This lifetime game....Paintball (Gun Centric)

I can't recall how I fell into the sport but my earliest recollection is an overused Stingray paintball gun with a short barrel. My parents refused to buy this piece of plastic and o-rings from a neighbor kid because it might just be an expensive "phase" for their son. At the time, paintballs cost a lot of money for a kid that knocked down $40 bucks a day working at his grandfather's refrigeration business. But still, with some hard work, I eventually ended up with that Stingray. In time, a 9oz co2 tank and 200 round hopper came into my ownership along with some camouflage pants and a jacket from a local surplus store. I spent weekends and summers playing with this gun. The neighborhood kids did the same and our games were limited only by the imagination. Capture the flag, point to point, night games, public games, private games. At one point, my neighbor's dad secured a flat bed trailer load of pallets and we built our own field. Hours were spent in the humid Pennsylvania summer, building bunkers, barriers, and prepping for the weekend when everyone would show up to play. Even parents got involved and bought newer and nicer guns to play than my little Stingray. A spyder with a ported barrel and expansion chamber was high tech stuff at the time.

Fast forward a summer and my love for the game had grown. We played some through the winter of 98 or 99.  Unknown to myself, western PA was going through what would later be referred to as the "golden years" of paintball. New companies grew in the market place such as Smart Parts and Worr Game products. Anyone with a mill and some imagination, soon took their skillset to work to the table.There was even rumor of an entirely new "electronic" gun from Europe called the "Angel" which had yet to hit our shores. Although Smart Parts had introduced an electronic gun called the Shocker, it was out of my budget. However.........

I was working a lot that summer and somewhere along the lines, a friend was in the process of upgrading to a Worr Games Autococker from his Tippmann Carbine.

The picture to the left illustrates pretty much what it looked like, minus the double trigger. I bought it from him for $250 dollars and never looked back. The paintball scene had grown quite a bit by now and I found myself playing paintball at a local field called "Hamburger Hill." This place, long since out of business was a young kid's dream come true. It was owned by an army vet who had been into paintball since the early 80's. He had been running the field for almost 15 years before I found the place. Paint was cheap and the fields were amazing. Wooded fields designed by a guy who saw action in Vietnam. It had everything from outpost buildings to foxholes and tunnels. It was the quintessential dream come true for a kid like myself. Sometimes I regret that kids these days don't have something like Hamburger Hill in their life. A place where a kid can be a kid and have fun. And fun we did have. I spent that summer playing in public games and also with friends. I believe my parents even loved that place. It was on an old farm homestead and if they wanted a day to themselves, all they had to do was drop me off with some money for paint.

     The trusty metal Tippmann saw many games out there and my old camouflage pants were often patched and stitched many times over after a weekend spent crawling through mud and wet creek beds. Long sniper barrels, ghillie suits, and camouflage ruled in those days. I can recall trips to Wal Mart to buy camouflaged hunting tape to cover my loader and other visible pieces. God, I loved that place. I even worked there on occasion doing random jobs to cover paint. This is where I was exposed to my first tournament game when asked to referee one weekend.

    The Super Guns

    At the time, paintball was beginning to change for me. I was getting older and looking for the next thing in the game. This was found that day I watched my first tournament. 7 or 8 five men teams from the surrounding area showed up to play each other on three wooded fields and one "speedball" field which consisted of pallets turned on their side and spread far apart. The format was capture the flag elimination plain and simple.

    I was put in to ref the old back woods field. This field was tough because the angle of the field on one side was elevated. Teams rarely won by pushing the top because it was so hard to clear a long and empty area adjacent to the field barrier limit. As the first team went off the start, I watched a guy run to the top with a black Pro team products micromag. Although I had seen one many automags in the past, this one was different. It was small but accurate and it held it's own against a Shocker which to me represented a dream gun a person like myself could never afford. I don't remember who won but it was a sight to see this action mere feet away with guns I had only looked at in Action Pursuit, the predominant magazine at the time. Remember, the internet existed at this time but it still hadn't caught up with content from published subscriptions. That was still the source of the latest and greatest. I coveted my Action Pursuit magazines and leafed through them hundreds of times. To this day, I still have a tote of them that I look through from time to time.

