 Players behind solid cover or thinking they are out of range can be vulnerable to a long shot or a curveball from the Apex barrel. Photo by Skirmish.com  BT Paintball Designs Apex barrel.  The special front end holds the secret to the Apex barrel's performance.  In the upper part of the Apex is seen the rubber half tube (arrows) that affects the flight of a paintball.  Removing the rubber half tube shows the spring and slide mechanism. |
Your opponent takes cover behind something solid. A rock, tree, inflated bunker, sheet of plywood, stack of tires-whatever protects him-you can't put a ball on him. You need to slice off part of his safe area by moving sideways. Move far enough, and you'll circle the barricade until you can tag him out. The tough part about slicing the pie this way? You'll wind up in the open where his buddies can tag you. Wouldn't it be nice if you could invade his safe area without having to give up your own good cover?
Now, you can. The secret? Master the BT Paintball Designs Apex barrel.
The Apex barrel has a front-end attachment about 4 inches long. This attachment can rotate 360 degrees and has a small reference post.
A small button slides about 1 inch forward in a slot. As the button is moved forward, it pushes a soft rubber half tube down into the path of the paintball. The paintball touches the soft rubber surface and starts rolling. This adds spin to the paintball.
The spin makes the paintball curve in flight. The more the tube moves into the path of the ball, the greater the spin, and the greater the curve.
The reference post points in the direction of the curve.
Flight Path When the moving paintball first leaves the barrel, its flight path is dominated by the forward velocity. Even if the ball begins to follow a curved path, the side movement caused by the curving is small compared with the forward movement. As the paintball travels farther out from the muzzle, the curve movement becomes significant.
A rising curve will produce "more distance." When the marker is held in the normal vertical position, the Apex reference post is at the top. The paintball will have backspin as it leaves the barrel, which will cause the ball to rise (curve upward) during flight. The rise helps keep the paintball in the air, and a longer flight time means a longer flight distance. This tendency to rise eventually diminishes as gravity starts to pull the paintball visibly down toward the ground. Moving the "spin" button forward gives you greater range for the shot. Opponents who thought they were out of range can be in for a big surprise.
A downward curve will let you surprise other opponents. What happens if the unit is rotated 180 degrees, so the reference post points down? Now the spin causes the ball to curve downward. if you raise the barrel using this setting, the ball heads high in the sky before it angles down. You can shoot the ball so that it comes down behind barricades that otherwise provided cover for your opponents.
What happens if the unit is rotated 90 degrees to the right? First, the flight path shifts about 30 degrees to the left. Then the paintball curves from that path toward the right. If you aim visually down the barrel at a target 60 feet away and shoot, the ball is curving to the right but still has not returned to your visual aim line at 60 feet. To hit the target, you have to aim to the right of a barrier that is near the end of the paintball's normal flight. When the paintball arrives, it is flying from the shooter's left to the shooter's right. This curveball performs as if you had moved about 8 feet to your left and used a regular marker barrel. Rotating the unit 90 degrees to the left gives an opposite resulting curveball for mirror-image performance, with the ball coming in from the right side of the target.
The APG test team roughly estimated the equivalent angle to be 5 degrees for a target at 60 feet with a paintball velocity of 285 fps.
Using the Apex, you can rotate the control left or right. You will have, in practical terms, sliced 10 degrees off the opponents' safe area without leaving your cover.
Paintball size and surface curvature also can affect the amount of curvature the Apex produces.
BT Designs currently makes the Apex for these markers: BT-4, BT-16, A-5, Model 98, Spyder, Autococker, and Intimidator.
Observations Experiment with one marker and the Apex barrel, using the same kind of paintballs, until you become good at placing curveball and longball shots where you need them. With practice, you can become quite good at reaching out and touching opponents with "hello surprise" shots.
The Apex can produce straight-line trajectory shots, longball distance shots, shots that drop "out of the sky" over a barrier, and curveballs (curving left or curving right). You will become a five-way threat as you master the Apex and its abilities.
Apex Barrel BT Paintball Designs 3217 E. Washington Blvd.
Fort Wayne, IN 46803
Phone: 260.424.9100
Fax: 260.424.9103
www.btpaintball.com
