-protected even though their other three players were strung out in a line roughly even with that big bunker. I was able to keep the two guys in the big bunker laying low while both sides traded shots for awhile. I was putting shots right along the left edge of the board and the right edge of the spools hoping I could catch one of them looking out. My nearest teammate on my right was also putting a little pressure on the right side of the spools. I saw one of the guys behind that bunker exit, and figured my teammate must have got him as I wasn't shooting there just then. I found out after the game that I had gotten him out by matching the color of paint I was using to the smear of paint in his hair. I still have no idea which of my shots got him. The other guy was still behind the bunker but wasn't being as aggressive. I saw that my teammates were keeping the other three guys busy so I decided to take a chance. I waited until the guy's head had disappeared for a few seconds, fired a couple shots at the plywood to make some noise, and took off running hard. I ran by the left side of the board a few steps to get a little distance, shot the guy behind the bunker with one shot down low, and dashed back to the opposite side of the bunker. The tripod of spools on the right side shielded me from the rest of his teammates, who didn't know I was there. Of course, I now had great angles on the rest of them. I took out the next guy over in their line pretty quickly, while I still had the advantage of surprise, and was still panting from my run. My teammates were now moving up in the middle and on the right. The guy in their center moved back and I lost my angle on him, so I started lofting shots over to the far side of the field where one opponent was against the tape. He didn't have decent cover from my teammate in front of him to move back to, so he couldn't really retreat, though he tried. He had to move back up to the bunker that protected him in the front, from my much closer teammate. I kept lofting shots at him and got a good one to fall at about the same time my other two teammates got their lone guy in the center. I described the whole game because it is the best I've played so far, and I want to remember it. The rest of the day was a lot of fun. A few players came and went, and some sat out here and there. The last game was a 4 on 5 elimination game using the entire field, with the four of us heading up the hill, right at dusk. It was pretty hairy for awhile. We split into two pairs and went far left and right. They split up into a widely spread line near the top of the hill. Since we were coming down their line, there were a bunch of 2 on 1 fire fights that left them with one hidden player left against all our four. We were working toward the upper right corner with me near the top of the hill and the other three a good bit lower. I started thinking about where I would hide if I was the one left. I headed for a medium sized log trying to be quiet. I saw the plaid shirt of the guy laying behind the log when I was about 15 feet above it. He was looking over the top at my three teammates waiting for his shot. I pointed my gun at his butt and fired a single shot, POP! He didn't move, and I did a double take when I didn't see a splat appear. I shot three more times and nothing came out! He rolled over, saw me and got me three times as I stood there in the open, dumbfounded. He then picked off the closest of my teammates. Of course, the other two got him out fairly soon after that. We were laughing about the expression on my face as we all walked off the field. I had been low on ammo, and a ball must have broken while bouncing around in my nearly empty loader while I was searching out that last guy. What a great game!
12/17/99: Finally sprang for a regulator for my gun. I put the expansion chamber on the input of the regulator facing forward under the barrel. I used a female ASA to male NPT adaptor to attach the chamber to the regulator. I can now hold the gun like before at the regulator, or I can switch to a more rifle-like grip at the expansion chamber. The gun looks really cool, too. I think I'll call the setup the Ferrante special. Attached the bottle and got a leak at the regulator. Took it apart and found that the piston O-ring was bad.
12/18/99: Got a new piston O-ring. Installed it and put on the bottle. Found a leak in the regulator burst disk.
12/19/99: Got a new burst disk from C.O.P. Turns out that there is a washer between the disk screw and the disk that was missing from my reg. Used the washer with the old disk and stopped the leak. I'll save the new disk as a spare. While I was at it, I did a modification to the trigger to eliminate overtravel. With my Dremel tool, I cut a short length off a broken 5/32" drill bit. I dropped it into the center of the trigger spring so it limits how far the trigger can pull. I ground off the length so the gun fires just at the end of the trigger pull. I tried adding 1/16" bump-on stuck to the top side of the trigger, inside the grip. It eliminated undertravel, but the trigger wouldn't quite reset the sear. Also, I couldn't use the safety. I took off the undertravel mod. I checked with the air on and the guts removed, and there is still a tiny leak at the valve. I won't bother with it until my Turbo valve gets here from PMI.
12/21/99: Used thinner bump-on to finish the trigger job. Works great now! Can't wait to try it out for real.
12/23/99: While in eastern Ohio for Christmas, went up to Paintball Sphere, in Boardman. Talked a bit with the guys there about the new Piranha PROs coming out. Also, picked up a used 300 psi pressure gage one of the guys removed from his Shocker. Payed $6. Don't know if I'll ever use it, but what the heck...
12/24/99: On Christmas eve I opened up my new paintball gun case. Janelle (my wife) and Steve Burkey (owner of Cabbage Cases, and my good windsurfing buddy) colaborated on it as a Christmas surprise. I'm very excited about it. My dad and I spent a couple hours playing with different arrangements of my stuff in the case. We hot glued blocks of foam into the case to hold my stuff. I just couldn't wait for Steve to do the custom foam routing. Besides, now I can try out different options before commiting to a final configuration.