     I referee'd more tournaments that summer and later saw the next super gun in my books. In fact, I would call it the super gun that beckoned my own arrival into the realm of super guns....The Dark Angel. A team showed up from Ohio that summer all carrying matching Dark Angel LED paintball guns. These Dark Angels were a gorgeous dark pewter. This was evil stepsister of mainstream paintball. No camouflage? Who cared, because honestly if you're shooting a gun like this the thought seemed to be "come after me, take your chances." And chances teams did take that day trying to beat the Ohio boys. They never lost a game, shot ropes of paint, and won quite easily. That day, I swore to myself I would own one of those someday. Someday.....

      Someday wasn't today but I needed to play a tournament, own a super gun, and play with people who I had grown to trust in their habits on the field. As a side note, super guns at the time were Automags, Autocockers, and if you had the cash (which I didn't) a Smart Parts Shocker. The picture to the left is a classic example of the original shoe box Shocker 4x4. If you paid extra, you could choose from a long list of features which included an expansion chamber, additional barrels, wooden grips, a nitrogen system and actuated loader system. Guns of this caliber were so desired that people had custom anodizing, laser engraving, and even their cars painted to match the splash colors coming out of Smart Parts. I recall a guy with a brand new Mercedes. I had never met someone who owned a Mercedes, let alone one that matched his gun.

      But back to this story about the guns that came and went in my young life. At some point, I played at Three Rivers Paintball. This was the mainstream, high end field. Paint rain a $90 a case plus admission and air. Fields were amazing and weekends were packed with people playing private and public games. It was nothing for games with 60 people playing at the same time. Life was good and when I could afford to play there, life was awesome. Three Rivers Paintball was a big part of my life even with the cost of paint. It seemed as if something new happened every weekend I played there. (More on that later)

     At some point (I can't remember exactly when) I ended up buying a Automag Classic. It was the most basic version since that was all I could afford at the time. It was used but had plenty of life. This was the most basic super gun at the time, but I didn't care. I had a super gun. The next spring soon came and I found myself playing some of the last games I can remember at Hamburger Hill. My classic Automag had a slow rate of fire and a crappy barrel but I didn't care. It sort of held it's own and kept me in play. This would be the gun I later took into my first tournaments. I upgraded when I could afford to. A new body, efficient internals, a double trigger frame, and in time, an air system. I still own the Automag to this day. Somehow in between then and now, it has just floated through my life. I will be honest. I never really liked the feel of an Automag. But I was in it for the long haul and continued to upgrade that little gun that saw countless cases of paint cycled through it.

     Sometime in life, this is when the collective efforts of many people created a team known as the "Pittsburgh Exterminators." This was the first team I joined. To a young 14 year old, this was the ultimate dream come true. Life got serious and paintball turned into something that included team training, drills, and ramping up to organized 5 and 7 man tournaments. I never played a 10 man tournament to my recollection but I won't dismiss that I didn't. Those early days were pretty amazing. Matching jerseys, tournaments, and playing regularly with people who somewhat knew what they were doing.

      To my recollection, the Exterminators was a big team. 20 people loosely bound by the love of the game. The summer was fun and my focus was tournament play but much like the seasons in Western PA, all things come to change. The following spring, the Exterminators broke up and splintered into three teams. It was in that time that my trusty old Automag fell to a backup gun and some good fortune resulted in the ownership of an Automag RT. This was a gun owned by the former coach of the team and it was capable of shooting volume. An oversized tank with a long barrel. In my hands, this gun was an amazing sight to see, however it was probably the worst gun to own. I never got it to function correctly and to this day only have bad memories. Memories of it breaking in mid game. Memories of carrying that god forsaken 114ci, 3000 psi tank through muck and mire. Sometime along these lines, my parents got behind the game. Through the years it had become an enabler to work hard, study, and do well in my endeavors. Good behavior was rewarded with new parts and good grades sometimes meant that my dad might help me split the cost of something I wanted. Somewhere in between I spent my days working my butt off to cover the outstanding cost otherwise.

