Came across this forum by accident, really weird seeing all these names I remember from the 80s and 90s. An awesome time to be involved in paintball, I played one game on a site near Effingham, can't remember the name of it but it was across the road from another site where the Turks were apparently based. And then another game at Pondwwod farm.After those two games I was hooked and went out and bought a load of splatmasters and all the gear off Steve Cox in Essex and set up a site in Wales.
The early days were brill, paintball was evolving week by week. Guys making their own gear, mostly crap but sometimes the seeds of ingenuity were there. We were all using tubes sticking out of the top of the feed sticks on our guns and at one game a guy turned up with a "hopper" he'd made from the tops of two lemonade bottles taped together. Never seen anything like it, he had about 80 paintballs on his gun, did have a major flaw though, the first hit ripped it apart.
In the magazines you'd see things like " How to make your own paintball helmet" Sad.
It was good being in the scene from the 80s. Got to see so many changes, 12grns to six pack (still have one somewhere) to CA. The guns going from pump to slam fire to semi auto, completely changing the way you played in tourneys. Brilliant times.
I got out of paintball in the mid 90s as the tourny scene was crap. You could accept the teams you were up against would cheat but it had got to the stage that the marshalls were cheating, Preferential treatment for their "mates" or just to suck up to the faces in paintball. Politics had really taken the fun out of it. How well you done depended on whose camp you were in.
I don't know how clever the cheating is these days or if it's as bad as it was. In the time I was playing it was accepted to some extent. The Preds were awesome, in a ten man tournament you could light up twelve of them and they would still beat you. They really knew how to play the game. The Eagles used klingon to talk to each other, even had a code for assisted wipe. I still have a rifled barrel that Bart gave me for my golden eagle. when you squeezed some paint into the barrel it filled the rifling and after a couple of shots you'd get an extra 10 -20 fps
I played for the Hawks, we were a bogey team for the Nam and I had a good little caper I pulled on them a few times. They had a player called, I think little mickey or something like that. A man with a short fuse.
At the chrono station I'd get behind him and push a split ball into his battlepack then when I saw him on the field I'd call the marshall to check his battlepack. Had him out a few of times with that one, then for luck as he walked off we'd give him a couple of stingers and see him flip. That's one Robbo never sussed us on.
After all this nostalgia I think I'll have to take up my son's offer and go visit Delta Force and show him how we did it in the old days. Need to be careful though, may get the bug again,
The early days were brill, paintball was evolving week by week. Guys making their own gear, mostly crap but sometimes the seeds of ingenuity were there. We were all using tubes sticking out of the top of the feed sticks on our guns and at one game a guy turned up with a "hopper" he'd made from the tops of two lemonade bottles taped together. Never seen anything like it, he had about 80 paintballs on his gun, did have a major flaw though, the first hit ripped it apart.
In the magazines you'd see things like " How to make your own paintball helmet" Sad.
It was good being in the scene from the 80s. Got to see so many changes, 12grns to six pack (still have one somewhere) to CA. The guns going from pump to slam fire to semi auto, completely changing the way you played in tourneys. Brilliant times.
I got out of paintball in the mid 90s as the tourny scene was crap. You could accept the teams you were up against would cheat but it had got to the stage that the marshalls were cheating, Preferential treatment for their "mates" or just to suck up to the faces in paintball. Politics had really taken the fun out of it. How well you done depended on whose camp you were in.
I don't know how clever the cheating is these days or if it's as bad as it was. In the time I was playing it was accepted to some extent. The Preds were awesome, in a ten man tournament you could light up twelve of them and they would still beat you. They really knew how to play the game. The Eagles used klingon to talk to each other, even had a code for assisted wipe. I still have a rifled barrel that Bart gave me for my golden eagle. when you squeezed some paint into the barrel it filled the rifling and after a couple of shots you'd get an extra 10 -20 fps
I played for the Hawks, we were a bogey team for the Nam and I had a good little caper I pulled on them a few times. They had a player called, I think little mickey or something like that. A man with a short fuse.
At the chrono station I'd get behind him and push a split ball into his battlepack then when I saw him on the field I'd call the marshall to check his battlepack. Had him out a few of times with that one, then for luck as he walked off we'd give him a couple of stingers and see him flip. That's one Robbo never sussed us on.
After all this nostalgia I think I'll have to take up my son's offer and go visit Delta Force and show him how we did it in the old days. Need to be careful though, may get the bug again,
