A letter landed in my email box. A picture attached to it showed a player with his shirt off. A whole lot of round red marks dotted his chest. Now, this was a newer player. He was not happy.
He asked if he should expect getting shot up a lot. Used to be the answer was "no" until the electros and now ramping arrived. Can't say "no" any more.
Nobody's trying to say there are no bumps and bruises in paintball. It has them. The harder the ball hits the more bruised a player might get. The ball's weight and its speed (velocity) affect its impact energy. Get shot from 10 feet, compare that to getting hit from 50 feet. Up close and personal is likely to sting a lot, or bruise.
Dinosaur paintball (back in the old days) had hard hits. Not like now, back then a player only got one or two hard hits. It's all changed now. The logical result of a higher ROF is more hits landing on someone. Add velocity ramping to ROF ramping, controlled by secret codes in computer programming, to get harder hits, too.
Fellow players, the name of the game is paintball. Paint-ball. PainTball, with a T. Not painball.
I really want to know how you feel about this. Send your questions about anything in paintball to profpb@actionpursuitgames.com.
CODE TALK Q: I don't understand about codes. Help!
A: Codes are short ways to talk to teammates, using words the other team might not understand. Say your marker quit working. You don't want to yell, "Hey! I'm out of business! I can't shoot anybody!" Someone on the other team will be glad to take advantage of your situation.
The first step to making a team's codes is to make a list of what you need codes for. Marker down, out of paint, need to squeegee, one just ran to the snake, six inside the building, one behind the fallen tree, how many of them are out, how many of us are out, and so on. Say you need to tell your teammate he has one bad guy left in the farthest bunker on the right side of the field. You could just yell, "Back Right!" But say you want to tell your teammate to go shoot the bad guy in that bunker, in code. You could yell, "Glide 10 Red" (or whatever code you work out).
For you newer players, Back Right means all the way back (toward the opposition's starting point) and all the way to your team's right. Back Left means all the way back and all the way to your team's left. Center Back is all the way back in the middle of the field.
In speedball, some fields even have yard lines like football. Even without yard lines, you can count the rows of bunkers and start with midfield as the 50. Identify where a bunker is by what yard line it would be on (and don't be too specific). You might have bunkers along the 50, then three more rows of bunkers which would be the 40, 30, and 20. Or you might want to start at the far back and number the rows of bunkers 10, 20, and 30, unless the 30 is more like the 40, giving you instead 10, 20, 40 (and 50). Figure this out with your team. A player on his own team's 40 yard line in the bunker farthest to your right could be identified as "40 Right" or "Right 40".
Your team needs a code system. The words should be simple, easy to hear over the roar of a crowd, and practiced hard.
BURLAP Q: I purchased a HUGE roll of camo-d burlap and (am trying) to make a high quality ghillie suit, made especially for the type of environment I live in (wooded, Tennessee). The strips I cut are too chunky, but if they get any smaller then I don't know how to attach them to the suit, which is a rambo-syle poncho made also of burlap.
A: The key to an effective ghillie suit is to produce a three-dimensional effect. Large pieces of burlap are prone to laying flat by virtue of their weight. What you should do is twist and wad the strips up into tight balls. Let them sit for a few hours, then decompress them. Now here is one of the keys: when you sew the ends of the strips on, sew on the bottom of the strip, so the loose body of the strip is "up" relative to the poncho. Now, when you wear it, gravity will peel the strip back and away from the suit, giving a three dimensional effect. The twisting and wrinkling of the strip will give it even more texture, and with enough strips sewn on like this, the effect will be quite pronounced! Be sure to treat the entire ghillie suit with plenty of flame-retardant spray (available at the hardware store) and keep well aware of all sources of open fire, such as bonfires, cigarettes, and even smoke grenades. (Answer by Dave "Landshark" Norman)
Q: If I buy the Kingman Rocking Trigger, will it work with my Ricochet?
A: Yes. As long as the Ricochet fits the marker feed tube, and stays on securely (which it should), it will work. The Ricochet Apache 05 is the fastest Ricochet out there.
Q: How do I make my marker shoot 30 balls per second? I have a (non-electronic marker) and a gravity-feed loader without batteries.
A: It won't shoot that fast. In fact, it takes electronic assisted feeding to an electronic marker to even approach speeds of 30 bps. Think about it: 30 bps x 60 seconds in a minute is 1800 paintballs shot in one minute.
Q: Where do paintballs come from?
A: They are made in factories.
A little more background. The first "paintballs" actually were filled with real oil-based paint. It did
not wash out of your camouflage clothing. These were used to mark cattle or trees for agriculture and forestry use. The first marker was designed by Crosman (the Crosman 707) and it shot .68 caliber marking "pellets" (also called "rounds"). Not many of these were made. Next was the Nel-Spot, made by the Daisy Manufacturing Company. The Nel-Spot U.S. patent is 3,788,298 (issued 1/29/1974, James C. Hale). This marker was sold by the Nelson Paint Company of Iron Mountain, Michigan. It shot the .68 caliber marking pellets.
Nelson had these oil-based marking pellets manufactured by the R.P. Scherer company at the R.P. plant in Michigan. Read the story of how the Nel-Spot became the first marker used for paintball at www.actionpursuitgames.com. The oil based paintballs were replaced by water based paintballs because Robert (Bob) Gurnsey of NSG, Inc., a founder of paintball, knew paintball needed a water based fill for his new company and the game to grow. He also needed an encapsulating company to make the water based balls. The patent for a washable marking fluid formula for soft gel capsules is U.S. patent 4,634,606 (issued 1/6/1987, George A. Skogg).
Today, water based paintballs are made by the billions, sold worldwide. Paintball has over 10,000,000 players in the U.S. alone.
ASK THE PROFESSOR anything about paintball by email:
profpb@actionpursuitgames.com. Questions may be edited, and personal replies are rare because the good professor gets so many questions, so read APG regularly to get your answers.
