50 Cal - the way forwards.....?????

[Stee-vo]

My experience of .50 is that you have to run it at a higher fps for it to be viable. We run ours at about 320fps and that seems to give it reasonable range (still not as good as .68 though). cant say i have experienced the accuracy issue and if anything I would have said it was very accurate up to about 40 metres. The paint we use is the GI Milsim tourney grade as the field grade was awful. The problem with a smaller ball is that tollerances in terms of ball quality have a bigger effect and if you understand the physics a smaller mass of object will bleed speed (fps) of more quickly than a heavier object hence the lack of range with .50. Haviung said all that we think .50 is a good product but you have to accept that it has advantages and disadvantages over .68. In terms of rental play most rental customers would notice little difference, in terms of experienced scenario players, well you would be at a significant disadvantage in terms of range and ball breaks against .68.

 

[gambo47]

I was the one who bought the .50 cal spyder and did have probs with not being able to clean the barrel with chops and barrel breaks, the first five shots were accurate but that was the end of it... I still like the idea of .50 cal though and think new young players could easily adopt it. Rentals would use it and not know the difference (I suppose it would have an accumulative effect of saving site compressor wear and tear if it was adopted fully for site rental use too.) If I could afford it id like to try a tournie .50 cal too ( but can't ) in case the spyder is a bit rough on the winter .50 cal we tried. NOTE: The same day we tried the .50 cal lots of players were using the .68 paint and had barrel breaks galore too. So it could just have been the cold weather...

 

[Random Invert]

Yeah I'd like to snap up an electro 50 cal but money has other ideas. Gambo what velocity were you shooting?

I was hoping to up the velocity so it was a better match to the 0.68 but if the spyder rough on paint using a low velocity then it may not work.

 

[Spike]

Whilst not wishing to teach people to suck eggs in this weather I would make sure that the paint you are using is a true winter formula paintball and that it has been stored correctly. If you've been keeping an eye on my facebook then you will know that we've been testing paint under extreme conditions and it was freeking cold here.

It is well known that a .50 cal ball will normally fly straighter than equivalent .68 due to is lower surface area but yes at 300 fps like for like the 68 will fly further.

When I am back in the UK I will be looking to visit some of the rental fields - so if you want to be on that list then just holler.

 

[gambo47]

Cheers spike, sure you'd be welcome in the north of Scotland..!!

 

[Spike]

Then I will make a point of coming up there in the new year then - if the plane takes off tomorrow!! I hear our island is closed at the moment because of a little white stuff?

 

[Biscuit]

now i went to a site on saturday in the york area
they run both .50 cal and .68
the only problems they were having was with the .50 cal
the .68 paint which was frostbite was running dead on
the .50 cal was like shooting soup,but before anybody says that proves it,s crap ,hold on a mo
talking to the marshalls and site owner they believed that dark sports had not got proper winter formula out yet,as the paint and markers ran perfect through the summer.
this is the only reason they could think of as to why they were having problems

 

[Alex R]

As bisc has said, the 50's have been hung up untill there is some descent winter paint or untill it gets warmer, luckily I didn't marshal the 50.cal games, but I saw what the marshals had to go through to try and keep the games going and I know we had to give some free tickets away at the end of the day. On Sunday we also had some 50.cal booked, but because of the day before they were given 68's and kept seperate in their own group from the other 68's as the 50.cal players are usually younger than the regular 68 player. Although the guns were bigger and heavier they still enjoyed it and the Frostbite was spot on.

As for the cleaning of guns, we use some 50.cal pull throughs that had a little wod of cloth type stuff in the end, they're ok, but once the cloth is smothered it becomes useless and also goes missing. It'd be nice if some one developed a nice straight shot and fluffy!

 

[Spike]

Yes Alex you were spot on about Winter paint. There was no winter formula 50 cal made in time for the big freeze in the UK.

Interestingly though that there appears to be a trend with the 50 cal markers used.

I can only talk about performance of our 68 winter which performed well when left out overnight in the montreal winter. Over here I got reports of some sites seeing problems with their choice of 68 too , which isn't a surprise at minus 18 which some sites reported. That said most "real" winter formulas will be fine in that providing the paint isn't left in it all day, which sadly is generally the case as some operators don't have the luxury of temp controlled storgae on site.

So from my side I saw both calibres having problems in the winter but I think its understandable why the 50 cal was having particular probelms as it wasn't winter paint and it was extreme weather condtions.

 

[Jomtien]

50 cal was imported to the UK over 20 years ago, used in 6 shot revolver type paint guns, totally inaccurate so everybody moved onto splat masters and sheridens, to get 50 cal firing straight you would probably need to get it firing at 400fps or higher.