I am gonna tell you guys something and I am saying it not to be immodest but to make a point, and it is a point that really needs making because at the moment, I can see that ignorance is alive and well and thriving in Paintball.
When I did a seminar a few years back in Ancaster, one of the guys there was asking a question about accuracy, the problem is when I answered him, all I had were words.
I told him, there were no significant differences between markers or barrels etc ....but this did not seem enough for some of the people out there, basically, they just didn't believe me, or maybe, didn't wanna believe me.
And so, to make a point, I asked who had the cheapest marker there and and one of the guys had a 100 quid god knows what of a gun sitting at the front. He was right cool guy and offered up his marker for my attention.
I'm not gonna diss him or his marker but bejeezus, you woulda been hard pressed to find a cheaper marker.
One of the tricks I do at these seminars is to shoot a paintball out of the air, it sorta looks impressive and at the very least illustrates the accuracy of these markers.
To cut a long and painful story short (well it would be for Mark Toye, Nicky T, Junior Brown and a few of the other old Nexus guys there with me) I shot ten paintballs in a row out of the air.
Just to qulaify this post, I am in NO way mentioning this to look good, indulge in immodesty or any other self serving venture, I am mentioning it because it serves a very real and useful purpose in highlighitng, in a very practical way, the real nature of paintball ballistics.
Now I wasn't throwing these balls up two inches from my marker, the range varied from about 15 feet down to about 8 feet, not massive distances I know but enough to make the point.
If you can shoot frikkin paintballs out the air with a 100 quid marker, how much more accurate do you wanna be????
The point was made .......
I'm afraid sales talk and ignorance fuel debates such as this but the harsh realities of science can, and should be bought into play if you truly wanna understand ballistics.
I will add something however, there is without a doubt a psychological aspect to accuracy inasmuch if you feel confident with a particular marker / barrel that you have bought then you will shoot more accurately but this is where science takes a bit of a back seat and psychology plays a hand.
(Too much conjecture in psychology for me to brand it as a science I'm afraid..apologies to all those psychologists out there).
As long as the barrel is at least about 7 inches long then that is enough because the paint is the most important aspect of accuracy, not the marker.
The vast majority of barrels are made on centre-lathes that have incredible machining tolerances (one tenth of a thou) and therefore barrels can be pretty much factored out.
There are other variables that theoretically influence accuracy but these can also be ignored for the most part because in a practical sense, they are barely siginificant.
The two most important factors when looking at how accurate your paintball marker is...the paint and you !
And if you wanna start debating that.......you would lose...miserably.