Paintball

Jonathan Keith "Jack" "Delmart Mike Vreeland" Idema Found Guilty

Jack — Wed, 15 Sep 2004 11:43:00 GMT

The link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6007807/

Poor Mr. Idema. He's going to be in an Afghan prison for 10 years, which will be a lot like hell, only worse. This guy's story is just fucking nuts, and it's made even more nuts by this crazy fucker who is tracking it. What's particularly funny is that Idema was big into paintball during its early years, and defrauded a bunch of people, pissed a bunch of people off at tournaments, and generally did what he apparently always does everywhere he goes.

Reality is From Mars, Hussain is From Venus

Jack — Tue, 14 Sep 2004 12:19:00 GMT

We're having a hell of a time getting Hussain's Angel Speed working right. There's two regulators in the gun, I've looked at both, and both look fine, but don't seem to work correctly. It's a mystery, and Hussain's not dealing well with it. As long as I've known Hussain, he's always had this strange attitude about service, the service industry, and generally how the customer should be treated. Today he said this to me: “there's a concept of service and respect that you don't seem to think exists.” To him, if something isn't being done right, you call the service provider up, you make a frowny face, and they get right on it. To him, this is a universal truth. I don't really know how that works, because in my entire life, I've never had a positive result from bitching at anybody.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe somewhere in this world you can call up, complain, and people get right on it for you. I've never seen it, but maybe Hussain has. I can promise you one thing, though, and that is that paintball is not the industry in which service is provided to match your desires. In paintball, the concept of service is treated with something between indifference and outright contempt. Hussain doesn't undertand this, so I am going to write up a little anecdotal story that will help him get a picture.

A fairly major player in the paintball world is a company called Warped Sportz. They sold one of the original “custom” Angels, the Dark Angel. They've got paintball personality Rocky Cagnoni on their staff, and he's a “pro” player, and all the kids think he just rules. They are one of the most respected, most legitimate shops in paintball. So, I decided to try out their services. My old Angel LED had a leak in the ram, and I didn't want to service it. So, I decided to send it to Warped Sportz. I also decided to order an Intellifeed hopper, and an “Angel Condom” protective cover for my Angel.

The gun came back, with an invoice, and immediately I noticed a number of problems. First off, there was no Angel Condom, and I had been charged for it. Secondly, the Intellifeed hopper I'd ordered was hugely overpriced. Lastly, the Proconnect I had on my Angel, a $50 piece, was not there. But, it got worse from there. I had a spare Proconnect, so I hooked up the gun, and was pleased to find that they had indeed fixed the leaky ram. Good. Then I hooked up the overpriced Intellifeed hopper, took a couple shots, and then the gun shut off. It made a smell like burning plastic and got very hot. I opened it up, and to my dismay I found that the wiring had been damaged somehow, and had burned up.

This, as you can imagine, was not good. I had to rewire the gun myself, which took quite some time and effort. I called Warped Sportz and asked them where my Angel Condom was, where my Proconnect was, and why the hopper was overpriced. They acted very apologetic and assured me they'd send my Proconnect back, as well as the Angel Condom. A week passed, and nothing happened. I called again. Same story. Another week, another call. Same story. This time, they sent the Proconnect, still no Angel Condom. At that point, I stopped talking to them.

This is a reputable business in paintball. They charged me for a product they literally refused to send me. They overcharged me for what appears to have been a defective product. They required multiple calls to even return my own property to me.

The Nature of Metal...

Jack — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 10:40:00 GMT

This is the nature of metal: You can be looking at a problem, sitting right in front of you, simple as can be, and you just can't solve it. That's how it is with metal. Cameron and I were rebuilding the two cylinder two stroke engine in his RD350, and we needed to get the block out of the frame. It was bolted into the frame at several places, and in typical metallic fashion, the bolts had extremely soft heads, and extremely strong threads. The end result is that trying to ratchet the bolts loose just rounds off the heads. This leaves you standing there, looking at a little bolt, and you can't get the damn thing to turn. Not even a degree. You're powerless to effect the reality of this one stupid little piece of metal.

The answer, almost universally, is “buy more tools.“ In the case of the RD350, because Cameron was really a limp wristed fag at heart, I took over the task. I used a Dremel tool with a cutting wheel to slot the bolt head for a phillips driver, then put a lever onto a phillips driver, and popped them all.

This is the same problem that confronted me in getting the busted guage off of my Microreg yesterday. There's a brass 5000 psi guage on the regulator, and it's only nominally squared off for a socket or wrench. A crescent wrench was just rounding it off, and pliers were just scraping on it, so I knew what I had to do: “buy more tools.” I headed to Ace, and took one of my new micro guages, so I could match it to a socket. The guaged tuned out to be 26mm (if I recall), so I bought one of those. Why it was metric, I have no idea, but it was. Of course, I didn't bring my Microreg in, so I had to guess at that one. I guessed it was a 1” guage, and bought a 1” socket. I also brought a ratchet, and a set of SAE wrenches, and a set of metric.

