Special Ops A-5A2: The Self-Aiming Paintgun

November 24, 2004
www.specialopspaintball.com

Nineteen years ago, I bought my first paintball marker. It was a Gramps and Grizzly Marauder Turbo. With a a self-important name like that, you would expect the gun to be the peak of modern technology. I suppose, for those days, it was.


	Paintball games can be divided into two disciplines: recreational (including walk-on and scenario games) and tournament. This article deals only with the ergonomics of recreational paintball. In military and paramilitary organizations, firearms are chosen for their suitability to the primary job of the team. Ergonomics plays a big part in that choice, along with the caliber of ammunition, range, accuracy and magazine capacity. Since all paintball guns use the same "ammunition" and have similar range, accuracy and capacity, ergonomics plays an even greater role in choosing a paintgun. A close quarters combat (CQB) military team that will be shooting around corners at close range, for example, will choose firearms that are compact and low-profile above all else. Much like a tournament paintball player, the CQB soldier will choose a quick gun, such as an Uzi or an MP5K, over a larger gun with better accuracy and ergonomics. The requirements of a recreational player are more similar to a special operations unit who will engage at the medium range of thirty yards and up. For this, a military unit might choose the full-size MP5 submachine gun or M4 Carbine. Likewise, recreational players will see improved ergonomics, and improved accuracy, with a gun of similar size and balance.

The Marauder Turbo was an amalgamation of enough Bondo auto body putty, aluminum and PVC plastic to provide sprinklers to a small front yard and restore the beat-up Chevy Impala around back.

You see, what passed for paintball technology in the mid-eighties came out of the garage workshops of bleary-eyed paintball fanatics who wouldn't hesitate to spend hours molding Bondo and plastic into top-secret loader configurations of questionable market-worthiness. It must have been a labor of love.

While the "Turbo" weighed about six pounds empty, my hulk of a paintball marker actually kicked some serious boo-tey. It wasn't smooth to operate and it wasn't fast shooting and it definitely wasn't light. But, right out-of-the-box it took my daily paintball stats through the roof.

In case you imagine that the Marauder Turbo had some kind of rifled, ported, whiz-bang barrel, let me add: the barrel was as crooked as a California politician. When I looked down the barrel, I could see a gigantic seam as the barrel stutter-stepped abruptly where the original "donor marker" ended and the extended "Turbo" barrel began. In fact, the
first half of the barrel pointed in a different direction,
slightly, than the second half of the barrel.

Yet, when crunch time came, I would throw that beast up to my shoulder and put the balls on the bad guys with amazing frequency. I was playing almost every weekend in those teenage years before steady girlfriends, and I shot that gun enough to form a reliable opinion. The conclusion I reached was this: for some reason, I pointed that marker in the right place more naturally than any other gun. As the years went by and I played with dozens of other "tournament" markers, I realized that there was something special about the way that first paintball gun shot.

If you were an engineering, pocket-protector type, you might say that a paintgun that felt comfortable and aimed naturally had good "ergonomics" (the science of making objects so that people can use them most efficiently.) A perfectly ergonomic paintgun would more naturally point to the place you want to hit even before you looked down the barrel or through the sights – in essence, a self-aiming paintgun.

Another way of understanding ergonomics would be to try a simple test. Raise your arm straight out from your shoulder and point your index finger at something across the room. Now, without moving your hand, tilt your head to look straight down your pointed finger. You'll probably find that your finger is dead on the mark. Your index finger is ergonomically well suited to aiming at things. Now, take off your shoes and try pointing your big toe at something. First off, your toe is not ergonomically situated so that you can look down it (unless you're a cast member of the Cirque de Soleil.) Second, if you could look down your toe, you'd find that your toe is ergonomically unsuited (in other words it sucks) at aiming.

When paintballers talk about accuracy, we usually focus on the barrel. But, the best barrel in the world won't do you any good if you're not pointing your marker in the exact right place. If you could naturally point your paintgun right on, first shot, you would soon top the "most wanted" list at your local field.

In paintball, it's easy to forget first-shot accuracy because we all "walk our shots in" to the target. In other words, we shoot a string of balls and adjust our point of aim when we see where the paintballs are flying. The first, wild shot is forgotten in the rope of paintballs that follow it. But usually, when we get the drop on the other guy, we only have a few balls in the air before that guy realizes he's hanging out there and returns fire or dives for cover. So, it usually comes down to a race to hit the other guy before he gets away or hits you first. If you can place your first shot very close to the target, you will have a huge advantage. That's a big part of what makes a legendary player: he hits what he's aiming at fast.

