I've had the Q-Loader for about a month now, but I never bothered to bring it out to the field as I was trying to design a new mount/socket. AIC has recently unveiled a new socket which would reduce the amount of custom work I was planning to do, so I figured I'd just throw the Q-Loader on as-is and get used to it while waiting for the new socket.
The first stupid thing I did was leave the hose o-rings at home. I clamped the socket on the night before, and left the rest for the next day. The way I had it set up, though, the hose never popped off or loosened on me. The elbow, on the other hand, did pop off the feed neck once while I was chrono'ing. By the time I managed to grab the elbow like a second or two later, however, the pod managed to shoot most of its wad, to my dismay. Then I tried to remove the pod so it wouldn't dump the rest out, but there was ball jammed in there, so I wound up slicing it in half. This was not a very auspicious start.
After cleaning that accident up and applying a little electrical tape to the feed neck, things were on their way.
On the field, the loader easily lived up to expectations. I was now free to pop out the top of the bunker, and I started warming up to shooting out of the left of the bunker warp-style.
My gripes:
1. Reloading socket is crappy. My rev-on-top-of-the-socket contraption worked well enough (I put the video up briefly on another thread), but you really need sort of a high-rise buffer to really be able crank the sucker and load quickly. I got proficient at it, but a high rise would make a world of difference.
2. It's really hard to see how many rounds you have left in your tube in-game, especially with black paint. It's not too hard to do with a shiny new q-loader, but once that thing has been scuffed up a little and dirtied, your visibility into it goes to poo. Again, especially if you're using black paint. The only reason this matters is...
3. When you empty the q-loader, you no longer have force feed. This should be pretty obvious. I chopped one game, looked down and realized the pod was empty. I didn't start the game with a new pod; I just used the same one from the last game. Plus it was one of the last games of the day, so I was out there intentionally unloading the paint. This happened to me twice; both times it was near the end of the day, and I was intentionally trying to unload paint and not paying attention to what the pod was doing.
4. Feed pressure was causing ball deformation. My field's paint is already deformed enough as is, I didn't need my pod to be making the situation worse. This is mostly due to an improperly cut hose, so I adjusted the hose a bit, and the problem went away. This is one of the good things about the clear AIC feed neck elbow -- since it's clear, you can see how hard the paint is smushing up against it, and tune things accordingly. I'm not sure how I'm going to manage this when my pro-team warp adapter comes in...
5. I did manage to get shot on the hose one game on the first day. One of the rare times I did get shot. If it hadn't hit the hose, it would have hit me in the face anyways. However, the bad part was it broke the paint inside the tube. Cleaning took a bit of time; remove the hose, run some water through it, run a squeegie through it, swing as much water out, put a paper down in it and smack it around to get the rest of the water out. I'd recommend keeping a second hose cut to the right length for speedy change-out if necessary. I decided to wrap some "cold-shrink" tape around the part of the hose that I thought needed it to give it a little impact absorption + extra support/density. Not sure if it worked; I was never shot on the hose again.
6. Mounting the thing on the front of the gun is not good for playing tight against bunkers. I.e. air/hyper/or any other occasion where you want to get right up on the bunker. In fact, I couldn't even mount it on my mag as I don't have a proper place on the front to clamp it to.
I wound up dusting off my 5 year old cocker for the first time in years since I could clamp the socket on the WGP reg. Well, my reg had this habit of unscrewing a little bit to the right, causing the pod to shift as well. (I have a simple fix for this though). Also, mounting it on the front of the gun, while balanced, exacerbated a slight problem with my old plastic cocker grip frame, which started to flex due to the counter-balanced weights of the loader and my tank. It got really annoying when I leaned out for a left shot. I think it might just be time to retire the ol' frame.
In short, I really hated mounting the thing on the front of the gun.
Otherwise, I'm very pleased with the Q-Loader. Most people at the field know me as the guy who likes to go out with the 13ci tank + 50 round hopper, so the 100 round capacity isn't exactly holding back my game.
In fact, one of the refs who was watching me play was starting to warm up to my setup. Most other players were pretty receptive to the idea, although this is probably because I'm a regular, and the people at this field are usually pretty laid back, not like PBN'ers.
To wrap things up, here's a video clip I shot at the end of the day.
This is a STOCK '98 cocker, except for the J&J barrel, and the delrin bolt which I replaced after the original one's pull pin wore itself and the back block out. And I haven't even used the thing in a year or two. Gotta love that sliding trigger.
I timed the first 12 shots -- I'm bursting 12bps, no chops whatsoever. Incidentally, soundgraphing cockers is a royal pain due to all the extra noise. What I did was import the audio into audacity, then reduced the speed by 50%. It makes it easier to distinguish the shots. Just remember your time is now doubled, so take that into account when you make your calculation. Oh, and this clip was taken with my digital camera, which only does about 16 frames per second, so you're not going to catch all the fascinating back block action.
