• Ancient Innovations Corp.
• TAG Paintball

AIC generously gave me 6 Q Pods and the extra hardware to mount them in various positions. Nicest folks I dealt with, and before you go spouting off about how they wanted the publicity know that AIC was the ONLY company who returned my emails inquiring about using their products to speed test.

Steelrat from AO and PBN was responsable for all the magic with the AKA Viking. He tells me that he simply set the WAS board's debounce to 1 and stuck it in simulate mode. A few test runs and we knew we had hit pay dirt. He may be death to any Automag he touches but he sure knows how to make the AKA markers work.

I had planned to use my Classic RT used int he earlier speed test videos but for some reason it was being fickle and I didn't feel like dealing with it.. not with an SFL lying next to it working fine. So we started loading up Q Pods and getting the markers ready for footage.

TAG Paintball field allowed us unlimited air for the production and actually donated a case of paint to use for the testing. The footage was shot looking out from their chrono station.

One thing we have both been asked numerous times was how we mounted the Qloader like we did. We noticed right away that while a hose line to feed the paint in would be fine for normal sane rates of fire (like 20bps or less), the Q Pods would be much more responsive if we just stuck them on the feedneck. It was a speed test, what do we care about profile?

We cobbled together an adaptor of sorts using a small section of QLoader hose a Warp Feed socket and a liberal use of electrical tape. Nothing fancy, but it worked fine.

In the end the Viking beat out the SFL in the speed race that day. Steelrat's AKA monster put out a solid and sustained 32 balls per second from round 1 to round 100. What's more he did it using a regular factory tank from Dynaflow, no mods, no significant adjustments. The SFL pulled of a respectable 30bps even.

While I have taken RT Valved Automags up around the 35bps range remember that I am using a scuba tank. Using conventional HPA tanks from a store you really cannot get more than about 26-27bps out of an RT valve.