I returned home to find that the guage was not a 1” diameter. At this point, I was no longer feeling fond of the guage, so I decided to drill a hole through it, perpendicular to the guage face, so I could stick a screwdriver in there and torque it loose. That didn't work, all it did was cause the sides of the guage to break loose, leaving the back face of the guage. At that point, my rage was building, so I got out the pliers and went for raw, brute force. After much pain and yelling, I finally got it to budge. From there, it was no problem to remove the remains of the old guage, and ratchet on the new one. All that remains is to replace the fill nipple on the Microreg, and that system will be ready to go.

Speaking of fill nipples, I called Nitroduck, and asked them what I should do. They told me that the Drop Zone II cradle would work with the SS4500. I had a suspicion that was the case, but I wasn't sure. Regardless, I ordered a new set of guages for my SS4500, a bunch of the old 4-40 threaded screws that their stupid cradle uses, two of their new 4500psi fill nipples, and a Scuba fill yoke. When that arrives, I'll be getting closer to everything working.

Curse You Paintball...

Jack — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:05:00 GMT

Now I'm beginning to remember what paintball is like...

I should start with the good news, though. I got back all my tanks from hydrotesting, they all passed, it only cost me $80. I also got my Shocker batteries, and that little $75 Radarchrono. I hooked up the Shocker, fired some test shots over the chrono and it looked ok. So, maybe with some tuning, maybe already, I've got one working gun. Not bad.

The bad news...

First off, the hydrotest guys switched my regulators around on me. When they put the Max-Flo systems back on the bottles, they swapped bottles. Now I've got a 68ci bottle on my Shocker, and an 88ci bottle on my iR3. I don't like this, the Shocker eats more air, and needs the bigger bottle. Of course, its a major fucking hassle to get those changed, it demands I empty the bottles (I filled them to test my iR3 and Shocker before I noticed the mistake), and I don't have the tools to do it regardless. So, that's at least one trip to an airgas place that can do it, and at least a few more nice gouges and scratches in my regulators.

From there, I'm running into all manner of issues with the guage situation. I've got broken guages on my SS4500 and Microreg, and I bought replacements at $15 a pop. On the SS4500, the replacements don't seem to fit around the shitty assed cradle that Nitroduck ships with that reg, and as far as I know, there's no other cradle on the market that it can use. Speaking of that cradle, it uses these tiny, shitty little screws. I lost the ones it came with, and I lost the ones I bought to replace them. The originals were nice little allen keyed ones, the replacements were phillips head, and the new ones are plain slotted. Slow downward spiral there. I'll have to order some from Nitroduck when I call them to whine about the guage situation. The Microreg has a single semi-micro sized guage on it, it's broken, and I can't get it off. Nor, for that matter, can I really screw on any of the new guages I bought. What I need is a nice crescent wrench set, and Home Depot doesn't have one, believe it or not. Lastly, I need to get some decent fill nipples, cause Nitroduck put those stupid threaded fill nipples on shit for about a year before they came to their senses and used the same basic nipple as everyone else. So, that's more money I need to drop to get more tools, more parts, etc. etc.

The iR3 is off in California by now, getting the once over from Cobra. The LCD seems to be working ok, although its breech pin sticks like crazy, and that will need work... But of course, it's the gun I was running with the SS4500, and that's out of action until I can get guages for it. The LED is charging, and while it looks like it could be ok, the battery and charger are decidedly cool, which is not a good sign. That's an old battery, I'm sure no longer any good.

The long road to functionality...

Jack — Thu, 19 Aug 2004 13:02:00 GMT

Paintball guns are dirty little skanks, that's all there is to it. They just demand so much fussing and money before they're willing to work.

Angel LCD: Appears to be ready to go, although the LCD screen still freaks out periodically. It's always done that, the gun still works when it does, but it's a bit unsettling. Of course, the SS-4500 I have on here has a really inconvenient cradle, parts of which are probably off at the hydrotester getting lost right now. Hopefully I can locate all the parts. I may just put my Microreg from the LED on this gun. Right now, I'm rating the LCD as “most likely to fucking work.”

Shocker V-Sport: My Shocker was working like a champ up until its battery died. I fucked around looking for 9V conversions, rechargeables, other such stuff, and eventually just bit the bullet and ordered a pair of new batteries from Smart Parts. I cleaned and lubed the gun the other night, hopefully I didn't change any of the lubrication so much that the solenoid dwell timing needs to change. This gun was very reliable until its battery died, so it might return to prominence, but then again, my previous Shocker ran like a champ for about a year, then just went fucking crazy and never recovered. So who knows.

