Rogue, you thought about making one of these?

[Evil Bob]

Was thinking about adapting one of my older RT's for scenario play for one of my kids without buying a tac1 body and started digging around the web for weaver mounts and accessories.

Got the basic idea of what I was looking for as a final result, fired up Lightwave and cooked up the following...

Adapted from the standard RT/Emag sight rail to hold all the popular bolt ons you could care to use. Was also thinking about a weaver based q-loader bolt on that will use a warp left/right body so I can go totally batteryless once the pneu frame comes out. Was thinking about mounting a bright flashlight on the right, dot sight on top, and q-loader on the left.

-Evil Bob

[Chronobreak]

ooooh tac-one sightrail...

COOL! :cool:

[Evil Bob]

Sort of, just without the need to purchase the tac1 body, just bolt it onto any mag rail with those annoying holes everyone hates :)

-Evil Bob

[Evil Bob]

Funn you mention...

I suggested almost this identical idea to Tom a year ago, who showed little interest.

I spoke with a number of scenario players, and some of the notable scenario teams to get their thoughts.

Their interest was minimal at best as well.

I think its a great idea.

:(

I have a weaver/dovetail adapter on my current Emag sight rail, its ugly, but it fits the bill, would rather have one that supports more options.

-Evil Bob

[Evil Bob]

The question is, how much would you pay for one?

(Take into account thhat the retail on the standard site rail is $60 from AGD....so this site rail would be more expensive).

If it was your usual quality, I'd pay easily $100 for it.

-Evil Bob

[Evil Bob]

That leads to another question.

Why would you pay $100 for this, and $130+ for an ULE body($230) when you could buy a Tac-One body for $200?

I want to get that hopper off of the top of the marker (use a warp body), can't do that with the tac 1 since its not currently offered in a warp feed config.

-Evil Bob

[fire1811]

good idea im surprised there was little interest

[Dryden]

That leads to another question.

Why would you pay $100 for this, and $130+ for an ULE body($230) when you could buy a Tac-One body for $200?
For me, I could slide off the tac rail when not playing scenario or woodsball. Having a "convertible" Tac would allow me to use the same marker for any style of play, without having an extra $200 invested in a complete body I rarely use.

[manike]

That's a great idea and design. Picattiney rails are becoming the new 'hot thing'. Lots of the eVolt stuff we are developing will work on the picattiney system... ;)

Only issue with that site rail is the lack of guns to put it onto, meaning a reduced market potential, otherwise it would be an awesome product. :hail:

[Evil Bob]

I suspect one of the reasons Tom didn't go for it at the time was the tac1 had just come out and was more then likely showing rather poor sell through, its possible he felt such a rail would cut into the tac 1 sales. Its pretty basic stuff here, you make a tactical marker out of pretty much any mag with the holes in the rail, old school RT's, emag's, etc.

-Evil Bob

[Dryden]

I think the harder thing to gauge is whether this covers all the features a customer could want? Could this one part, with the possible addition of two interior "spacers," be mounted on the narrower front of RT rails, so that another set of rails is available ahead of the feedcup? Would a "front" rail and "back" rail be two totally different designs? Do any Tac owners need that much rail space to justify two versions?

... more versatility, same idea. Why not make a Tac adapter that is dovetail mounted to slide a "Tac box" onto any sight rail? Now you can sell it to everyone, not just Mag owners. Too bulky? Not rigid enough? I'm thinking some Phantom owners would go nuts for that!

[Evil Bob]

Yeah, I can see that, if I had a set of $3k NODs I'd be rather hesitant to mount it on something that might end up being very flimsy. Your typical scenario guy is going to put a dot sight, a flashlight with a remote on/off switch they can toggle, and maybe a laser site on it, that's about it. Its a very rare breed that drops the big dollar items onto a paintball marker, definitely not your typical scenario player.

This is where the tac body has its advantages, you're mounting right to the body itself.

