Link: http://www.bullrun.com/

Well, once again I was watching Bullrun and once again, paintball markers played a part on the show. What do they have a contract with Tippmann to get so much airtime for their 98 Customs? This time the contestants had to navigate a dirt course and shoot a couple of stationary targets with the markers along the way.

I think the bus takedown was better.

Link: http://www.b17queenofthesky.com/paintball/images/03_21_09BDII/

So the economy is hard on all of us and for me it's no different. Dwindling income coupled with increased responsibilities mean that everyone has to pick and choose their entertainment options with caution. As such I was not going to be able to participate in the next scenario game that was coming up in my area, Blood Diamond 2 at Giant Alpine with special guest, paintball legend Greg Hastings.

However, my team was making an appearance and since I really wanted to go anyway I decided to tag along as a ref/photographer/PUG monkey...more on the PUG monkey later if you don't know what that is...

The day started out with me getting out on the field at game on and taking pictures. I had a team radio with me but made sure not to give any critical game information to my team. Some of my folks forgot that I wasn't playing and would ask me questions about what was going on in certain field areas and I could only tell them that...well...I couldn't tell them. I know, what help was I?

Wearing the orange "don't shoot me I mean you no harm" vest I wandered the field getting shots of the action. Having this be the first experience I had as a "Combat" photographer it provided a very different view of the game. For instance, there is this large hill that is on the field and I had never ventured up it until this game. I had no idea just how tall it was and just how much it dominated the field. There was NOWHERE this place didn't look down on. The top was covered in large rocks so cover was abundant but left you feeling vulnerable and very much "out in the open".

I also noticed a lot of areas where there were places an entire unit could move through enemy lines without being spotted if done so correctly. I suddenly realized just where those players were coming from the last time I played this field.

The game seemed well balanced with both teams stabilizing the fight towards the middle of the field. With the hill, varying terrain, and abundant overgrowth it was hard for either team to really push the other too far.

That was up until right around lunch time...then the side we were playing for got pressed all the way back to our base with attackers hitting us in waves from three different sides. That sucked. One of the tasks I was taking on this weekend other than photography duties was PUG Monkey.

For those that don't know a PUG is a foot powered tank with a crew of one. The rules state that each PUG needs to have a ref with it to prevent overshooting and call any LAW/Grenade/Satchel hits on the PUG. This is what I lovingly refer to as a PUG Monkey. In addition we play PUG Engineer too and I was equipped with knife, duct tape, zip ties, spare air tank, and rag to make any emergency repairs necessary while on the field. An emergency repair is basically the PUG being on the verge of completely falling apart...other than that it's not an emergency.

So I had put my camera away and awaited my PUG pilot to get off the field, reload and reair, then come back out on the field to mount the PUG and head off into the enemy guns-a-blazin'. As I stood around the CP with the PUG waiting I decided to put in a little ref' time. I called hits and generally made sure to stay out of the way. The waves kept coming and I began to wonder if they would hold out long enough for our PUG to play the role of cavalry.

Our pilot got there and we started to get him suited up in the midst of the battle. I no longer paid attention to what was going on around us and just focused on getting him ready. We hadn’t had the time to make all the necessary repairs to the netting and a couple late minute cracks in the PVC frame but none of these problems would keep the PUG out of action so we just moved out the way it was.

But something strange had happened while we were getting the PUG ready. The respawn window had opened up and we had a large number of players able to push up with us. In addition, the enemy seemed to have evaporated. What once was a three sided press had completely vanished. We moved through the plains around our base, through the low hills that lead into the city, through the city, up through the black forest, up through ghost town, up along the main street village, all the way up to the doorstep of the enemy’s cp before we got into the action. We had no clue how but sometime during us getting the PUG ready to go our side had made a major push while their side must have ran low on paint and air.

So we pushed up past the last of the main street buildings and marched on the enemy’s CP. Problem was, no one was coming with us. As such we received the brunt of the enemy’s fire. We eliminated a couple of players that somehow had missed the big, black walking box of furry coming up the road and were surprised with fire from almost point blank. I’ll state here that my PUG jock was good at only firing one round at a time and seeing where it fell as not to light up these poor unsuspecting players. We got to within twenty feet of the front door of their CP and stopped. We could have pressed on but the netting on the PUG was failing and allowing a lot of rounds to get inside and impact the PUG pilot. No matter which way he turned there were significant holes in the netting that were allowing paint to come through. He was taking a beating. Even so, he kept firing when he could and kept the opposing players from trying to rush forward. Finally someone came out with a hand grenade and threw it at the PUG but missed. They though they got a little paint on us and that it had been a hit. Rules state though you have to actually HIT the PUG with the grenade…close does not count.

Next a player tried to rush with a “Satchel Charge”…at least I think it was a supposed to be a satchel charge because in reality it was a full sized Nerf football. The JMinT (that’s Joe Montana in Training) missed but also thought that the satchel charge was an area affect weapon and briefly declared victory.

While we continued to keep the opposing team at bay, our guys remained in cover down the hill. I eventually tried to motion them forward but to no avail. Finally, our time ran out and my well-welted pilot was glad to head back to base. We decided to park the PUG for the day as time was running out and there really wasn’t much we were doing just sitting at the door of their base with no support.