Angel iR3: This gun is going to Cobra Paintball for a checkup. It would have left this morning, but my internet connection is down, so I couldn't get a copy of the form at Cobra. I'll send it out this coming monday if I can get my cable going again. Anyway, it looks like the battery is shot, it doesn't want to take a charge. I also will have Cobra flash the board up to the most recent firmware version available.

Angel LED: I'm scared of this old guy. I think it aught to work fine, but something makes me fear that the battery is shot, the solenoid is all dried out, or some other similar problem. It hasn't been run in a long time, and it's a 5 year old gun regardless. One of the first electropneumatics. I'll take a look, but I bet it's not going to want to run.

Everything Else: I ordered the $75 chrono from 888Paintball.com. We'll see if it arrives, and if it's any good. Should be enough to test guns with.

It Begins...

Jack — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 00:08:00 GMT

So, I created a whole category for paintball. My thinking is that doing this will keep mind on mission and get me out there playing again. I've been away from the sport for a long time, pretty much as long as I've been in Colorado, and it's saddening. I've got all these guns, all this gear, and I don't make use. So, I'm putting things in motion and trying to get back into it.

I took my air systems to High Plains Scuba to get hydrotested. Hopefully they all pass, and hopefully nothing gets fucked up. Also hopefully, they don't molest me too much on the price. When I asked them how much it was to get a hydrotest, they said it was $20 per cylinder. That's pretty typical, and for the 4 cylinders I brought in, it's not too bad. But, as I was leaving, the guy (who seemed confused by the whole paintball hydrotesting side of the business) said to me “Ok, it'll be $20 for the hydrotest and $15 for the visual inspection.” I was leaving, and didn't really understand what he said until I was in the car, so I didn't do like I should have and said to him: “Dude, $15 for a visual inspection? You're supposed to visually inspect a tank every time you fill it, it's not $15 it's free.” But, whatever. They're getting $80, they're not getting $140. The hydrotesters will have epoxied the new inspection dates to the tanks, that's all I need. If they try to charge me $35 per tank, not only will I not pay it, I won't buy a SCUBA tank and yoke from them either.

I also went and got myself an Evlution II, which I don't really trust at all, but at this point, I don't trust any of the new loaders. Shit, when I last played, there was one brand of loader (Viewloader) and one type that anybody serious used, and that was the 12V Revolution. I really only have faith in the old 12V Revolutions, of which I have two, and I don't really even have that much faith in them, since they tend to eat batteries, and have problems with their IR eye... But, back then there was only the Revolution, so that was what you used. This Evlution, is just as stupid looking as its name sounds, which is unfortunate. It's also got a really overcomplex loading door, which Viewloader thinks is a feature, and I think is ridiculous and hard to use. And, most wonderful of all, the stupid feed neck didn't fit into the feed on my iR3, so I had to sand and sand and sand, until I finally took the whole loader apart, and filed down the sides of the neck so it'd compress a bit more. I also had to chop off a half inch of the neck so it wouldn't sit too high up off the gun. In the end, I got a good fit, and I noticed some decent features... For one, the feed neck is a seperate section from the rest of the hopper, so if I was to munge it severely, it'd be replaceable. Another nice feature is the adjustable rate of spin on the feed impeller, which is a new one for me. Finally, this loader is semi-forced feed, which is also new to me. It basically allows the balls to fall into the reach of the impeller, which then stuffs them into the feed. Last I played, there was a certain degree of commitment to the idea that the balls had to feed via gravity alone, and that gravity could serve to limit the ever increasing rate of fire on paintball guns to around 12.5 bps (the theoretical limit of gravity feed). That, of course, was run over by the marketing steamroller, and now most paintball guns sound like fucking Vulcan cannons. My friend Dennis tells me that 20 bps is pretty standard these days. I never even tried to get above 10 bps. Regardless, let's hope that the Revlution II is a reliable and ergonomic piece, and doesn't create any undue misery for me on the field. If it does, I've always got a pair of 12V Revolutions, and I know what to expect from them.

I'd love to get my basement finished ASAP, cause then I can set up a nice work bench, and run through all my guns. I'll also need to convert my Shocker to 9V batteries, cause they don't sell the proprietary ones in any local store. Drywall is supposed to go up Thursday, and my tanks won't be back until a week from this Tuesday, so maybe I will be ready to play two weeks from today, or thereabouts. I may have to spring for a chronograph to tune my guns up right... This is the one I want, it's the one that was at every field I liked playing at, but I don't know about $300... Maybe I'll go with one of these. Compact is nice, $75 is even better.