12/27/99: Made the big after-Christmas trip to C.O.P. to spend my gift loot. Janelle gave me a handmade $40 gift certificate, and my bro and sis-in-law gave me $20 to get a double pouch and loaders. I got the loaders, another 20oz CO2 bottle, and a Piranha players pack! Now, I have a spare gun to cannibalize. It will also make it easier to get other people to play with me. I immediately disassembled gun #2 and switched the stock bolt into gun #1. The stock bolt is supposed to be better for low pressure operation, and the venturi bolt will make gun #2, with it's short stock barrel, a bit quieter. My turbo valve arrived in the mail over Christmas, and I tried to install it. It seems like it needs its own clamp screw, as the one in the gun doesn't quite work right with it. I'll go back to C.O.P. tomorrow and check the one in their display case. In the meantime, I switched the bolts, and put the gas thru fore-grip from my STS, and my first prototype drop forward on gun #2. Gun #2 is going to be a rival to my STS before I started upgrading it. Although it won't have the beavertail, thumb screw velocity adjuster or ported barrel, it will have the venturi bolt, foregrip and a drop forward. That will make it quite nice to play with for anyone I rope into playing with me. Who knows? Maybe I'll even try playing two-fisted sometime... what a hoot!
12/28/99: Checked the valve screw in the turbo valve at C.O.P. It does have a different set screw. I didn't want to wait a week for one to come from PMI, so I headed for the hardware store. I picked up a couple of steel set screws for 30 cents each. I chucked one in my drill press and used a file to turn down the tip to the correct diameter. It seems to work great.
12/29/99: Installed a bottom line adaptor and a macro-line kit on gun #2. It is now upgraded as far as it is going to get for a while. I'm developing an interesting relationship with C.O.P. You really have to watch out when you are there that you don't get taken for a ride. I always try to ask the same question to a couple of the different guys working the counter. I'll often get two different answers. For example, when I bought the bottom line adaptor tonight.. I wanted a certain looking adaptor, so when I was there I asked if it was in stock. One guy told me a shipment was supposed to be "tomorrow". So went back tonight, but they were still not in. I didn't want to wait, so I got a similar looking one for the same price: $12. When the guy (different one) handed it to me, I asked him for the two screws to attach it to the gun. He went in the back and got the screws and rang me up at $15. I said that I thought the price was $12. He said it was $15 with the two screws. I said there was no way I was paying $1.50 each for two screws. I got home and installed the adaptor with some screws I had laying around. When I went to file my receipt I noticed the line item description is "Bottomline adaptor w/screws $12". Now I know that I had it coming for price matching any big ticket item I buy from them, but in the future I will be double checking every purchase I make, and triple checking my change before walking out the door.
12/30/99: Picked up a 1200psi gauge from C.O.P. and bought a couple of brass plumbing parts from Roush Hardware. I took the slide-check valve from my remote and combined it with these other parts. Now, I have a valve and a pressure gauge between my tank and my expansion chamber. Now I just need to add a low pressure gauge after the regulator, and I'll be all set.
1/1/00: Reworked the inside of my gun case with new foam pieces and hot glue. The addition of the slide check means I don't have to remove my bottle from my gun. I can power down the gun with the valve and stow the gun without taking it apart. It looks really cool in the case that way. It also saves on bottle O-rings. It seems I ruin one every third time I screw the bottle onto the gun.
1/2/00: A record high of 60F or so predicted for today. I got on the net looking for an open field anywhere close, but couldn't find anything. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity before the weather turns frigid once more. So I bit the bullet and drove just about an hour and a half to play at Xtreme Paintball, east of Dayton. For a walk-on player it was $8, BYOP. Today was my first time playing with my new low pressure setup. My first results were very exciting! The past few times I've played before going LP, I've had trouble getting above about 260fps, even with the red spring cranked all the way in. Today I used the turbo valve, stock bolt, and turned the regulator pressure way high with the red spring backed nearly all the way out. I started off shooting 360fps, a vast improvement. I then started backing off the regulator pressure to drop the speed down. Since the reg is new to me, I wasn't sure how far I could back the pressure off before the safety release kicked in. I backed it way off, but ended up putting the blue spring in the gun to shoot below 300 fps. I was using up all my limited supply of paint playing with my gun at the chrono. When I get a fresh case of paint, and have a bit more time, I'll experiment further. I'm most happy with two things: The first is that I'm able to shoot at near 300fps once more. The second is that the gun is surprisingly quiet, even with the stock bolt. I had heard reports that going LP reduced gun noise, and the difference was quite noticible. At the field there were a ton of players with STSs and EXTs they got for Christmas. In the chrono line I got a lot of comments from them about how quiet my gun was compared to theirs. Sooner or later I'll dig out my decibel meter and measure the differance in noise levels. After one game, I was talking with I guy I shared a bunker with most of the game. He was laughing about how my gun was so quiet the other side didn't know I was shooting at them. He said he would pop out and shoot: blam, blam, blam. The other team would shoot back at him and expose themselves. I would them take them out without them realizing they were getting shot at: pfut, pfut, pfut. While