We were later told that the opposing team broke off their siege of our CP when they saw the PUG become active. Apparently they had no LAW rockets with them and thus no way of stopping the PUG. Rather than try to slow our advance, they broke and ran. Sad really as it would have been more fun to actually fight for the ground but I understand their thinking somewhat. That night we would fix the problems with the PUG and get her back on track for Sunday but after that I went home as my one-day gig was over. My understanding is the repairs we made were a big help and the PUG ran amok on Sunday. Apparently it worked so well my team, the SoCal Ghosts, walked away with the Most Valuable Team award for the weekend…way to go guys and girls!

For the few pictures I too, check out the link associated with this post.

Until next time…

Like it should come as a big surprise that I would wind up finding airsoft. Not like it was lost to me. After all, I had used airsoft parts to modify paintball guns as long as four years ago. My M203 is an airsoft item. Up until now though it just did not register on my radar as anything more than another outlet to get cool MilSim parts for my paintball guns.

So why airsoft and why now? Well, my soon-to-be-step-son wanted to get into it. He got himself a gun at Christmas and was bit by the airsoft bug. Only problem was none of his friends played and unlike paintball you can't rent an airsoft gun at any of the local fields that host games. (Which, might I add is a real shame...) So over the course of the last few months he has done his best to try and convince me that I need to get an airsoft gun too.

Well at first I wasn't exactly excited about the prospect I'll admit. I've played paintball for over 20 years off and on (about five regularly) and I liked the sport of paintball. I was primarily concerned about cheaters in airsoft. I mean, it's bad enough when you have guys wiping off big orange globs of goo to play on what would happen if there was no goo to wipe? Why would anyone leave the game?

The more he talked to me about it though the more interested I became. I never have liked the look of a hopper and while I could just attest it to me getting older and thus codgier I really don't like the mess associated with paintball. Plus there was the issue of expense. While going out and buying a whole new gun isn't exactly cheap the prospect of lower ammunition costs was really a bonus. Then there was the whole realism aspect...also a big plus for me. The more I read and the more I learned the more I wanted to try it.

So finally I got my own gun...not a marker...a gun. That's another nice change. I grew up with paintball GUNS. We never called them markers. They shoot things thus they are guns and the whole "PC" spin of calling them markers never really sat all that well with me. So now here I was with my first Airsoft gun. I chose an A&K M16A4 with RIS...which in paintball terms is a very BIG and HEAVY gun. My fellow teammates can attest that I must have something that would give The Rock arm strain to carry all day long in order to play paintball and with airsoft it would be no different.

And, like paintball, first thing I did when I got it home was open it up. Oh sure I read the directions, but I had to see what made this thing tick and I had to make it tick better. I read up on gearbox shimming, hop-up bucking replacement, spring upgrades, gear upgrades, tight bore barrels, and improved pistons, heads, and cylindars. I didn't go too crazy and figured I would just start with lowering the spring to something that would shoot around 350 FPS rather than the 400+ it shot out of the box. Later I would find out that fields allow electric airsoft guns (Called AEGs) to shoot up to 400 fps so I would probably have been fine with the stock spring. That's about par for me.

So I shimmed the gears, installed the new spring, lubed everything up, installed a new hop-up bucking and called it good. Now, that sounds like nothing spectacular but it took me forever to get the gearbox back together just so with a couple of different trips to the computer to figure out just how everything was supposed to go back together. Now it is easier but like any other first time venture it took some doing to get it right.

We headed out to a new field for me called Mr. Paintball down in Escondidio, CA. I had never heard of Mr. Paintball though it must have been around for some time and as the former practice field for the tournament paintball team Dynasty it had to be decent. Decent wasn't the word. The field we would be playing airsoft on that day was only one of many fields the park has...and was larger than some paintball parks I've been to...not just one field at these parks but the entire park!

The people there were great and when my step-son's gun wouldn't fire when we got there I let him use mine. I was going to be content with being a spectator for the day when another player, upon seeing my plight, allowed me to borrow an extra bolt-action, gas-powered, sniper rifle he had with him. I went out with that and while I didn't hit anyone with it, still had a blast. About halfway through the day I got to use my M16 while my step-son switched to the sniper rifle (after asking the owner if that was okay, of course) and loved playing with it. It was far more manuverable without a hopper attached and all the extra gear on my back that normally would have been with me on a paintball outing. Firefights were usually fast and short while I spent most of the time trying to outflank the opposing side. It felt like old-school paintball and I had a blast.

When it was all over I didn't miss the lack of paint drenching my clothes and the mess my gun had become either. A little wipe down, a bit of silicone down the barrel, and the gun was ready to be put away. Simple. Easy. Nice.

Does this mean I'm giving up paintball? Hell no. However I will be playing a bit less and playing airsoft a lot more. I went through a total of about 300 rounds that day out of a $13 bag of 4000. Compare that to 1000 rounds of paint out of a 2000 round box at $50 per box and you can see just how much cheaper airsoft can be. The principles are similar and it will help me improve my paintball game as well so the reduced cost means I get to play more often for less money.

If you haven't tried airsoft and are an avid MilSim player like me you really owe it to yourself to give it a shot.