Speedball

On Sunday, we got an introduction to Speedball. It was crazy - and it was a lot of fun. Unlike woodsball, speedball is played on a field with soft, air-filled bunkers. The field is relatively small and the games are short - in the pro leagues, they're limited to some 5-7 minutes; none of our games lasted more than a couple of minutes.


Hearing about speedball, I figured it would be sort of boring. It's not. While true that you have a big cushy bunker for protection, your lack of knowledge about how the game is progressing while you're hiding there limits the feeling of safety you have. You have to look around and keep scanning the field, so someone doesn't come up behind you.


The shortness of the games also means that if (or when) you get shot out, you're not waiting a long time to play again. Which is good. 'Cause I got shot many times off the break (before I ever made it to my bunker).


It was a lot of fun, but hard on muscles I don't usually use: I'm rather sore today. All that crouching and tension....


They'll play again in a couple of weeks - but I'll be out of town. Next time, perhaps.

New Markers

This is old news, really, but until this week (when the laptop came), I was still really slow to post pictures. Things are moving a little faster, now.

A couple of weeks ago, Tracy and I bid on a whole slew of paintball markers on eBay. We had it in mind that bidding on used markers would be a cost-effective way to get our own equipment - so we could stop renting.

Here's what we got: 3 Spyders, all of them a couple of generations old: a Flash, an Xtra, and a Shutter. Here's the Flash:

The pity was, the Flash and the Shutter both leaked when we got them. A couple of trips to the paintball store fixed that (I tore them down, but couldn't identify any certain problems - all they really needed was replaced O-rings). It didn't cost much, either, except in effort and time. Here's the Xtra:

But effort and time do mean something, and, at the end of the day, they're not super markers. We only spent $50 on each of them (cost plus repairs), but still.... I won't buy any more used paintball equipment. Now that I have what I have, it's worth more to save up and buy new, I figure. Of course, at the moment, I need to improve my game enough to warrant a new marker - and I've a feeling that's a long way off. Here's the Shutter:

So what do I have my eyes set on right now? This guy, with a Freak barrel and the Full Freak kit:

Paintball

On Saturday, all of our paintball planning came together, and we went out to Jason's hunting plot in Madison to play. And it was awesome. We rented 5 markers, I brought mine, James brought his and one he borrowed, we took 7,750 paintballs, ten 12oz. CO2 canisters, three 20oz CO2 canisters, and masks for seven people. Oh, and it was awesome. Did I say that? Here's just part of the gear:



Since it had rained heavily the day before, we hiked our gear the last part of the way in to Jason's cabin: the road is primitive and we didn't want to tear it up. Once we got everything in (only took one trip), we went over safety, loaded some lousy paint, and chrono'd the markers. As it turned out, we needn't have worried much. All but one of the markers were shooting well under 285 fps; I think the one that clocked over 300 maxed out around 310. I'm checking Matt's, here.



My marker didn't seem to want to shoot any faster than 250 when I checked it. But later in the day it read just north of 285. Doesn't really give me a lot of confidence the precision of the adjustments I made: the markers seem to be so sensitive to a whole host of variables that influence their muzzle velocity.



Checking out Brian's marker, while James and Matt watch. Tracy was behind the camera; never did think to take it from her and get a picture of her. Oh well.



I don't have any pictures of the games, of course: I wasn't willing to risk the camera getting hit by paintballs. James had a helmet cam he uses for bike riding; don't know yet how the video he took came out. Could be awesome. We'll see.

The games were awesome. We ran around in the woods for a good four hours, not counting breaking for lunch and chrono'ing the markers before we started. Tracy and I were both exhausted when we got home, but it was a good kind of tired. Similar to after a hard day of skiing. Definitely something we want to do again!

At the end of the day, we had a good bit of paint left over. Balls in unopened bags we saved; the rest we used for target practice. Mike is shooting James' marker here, playing with the electronic trigger.



James' marker was chopping balls - either that, or they were breaking in his barrel because his barrel was so dirty by the end of the day. I had him load up with balls and just blow through a bunch of them so I could get this photo: the launched ball disintegrating just after it exits the barrel. No Photoshop - that's the real thing.



We're hoping for more paintball in the not-too-distant future - and we're hoping for more people. Seems likely; we'll see.

Splat

While we're still not quite set to run a game of "outlaw" paintball (not at an official field) with folks from work, James and I are a lot closer. We still lack a chronograph to check the muzzle velocity of the markers, but we should get that taken care of by the end of this week. And on Saturday, we went over to Jason's deer-hunting patch of 32 acres in Madison and scoped things out. Our consensus was that the games will be awesome.

We brought along our markers to shoot at trees and get a feel for how well they were shooting. That was surprisingly fun, and we blew through a lot of paint (close to 500 rounds, each). It was chilly, so we were fairly bundled; there was still snow on the ground from earlier in the week.

Shooting at trees, James' marker was far more accurate than mine, which was rather depressing. He'd said that the paint he bought was "better," according to the guy who sold it to him, than some of the other stuff at the store - and only moderately more expensive. I borrowed a handful of balls and shot them with my marker - the difference in accuracy was staggering. Clearly it's worth it to buy "better" paint - I could actually hit my mark most of the time with his paint.

Tracy shot some, too - and enjoyed it enough that she's almost convinced she wants to come and play with us.


We might go play as early as this Saturday - hope to post details after it happens.