The first stupid thing I did was leave the hose o-rings at home. I clamped the socket on the night before, and left the rest for the next day. The way I had it set up, though, the hose never popped off or loosened on me. The elbow, on the other hand, did pop off the feed neck once while I was chrono'ing. By the time I managed to grab the elbow like a second or two later, however, the pod managed to shoot most of its wad, to my dismay. Then I tried to remove the pod so it wouldn't dump the rest out, but there was ball jammed in there, so I wound up slicing it in half. This was not a very auspicious start.
After cleaning that accident up and applying a little electrical tape to the feed neck, things were on their way.
On the field, the loader easily lived up to expectations. I was now free to pop out the top of the bunker, and I started warming up to shooting out of the left of the bunker warp-style.
My gripes:
1. Reloading socket is crappy. My rev-on-top-of-the-socket contraption worked well enough (I put the video up briefly on another thread), but you really need sort of a high-rise buffer to really be able crank the sucker and load quickly. I got proficient at it, but a high rise would make a world of difference.
2. It's really hard to see how many rounds you have left in your tube in-game, especially with black paint. It's not too hard to do with a shiny new q-loader, but once that thing has been scuffed up a little and dirtied, your visibility into it goes to poo. Again, especially if you're using black paint. The only reason this matters is...
3. When you empty the q-loader, you no longer have force feed. This should be pretty obvious. I chopped one game, looked down and realized the pod was empty. I didn't start the game with a new pod; I just used the same one from the last game. Plus it was one of the last games of the day, so I was out there intentionally unloading the paint. This happened to me twice; both times it was near the end of the day, and I was intentionally trying to unload paint and not paying attention to what the pod was doing.
4. Feed pressure was causing ball deformation. My field's paint is already deformed enough as is, I didn't need my pod to be making the situation worse. This is mostly due to an improperly cut hose, so I adjusted the hose a bit, and the problem went away. This is one of the good things about the clear AIC feed neck elbow -- since it's clear, you can see how hard the paint is smushing up against it, and tune things accordingly. I'm not sure how I'm going to manage this when my pro-team warp adapter comes in...
5. I did manage to get shot on the hose one game on the first day. One of the rare times I did get shot. If it hadn't hit the hose, it would have hit me in the face anyways. However, the bad part was it broke the paint inside the tube. Cleaning took a bit of time; remove the hose, run some water through it, run a squeegie through it, swing as much water out, put a paper down in it and smack it around to get the rest of the water out. I'd recommend keeping a second hose cut to the right length for speedy change-out if necessary. I decided to wrap some "cold-shrink" tape around the part of the hose that I thought needed it to give it a little impact absorption + extra support/density. Not sure if it worked; I was never shot on the hose again.
6. Mounting the thing on the front of the gun is not good for playing tight against bunkers. I.e. air/hyper/or any other occasion where you want to get right up on the bunker. In fact, I couldn't even mount it on my mag as I don't have a proper place on the front to clamp it to.
I wound up dusting off my 5 year old cocker for the first time in years since I could clamp the socket on the WGP reg. Well, my reg had this habit of unscrewing a little bit to the right, causing the pod to shift as well. (I have a simple fix for this though). Also, mounting it on the front of the gun, while balanced, exacerbated a slight problem with my old plastic cocker grip frame, which started to flex due to the counter-balanced weights of the loader and my tank. It got really annoying when I leaned out for a left shot. I think it might just be time to retire the ol' frame.
In short, I really hated mounting the thing on the front of the gun.
Otherwise, I'm very pleased with the Q-Loader. Most people at the field know me as the guy who likes to go out with the 13ci tank + 50 round hopper, so the 100 round capacity isn't exactly holding back my game.
In fact, one of the refs who was watching me play was starting to warm up to my setup. Most other players were pretty receptive to the idea, although this is probably because I'm a regular, and the people at this field are usually pretty laid back, not like PBN'ers.
To wrap things up, here's a video clip I shot at the end of the day.
This is a STOCK '98 cocker, except for the J&J barrel, and the delrin bolt which I replaced after the original one's pull pin wore itself and the back block out. And I haven't even used the thing in a year or two. Gotta love that sliding trigger.
I timed the first 12 shots -- I'm bursting 12bps, no chops whatsoever. Incidentally, soundgraphing cockers is a royal pain due to all the extra noise. What I did was import the audio into audacity, then reduced the speed by 50%. It makes it easier to distinguish the shots. Just remember your time is now doubled, so take that into account when you make your calculation. Oh, and this clip was taken with my digital camera, which only does about 16 frames per second, so you're not going to catch all the fascinating back block action.
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