At the UKPSF conference I spoke to Andy and bought a selection of .50 gear to test. We will be doing some controlled tests and comparisons in the next week or so but thought I would post up my initial observations and results.
Firstly service from GIMilsim.
I have to say this was excellent. I spoke to Andy on Thursday, confirmed the order and the goods were delivered to my door 24 hours later well packed. Because the paint is so light it was all sent by normal parcel post.
What we bought.
A FM50, 5 mags, 4,000 tourney grade balls, one gravity fed hopper, one pod pack (holds 5 pods) and five pods.
Initial observations on the equipment.
The FM50 is their entry level site gun and seems to be well made. Its mostly metal and strips down easily enough and looks the part for a milsim/site gun. Only time will tell what it is like in terms of reliability.
The hopper however is awfull. A very breakable lid and shell and would not last 5 minutes as a site hopper. It is purely gravity fed and holds 450 balls.
Mags.
I think Andy said these were work in progress but they seem a little flimsey but do seem to do what they are supposed to do. Again only time will tell as to how durable they are.
Pod pack.
This seems well made but will only fit the slimmer of our players. Any big lads out there will not get it round them.
Pods.
Well made, secure lids and fit the pod pack perfectly. For those of you used to .68 pods you will be amazed at how tiny they are but each pod holds 100 balls (or 37 .68 balls).
Paint.
Seems round and hard and seems to be made to a good standard. Again you will be surprised as to just how small a box of 2000 balls is (which is a good thing). Balls were well packed and in good condition.
So how did it all perform?
We played with it all day with a variety of players using it in a variety of woods ball games plus we did some specific firing tests for range, player comfort, acuracy and frangability.
The marker perfomed without a hitch all day and was certainly very frugal on air with us getting more than twice the ammount of shots that we would get with the site Tippmann 98's. The only issue we had with the marker was that it was hard to control the fps as it spiked a lot when you were firing it with FPS varying from 267 - 306 all with-in a few shots.
In terms of acuracy at 10-12 metres it could hit a 6" fence post pretty much every time. Acuracy seems pretty good up to about 20ish metres but really suffers at longer distances. In terms of comaprison to .68 it is falling short by about 15 metres and to fire at a distance of 50 metres you really have to angle the gun to arc it on to the target.
A unexpected factor with the .50 is that it is hard to see where the balls are going at distance as the smaller size makes it much harder to see where they are landing which makes it more difficult to tell if you are on target or not. A plus however is that when you are being fired at by .50 it is almost impossible to see it coming and with the marker being much quieter it add's to the stealth factor.
In terms of bounces the paint performed much better than I expected and did tend to break on target. Obviously the closer the target the more it broke with almost 100% breakage at up to 20 metres (on a human target). The bounces increased hugely with distance but one of the players was taken out with a mask shot at about 40 metres how ever almost all shots to the body at that distance bounced.
The paint, as I said above, was pretty good and had a really thick fill which when the ball broke stuck to the target. The splat size is half the size of a .68 hit however some hits where the ball broke left little evidence of a hit which would have been an impossible call for a referee. All in all the paint and frangibiltiy was good at ranges of up to 30 metres and the fill was very thick and stuck to the target. A unexpected bonus is if you are hit in the mask it makes a far more compact splat with less splatter which makes for much better visability and less mess.
What should also be mentioned is we played all day and fired off 2000 balls and did not have one barrel break which was very good indeed.
We also did some player comfort tests and it does hurt much less than .68. At 15 metres it is more like being hit by a airsoft BB in that it gives a short, sharp pain but that quickly fades and leaves no bruise or mark. Even at 30 meters players could feel they had been hit and it was slightly painfull but it was way better than being hit by .68 however at that range against a human target about 50% of the balls bounced (the player was wearing a tourney top and bounce vest).
So in summary what do I think? Well I am actually quite impressed. The paint is WAY better than old .50 and does break on target and leaves a thick fill and we had no barrel breaks out of 2000 balls fired. The marker (FM50) seems well made and players like the milsim look. As for whether it will make for a site marker, well that all comes down to time and reliability so time will tell. The hopper however is awful (but that is something easily fixed). The big difference is EFFECTIVE range and that is significantly shorter than .68 (by 15 metres at least) however it is perfectly usable at shorter ranges or in all .50 games (inexperienced players would never know the difference). The other big difference is splat size which is MUCH smaller than .68 however most hits did leave a big enough splat to be recognised as a hit. The team loved this marker and feel it would be an excellent training marker as you can carry loads of paint and you dont get hurt or bruised so much while training. With 5 pods in your pod pack and a hopper full you would be going onto the field with 950 paintballs.
