wow!!!!!!!!

[Muzikman]

That would be it. Good find.

[Automaggot68]

That would be it. Good find.

I'm so cool.

[MindJob]

Umm...a warp feeds faster than that, so does a halo, even an Egg can...and although you are pushing it's limits, a 10 year old VL2000 can feed almost that fast. 15bps is not all that amazing.

sorry...

Damn man,.. dont poo-poo on his parade

[SlartyBartFast]

That would be it. Good find.

Yup. But it's bursts of air not steady pressure.

Bet the "proprietary ball sensor system" is break-beam eyes?

[mag88888]

jees, its just a piece of piping with a spring. it took me about 1 minute to think of. nobody needs to go and compare my 5 minute invention with electronic hoppers. alsthough it does work good.

[mag88888]

how does the tube of balls stay pressurized? how do they attach all this stuff together? what do they use to pressurize the tube? i just want an explanation on everything. thanks if you can explain this.

[Muzikman]

I am not sure anyone can actually answer those questions. I do know it used compressed air...that's about the end of it.

[billmi]

Yup. But it's bursts of air not steady pressure.

Bet the "proprietary ball sensor system" is break-beam eyes?

The ball sensor they didn't talk about, but it looked like just a spring loaded lever switch in the mount block that connected the feed tube to the paintgun, to detect a missing paintball. Much of the time when they demoed, they kept a beer can cozy over the block to keep it hidden.

They didn't start firing upside down - they'd shoot, and turn upside down while shooting, then back up. That left me with the impression that without air pressure, that first ball had to fall in, for the system to activate. In the back pack was a .68ci AA Apocalypse connected via a solenoid valve to the coiled hose (don't try to reload that in a game :-). When the system activated, it just blew air down the hose at fairly low pressure. Ronnie Howell (Team Nemesis) and Johny Rathburn (now works for PMI) were the guys demoing it. That's Johnny in the picture shooting.

[SlartyBartFast]

Bill's the man!

When the system activated, it just blew air down the hose at fairly low pressure.

Wow. Imagine running out of air for your hopper in the middle of a game.

But, how many balls were in it? With enough balls, you certainly don't need to worry about reloading.

[Muzikman]

I am pretty sure it was 600 balls.

[punkncat]

Well, not 100% sure, some of the people that were involved in the industry back around 96 or so could probably tell you. The guy was demoing it at IAO and one of his tricks was to turn the gun upside down and shoot a long string of balls.

From what I was able to gather at the time, and this is working off 8 year old memory, it was a long tube coiled in the backpack with the end of it sealed and pressured. I assume there was an LP regulator there some place as 800PSI on the ball stack might be a bit too much.

At the time I just assumed that the tube was close enough to the size of the ball that they just pressureized the whole tube and that pushed the balls though.

As for loading...yes, that was the HUGE downfall.

I had never heard anything else about it after that IAO. I think it was one of the IAO's between 96-98. I am not thinking it was 96 as that was the year our team demo'ed the traccer balls...so the backpack loader was 97 or 98.

I know a guy who has a very strange backpack loader for a one of a kind Angel package he owns. I am not certain it is the same as you describe , but its really wild.