It's this race that determines, more than probably anything else in recreational paintball, whether or not you're an average player or a real, make-the-other-team-gulp-when-they-see-you menace. Think about it: when you get into a firefight with a really good player, they usually beat you to the winning shot. And, that's the race that an ergonomic paintgun can help you win.

Of course, being a great first-shot shooter requires practice and lots of it. Not just any practice, because shooting while you play doesn't count. Practice is what you do when you're at the shooting range and paying close attention to your accuracy. Practice is doing snap shots over and over again from every angle and every body position until you see your first or second shots hitting the target most of the time. If you want to be a good first-shot shooter than you'll need to budget for a practice case of paint every couple months.

With ten thousand hours of practice a year, you could probably even become a good first-shot shooter with a twenty-pound paintgun shaped like a lawn chair. Enough practice will outweigh even terrible ergonomics. However, most of us don't have that kind of patience or paint budget. On the other hand, if you build or buy your paint marker with an eye to ergonomics, you can enjoy a gun that aims with natural, first-shot accuracy the first day you haul it out on the field.

For over six hundred and fifty y

ears, civilized man has busted his gourd figuring out the best ergonomic shape and balance for a gun to point and shoot accurately. During all the time, the outcome of wars and lives depended on how easily a soldier could shoot his rifle or machine gun. So designing the perfectly-shaped firearm has consumed a lot of human design time. Oddly enough, though, most paintguns borrow nothing from these carefully evolved designs. Rather, compared to a military rifle or a hunting shotgun, most paintguns roaming the fields today are awkward, imbalanced and ergonomically clunky.

Of course, paintball isn't war or hunting. And, we don't want it to look or
feel like war or hunting. Furthermore, paintguns have requirements that firearms don't have, such as mounting a gravity-fed loader, carrying a heavy air tank and accommodating a goggle-wearing shooter. However, there is still a lot we can learn from historical firearm design to make our paintguns more ergonomic and better first-shot shooters.

After a thorough study of firearms, it seemed like there were three major factors that demanded attention when creating an ergonomically effective paintgun.

1. Bracing. Virtually every firearm intended for use at over thirty yards (a good, average paintball range,) especially if the firearm is shot rapid-fire, has some kind of shoulder stock. Trying to shoot a submachine gun accurately without a shoulder stock is next to impossible. Likewise, if
you're shooting a paintgun without some kind of shoulder stock or back bottle, you're stacking the odds heavily against yourself. Certainly, there are practiced shooters out there who can shoot freehand well. But, again, you could probably shoot a brick-shaped paintgun accurately, given enough practice.

One of the fundamental concepts of firearm accuracy is to make your body into a stable shooting platform by getting in a solid stance, then snugly locking the gun into your body. This is almost always done by pressing the stock of the gun into the hollow just to the inside of your shoulder.

It

is also critically important to maintain a natural sight line down the length of your barrel. Your dominant eye should line up naturally, with only a slight tilting of your head, down the imaginary line running along the top rail of your marker body and barrel. This becomes difficult with some markers if the back bottle or add-on stock is too high. Remember to test this while wearing your mask.

Tournament paintball players have developed a very particular form of gun handling. By anchoring the paintgun very loosely to their bodies, they trade stability for agility. Tucking a back bottle up under your arm, over your shoulder or bracing it against your forearm is better than nothing, but it is a pretty serious departure from the proven ergonomics of firearms and you'll probably have to practice to wring stability out of this "tournament-style" grip. Some military or para-military units fire compact, stock-less, sub-machine guns tucked in tight like a paintball tourney player, so perhaps the underarm brace used in tournaments might be a suitable style for close-up speedball play, with ranges between two and fifteen yards. However, this article speaks to the recreational paintball player who spends his or her Saturdays on the woods or bunker fields of the world. For that crowd, playing without a shoulder-braced marker is probably a mistake.

You may be looking at your current marker and wondering how you could possible make a back bottle and the barrel line up with your shoulder and your eye at the same time. If you have a hulking back bottle or a low-slung bottom line, it might be difficult. Stay tuned: more solutions to come.