Once we do some more measured comparrisons I will post them up.
Firstly service from GIMilsim.
I have to say this was excellent. I spoke to Andy on Thursday, confirmed the order and the goods were delivered to my door 24 hours later well packed. Because the paint is so light it was all sent by normal parcel post.
What we bought.
A FM50, 5 mags, 4,000 tourney grade balls, one gravity fed hopper, one pod pack (holds 5 pods) and five pods.
Initial observations on the equipment.
The FM50 is their entry level site gun and seems to be well made. Its mostly metal and strips down easily enough and looks the part for a milsim/site gun. Only time will tell what it is like in terms of reliability.
The hopper however is awfull. A very breakable lid and shell and would not last 5 minutes as a site hopper. It is purely gravity fed and holds 450 balls.
Mags.
I think Andy said these were work in progress but they seem a little flimsey but do seem to do what they are supposed to do. Again only time will tell as to how durable they are.
Pod pack.
This seems well made but will only fit the slimmer of our players. Any big lads out there will not get it round them.
Pods.
Well made, secure lids and fit the pod pack perfectly. For those of you used to .68 pods you will be amazed at how tiny they are but each pod holds 100 balls (or 37 .68 balls).
Paint.
Seems round and hard and seems to be made to a good standard. Again you will be surprised as to just how small a box of 2000 balls is (which is a good thing). Balls were well packed and in good condition.
So how did it all perform?
We played with it all day with a variety of players using it in a variety of woods ball games plus we did some specific firing tests for range, player comfort, acuracy and frangability.
The marker perfomed without a hitch all day and was certainly very frugal on air with us getting more than twice the ammount of shots that we would get with the site Tippmann 98's. The only issue we had with the marker was that it was hard to control the fps as it spiked a lot when you were firing it with FPS varying from 267 - 306 all with-in a few shots.
In terms of acuracy at 10-12 metres it could hit a 6" fence post pretty much every time. Acuracy seems pretty good up to about 20ish metres but really suffers at longer distances. In terms of comaprison to .68 it is falling short by about 15 metres and to fire at a distance of 50 metres you really have to angle the gun to arc it on to the target.
A unexpected factor with the .50 is that it is hard to see where the balls are going at distance as the smaller size makes it much harder to see where they are landing which makes it more difficult to tell if you are on target or not. A plus however is that when you are being fired at by .50 it is almost impossible to see it coming and with the marker being much quieter it add's to the stealth factor.
In terms of bounces the paint performed much better than I expected and did tend to break on target. Obviously the closer the target the more it broke with almost 100% breakage at up to 20 metres (on a human target). The bounces increased hugely with distance but one of the players was taken out with a mask shot at about 40 metres how ever almost all shots to the body at that distance bounced.
The paint, as I said above, was pretty good and had a really thick fill which when the ball broke stuck to the target. The splat size is half the size of a .68 hit however some hits where the ball broke left little evidence of a hit which would have been an impossible call for a referee. All in all the paint and frangibiltiy was good at ranges of up to 30 metres and the fill was very thick and stuck to the target. A unexpected bonus is if you are hit in the mask it makes a far more compact splat with less splatter which makes for much better visability and less mess.
What should also be mentioned is we played all day and fired off 2000 balls and did not have one barrel break which was very good indeed.
We also did some player comfort tests and it does hurt much less than .68. At 15 metres it is more like being hit by a airsoft BB in that it gives a short, sharp pain but that quickly fades and leaves no bruise or mark. Even at 30 meters players could feel they had been hit and it was slightly painfull but it was way better than being hit by .68 however at that range against a human target about 50% of the balls bounced (the player was wearing a tourney top and bounce vest).
So in summary what do I think? Well I am actually quite impressed. The paint is WAY better than old .50 and does break on target and leaves a thick fill and we had no barrel breaks out of 2000 balls fired. The marker (FM50) seems well made and players like the milsim look. As for whether it will make for a site marker, well that all comes down to time and reliability so time will tell. The hopper however is awful (but that is something easily fixed). The big difference is EFFECTIVE range and that is significantly shorter than .68 (by 15 metres at least) however it is perfectly usable at shorter ranges or in all .50 games (inexperienced players would never know the difference). The other big difference is splat size which is MUCH smaller than .68 however most hits did leave a big enough splat to be recognised as a hit. The team loved this marker and feel it would be an excellent training marker as you can carry loads of paint and you dont get hurt or bruised so much while training. With 5 pods in your pod pack and a hopper full you would be going onto the field with 950 paintballs.
Once we do some more measured comparrisons I will post them up.