I think he may have been overstating things a bit, I'm now convinced that LP is a "good thing". As far as the playing went, it was pretty fun. Xtreme has a whole bunch of fields, and we played about 6 games with only one repeat. It was a challenge because you never knew what was the best thing to do. Most places I play, you use the same field over and over, just switching sides. Some regular players have names for all the bunkers, and they know exactly how to play the field in either direction. Here, it was like walking into the complete unknown. Most of the Xtreme fields didn't have many bunkers, and this made things challenging as well. In addition to there not being many bunkers, it was very muddy. The first time I ran for a bunker and dropped to my knees, I went Squish, in the mud. Yuk. It added a whole new dimension to the game. It was interesting seeing people avoiding bunkers that had mud behind them and going for trees that provided less cover. So, the whole day was one new thing right after another. Pretty neat concept for a field. Unfortunately, they were way understaffed. We were playing games with 15-20 people on a side, and the most we ever had was two refs. Usually there was just one. He just couldn't handle the croud, and he wasn't really trying. In one game there were two of us in one bunker holding off five opponents. I called for a check for some paint on my hopper. While I was wildly looking about for the ref I got hit from both the front and the side. I still couldn't see the ref, so I just left and watched from the sideline. Then I realized that the ref was buddies with the five guys attacking us. He was back behind them telling them what to do. I was a bit miffed. I've come to realize that paintball is a game where you have to expect that you will always be playing against the odds. You just have to accept it and let it make you a better player. For myself, this means stiffling my tendancy to be to aggressive. I always just want to make something happen. What usually happens is that I overexpose myself and get shot out. With just a bit more caution, I can usually do pretty good. For instance, in the game of "capture the fort" we played: I hung back at the beginning of the game to scout things out. I planned where I wanted to be and moved up into a forward bunker with one other guy. I was able to sit on the left and shoot through a hole in the bunker to the right. He sat to the right and shot left. I had a good view through the front door of the fort and through one loophole. I could shoot at the guys inside, and with my quieter gun, it took them a while to figure out where the shots were coming from and take cover. I got three guys out that way. Then they wised up and stayed under cover. Of course I got impatent and moved to try to get a different angle up the side. I moved up too far and got taken out by a guy on my right I didn't even know was there. It's taking a while, but I am learning... At the end of the day, I still repeat a phrase I first heard from Alan Hall, an SCA friend from Idaho, "Too much FUN!" One more first time experiance today. Today was the first time I've been shot at the chrono station. I had just timed my gun and was standing at the back of the pack waiting to head out to play. Someone standing behind me just leaving the chrono didn't have their safety on and shot me in the back of the leg from about five feet away. Not fun at all. The guy was very apologetic. His friends started ragging on him and told him to give me a few bucks for shooting me. Since I was running low on paint at this point in the day, I said, " How about some paint instead?" After that game, he gave me a hundred balls, which let me play one more game. So, it ended up being worth it. I still have a big welt on my leg though...
1/4/00: The new plumbing on my gun doesn't let me carry it by the regulator with the barrel pointed up. That's how I like to carry it because the liquid CO2 stays in the tank, and it's more comfortable. The gauge gets right in the way of my hand when I'm carrying the gun, so I changed things around a bit. I moved the gauge to the regulator. I moved the slide-check valve right up to the expansion chamber and put a straight macroline fitting on it. I have a piece of macroline running from the bottomline ASA to the slidecheck. I can now carry the gun the way I like to.
1/8/00: Got a CO2 fill and case of balls at C.O.P. First time using blue and yellow balls with yellow fill. They were out of the hot pink balls I like.
1/9/00: I went and played at Ground Zero, in Newark. I took along gun #2 and PMI/Scott mask. My brother-in-law, Craig, came along. Actually, he drove his Jeep Wrangler. It was a humid, misty day, and I didn't trust my station wagon to get back out of the valley in the mud. It was a pretty cool day, the max temp didn't get over 43F. Consequently, Craig's mask would fog up within a couple of minutes of him putting it on. The field guys tried anti-fog sprays, and keeping it in front of a heater between games, all to no avail. Most all the games he could hardly see after the first 5 minutes. The last game we played, we borrowed a mask from the guy who runs the field. I let Craig use my souped up gun #1, and I took gun #2. Once he could see, he had a great time and went through his hopper of balls not too far into the game. From then on, he faked it, acted as a spotter and drew fire so the rest of us could get good shots.
1/10/00: Cleaned up gun #1 and #2. Took apart gun #1 and checked out the cup valve seat. I sanded it smooth, but there was a scratch across the sealing surface I couldn't get out. I could just see it with my naked eye. With a 10X loupe, I could see the scratch as plain as day. I ended up putting a used seat back in the gun after smoothing it out. This seat worked fine and stopped my leak.
1/14/00: Finally received my spare Vigilante parts from Air America. They charged me for shipping after promising not to. Now I'll have to call them up and get a refund. What a pain. The good news is I finally have a manual for the regulator.