2. Balance. After testing dozens of assault rifles and sub-machine guns, it became apparent that these firearms all have a center of balance exactly between the fore grip and the pistol grip, either loaded or unloaded. In other words, when you hold these military firearms loosely in your hands, they do not tend to tip back toward the butt-stock or forward toward the muzzle. They balance perfectly in the natural center of your grip.

After testing an equal number of paintball markers, however, it became obvious that every paintgun tested, when loaded with paint and air, tipped radically toward the rear. The center of balance of the tested markers was always behind or over the rear pistol grip. Since every paintgun except the small "back-up" style pistols is meant to be held with two hands, this leaves the average paintgun severely imbalanced and back-heavy.

Balancing a paintball marker is even more challenging when you're toting nitrous. Compressed air gives such a huge advantage in terms of consistency and ease of use, who would want to play without it? However, the tanks are so monstrously large and heavy that they get in the way when played vertically, and they murder the gun's balance when played back-bottle.

With all this to consider, the goal is still to make your loaded paintgun balance comfortably in your hands. When held loosely, it should not tip backwards or forwards. Just about the only way, currently, to achieve this balance is to go remote. By taking your tank "off gun," you give your marker a much better chance of balancing. Playing remote brings its own challenges, such

as snagging your hose and adding the extra weight to your harness. Remote works best if you move your tank to the side of your harness and affix your air nipple as far back on your marker as possible. By getting the nipple and the tank closer together, your hose will be shorter and less in harm's way. All of this may seem like a lot of adjustment just to achieve a balanced gun, but it makes a world of difference when you're racing an opponent to the trigger. Try it for a while and see.

3. Bring to Aim. If you watch a special operations group work, you'll notice that they carry their weapons at the shoulder or ready to rotate them up in an instant. It's almost as if the gun were attached to their shoulder by a hinge.

Not even the burliest paintballer can hold his paintgun in a firing position all the time. Usually, when you see a target, you must bring your gun to aim before pulling the trigger. This motion of bringing your gun up to your shoulder, ready to fire, can be called "Bring to Aim." If you can do this very quickly, with your eye lining up instantly on the target, then you've just racked up another advantage in the race to shoot the ball where it belongs.

Good bracing and balance will help a great deal, but you must also feel comfortable with the shape and aiming of your paintgun to make it all come together. If your paintgun is now perfectly braced and balanced, but your mask gets in the way of seeing down your sights or barrel, then you still have work to do. When you bring to aim, you should be immediately ready to fire without having to adjust the gun a single centimeter.

If you're having trouble seeing down your sites or barrel, you may want to change out your stock to give your mask more room. If you're in love with your stock, you can usually find elevated sight rails that will bring your sight up and give your head more room to maneuver.

A word of caution about sights: they should be easy and quick. Full scopes aren't very effective paintball sights. (Yes, I know, they look cool.) Point sights are much more useful as long as you can instantly pick up your target. Sights that require you too look too hard won't get used and you'll be left with a lousy bring to aim.

Bringing a gun to aim takes on a whole new dimension when you have to crawl to your objective. If you're playing recreational and scenario ball, and you're not spending plenty of time low-crawling, then you're missing the best part of your game. Belly crawling is insanely effective, if you're willing to pay the price. But, most paintguns are dang hard to crawl with and almost impossible to shoot from a prone position. When you're considering the bring-to-aim of your paintgun, don't forget the low crawl. An ergonomically acceptable gun for rec and scenario 'ball must have a low profile. Tall guns, such as gas-under tourney guns, are no good for crawling.

Keep tuning the configuration of your gun until to comes to aim at exactly the right place with ease -- standing, sitting or laying down. You'll know it when you feel it.

After nineteen years of pa

intball, I've owned many paintguns. Currently, when I hit the field, I can pick from an armory of eighty-something paintguns, including two Angels and a flock of Automags, Autocockers, Shockers and the like. Lately, however, I've found myself playing almost every game with a simple Tippmann A-5 with the ergonomic improvements mentioned in this article. I go up against every fire-breathing electro-pneumatic and tourney gun out there and yet I feel like I'm holding a marker with the greatest technical advantage of all: I shoot it well.

Get your marker braced, balanced and then bring it to aim. Comfortably. Naturally. Ergonomically. If picking up your marker doesn't feel like putting on your old baseball glove, then there's a good chance you could improve your play just by improving your paintgun.