      My dad was an engineer and with some careful analysis, he could figure out the problems which plagued my friends and I. As I sit here writing this in 2012, slowly coming back into the paintball scene with new people, I can only reminisce in my mind over these days which formed my young life. New guns are simple, efficient, and damn nice compared to what we lugged around back in the day. But back to the Automag RT. I think at some point my dad began to see my frustration and he stepped in to help. The RT utilized high pressure air (Nitrogen) to operate. It would not function otherwise. This air was routed through an airline into the frame rail, and into the compression chamber. Between these transitions, the gun constantly leaked. My dad proved this one fall evening. He drove to West Virginia in search of parts to repair my gun, only to have it fail when he got home. With some careful measurement and testing, he determined that the seals did not meet the pressure of the tank. In the end, I went back to the Automag and sold the RT. Airgun Designs, the manufacturer would later go on to fix this shortcoming and a lot of folks would go on to make many good memories with the RT. However, I wasn't one of them.

     Introduce the Dark Angel. It was the dawn of the Millenium and the electronic gun had arrived. These new guns shot twice as fast as anything on the market and offered a plethora of options to boot. The old Automags and Autocockers were no longer the super guns of the day. Although efforts were made to electrify cockers and mags, the mainstream consisted of Angels, new guns coming from Dye, Smart Parts, and startups like Alkamp and Bob Long. Everyone seemed to be trying to create a new electro gun, however the industry leader was WDP.

     WDP was based out of England and they were the leader in paintball. Their standard stock Angel LED cost more than any other gun on the market. And the results spoke. The leading teams of the day dominated on the field with the Angel. And even if they didn't they were still the winner at the end of the day. Everyone wanted an Angel regardless of what they were shooting. The frustration of the RT resulted in an amazing spring that year. I had landed my first job working retail at a TJ Maxx. At a rate of $6.25 an hour, I socked away my money all winter and spring for a new gun. I wanted an Angel, loathed for an Angel, and found myself frustrated that I wouldn't ever get to the point of owning one. Even with the money I had saved, I had a little less than a grand. Not enough for even a stock Angel. That spring or previous Christmas, my cousin's mother purchased a Dark Angel for him. I was devastated. All the work I exerted and someone else just asked for it and received it. At this point my dad stepped in, and in the process taught me an important lesson. That lesson was to never lose sight of your dream and belief in hard work paying off. Years later this would prove true on many levels compared to my cousin who never really valued that gun he received from his mother.

    That spring, my dad offered to match every dollar I put forth to buy a Dark Angel. And shortly thereafter, we ordered the gun. WDP had just released a newer and more advanced LCD based system. I can still remember the day it arrived. I ordered the pewter color and never looked back. To this day, it is one of my most cherished guns. I took the Angel into tournaments, public games, and wherever life took me. Sadly, it was short lived because the following season marked the indirect beginning of the end of this chapter of life with paintball. I played a few more tournaments with a team called Wildfire. To this day, Wildfire consisted of some of the best, most talented, and humble players on the field. Truly good folks.

      Life changed that summer. I started attending classes at Duquesne University and my time became limited with a busy high school and work schedule. I played when I could but each month, less and less. And then the following fall, no more. Prom, holiday obligations, work, a driver's license, and everything else to make life busy took over. The following year I graduated High School and my paintball gear stayed behind when I moved to the dorms as a freshman.

       In the end, paintball taught me a lot about myself, the value of hard work, and the appreciation in the reward in doing so. I made some lifelong friends, traveled to some amazing places, and now in present day life, still appreciate the game, and the guns.

      I still find myself carousing Ebay and Craigslist when time and money permit. The guns I couldn't afford as a kid are now cheap relics of the past. For a 100 to 200 dollars, you can buy a gently used Angel, Autococker, or Automag. And with enough work and luck, you might even be able to take it out and play. But life goes on. Paintball has changed and so have the guns. New, modern guns work amazingly well and reliability isn't a question. Simply plug and play. See you out on the field.