-Evil Bob

[Creative Mayhem]

Kudos EB!

That would make a lot of tourney maggers who dabble in scenarios(or vice versa) quite happy. They could do both as you/someone else put it.

[thorn]

sounds like a great idea, but only if it were to go on a ule body or something. no point if u already have a tacone.

[Destructo6]

I think it would be a great accessory. I can't imagine owning a Tac-One, but I could easily see myself buying one of these for those rare times when I think it would be worthwhile.

I couldn't justify spending $100 on one. Honestly, about $40 is about as high as I could go.

[BeaverEater]

Personally i dont do a whole lot of scenerio play, but 100 bucks for a sight rail seems really high. I mean even the 60 for the stock sight rail seems high to me.

[Cristobal]

And therein lies the problem. If $40 is as high as most would go, it wouldnt be worth making.


Yeah, and that part looks to be a beast to machine out of billet.

If I had to produce them, I think I'd try and make it in 4 parts. On part would look like a normal sight rail and then 3 copies of the Picattiney rail would bolt onto it. I'd make the sight rail part out of sheet metal (like the newer AGD ones) on a progressive die, and try and find a supplier that already makes a Picattiney rail which could be adapted to the sight rail with little modification.

Of course, setting up a progressive die would require a high initial investment, so I'd have to sell a lot of them to come out ahead, which raises the question of how many would buy them -- even at $40. If this were a Tippmann accessory, I'd say no problem... but there aren't all that many RT and RTPros in use out there.

Maybe the thing to do for someone who wants one is to try and bolt a rail to an existing AGD RT sight rail.

[Jotsy]

The question is, how much would you pay for one?

(Take into account thhat the retail on the standard site rail is $60 from AGD....so this site rail would be more expensive).

isn't the sight rail (the RT Pro version) $20 in the AGD store? the emag sight rail is $50...

you could just come out with kits that bolt picatinny rails onto the RT pro rail like Cristobal suggested (don't even bother making a new sight rail)

[Evil Bob]

Lots of venders on the web that selll all sorts of rail kits, the sky is the limit. You can get stock by the footage if you dig deep enough.

What I currently have is the stock RT rail with a .22 cal dovetail to weaver adapter hammered on the full length of the rail, did this 7 years ago with my old school RT (using the same rail now with my emag), its ugly, but it works. I originally mounted the weaver adapter so I could use dot sights with an inner diameter larger then 30mm, the bigger the optic view area, the quicker the dot acquisition. That single weaver rail currently has a cheap BSA (made in china) 42mm dot sight on it ($40-$50 at most gun shops).

I also have a tri-rail weaver base that I picked up several years ago for use on my AR, it pulls double duty occasionally on my emag when I play night games. I usually mount two lights to it, one very bright for spotting people (ruining their night vision) and one for low light movement. I was looking at a cheap 2nd generation reconditioned night scope thats gun mounted as a possible use of my tax return this year.

A viable option for those guys who dont want to do all the mill work is to create a single weaver mount and then pick up a tri-rail online, they range from as low as $25 to $50 depending upon the store (usually the very same model shown everywhere I checked). That in mind, I changed the model to accomodate this concept. Not a big fan of this idea as the tri rail adds additional height to your sight picture (+4") when using the top mounting rail, but this is most like the most cost effective route to go.

Pics below...

-Evil Bob

[Evil Bob]

I'm running a warp body, not too worried about the hopper being in the way on top. Also was looking into a qloader mount on the left rail.

-Evil Bob

[Evil Bob]

Very true, that's why the tri-rail tends to be flat and wide, there will be an additional 2-3" added in the weaver mount that's attacked to the device that mates up with the rail base, that will give you the clearance you need around most bloat loaders.

That's the main reason why the two side rails on my first model were a bit lower and extended. They're also high enough to clear the feed ports on both sides for warp junkies and the air input into the valve.

-Evil Bob