How to Become a Professional Paintball Player

As one of the top tier extreme sports, paintball has excelled passed everything in its path to the top. The number one question from outsiders is "How do I get Involved?" The answer to that is actually fairly simple. The aspect for new paintball players to remember is dedication. Any average Joe can go play paintball, although, if you would like to make it to the top, and fast, here are some simple tips to help you along the way.

Go out to your local paintball field and play recreational paintball (rec ball), get to understand the basics (duck when people shoot at you, learn to shoot your gun to create your own cover, etc.). Start making friends with other paintball enthusiasts, try and get a group of 5-7 players together every weekend to play, together you can work on honing in your skills. When you feel you are prepared to step up towards your goal, find a team to play on for small local events, there you can practice all of your skills in a professional setting.

Now that you have reached a competitive level and are capable of understanding the required mindset for the paintball player, it's time to start looking for a divisional team to tryout and play for. Get on board a Division 3 squad, and start blasting away and doing what you do best. You will come to understand that with time, and lots of practice, the game itself will become second nature, and you will begin to start using your head more like chess, in order to out think your opponents several moves in advance. Advance through the ranks of Division 3, Division 2, and Division 1.  Now your in the perfect position(some people  do this in less than a season, others take 1 Division per season.)

You have dedicated yourself to the sport of paintball, you have honed in your skills, now its time to go play Professional Paintball. Throughout your time playing at the various National Events, you will maintain relationships with numerous people in the sport: sponsors, players, teams, the league etc. Now use your contacts to arrange a tryout - play your heart out and jump into the Pro Paintball circuit. Lots of information about Pro Paintball is easily accessible for those new, and old to the sport of Paintball.

Now that your ready, go to your local shop, pick up some paintball's and get practicing your way to the top!

Electronic Vs Semi-Auto Paintball Guns

The paintball market is no exception to the extent at which technology has influenced our world. Paintball markers are faster and smarter than they've ever been before. Some boost setting combinations into the millions. This equates to a paintball gun set-up that will meet very specific preferences and styles of play.

After an initial cocking and air-up, a mechanical marker will shoot semi-automatic. This means the marker will fire one shot for every pull of the trigger without having to re-cock the marker. Mechanical paintball guns have traditionally been of two types. The first type is a spring loaded marker that requires cocking per trigger pull because it does not use a reserve air source like CO2. The other is a blow-back marker. Spyder Paintball Guns really pioneered the blow-back concept. Their semi-auto's owned the market in the early 90's through the early 2000's. Blow-backs use a valve system that controls the airflow. Once the trigger is pulled, the gun will cycle causing the bolt to move forward to propel the paintball. It then blows back past a sear mechanism, ready to be fired again with another trigger pull. Tippmann contributed a revolutionary concept to mechanical style paintball guns with the Response Trigger. The Tippmann Response Trigger System is available pre-installed in some of their markers and an upgrade option for base models. This system uses the exhaust air from the previous shot. It shuttles the air back to a cylinder behind the trigger, resetting the trigger faster. The Tippmann Response Trigger will increase the rate of fire. You can also find a sweet spot in which holding the trigger with a certain amount of pressure causes the gun to auto-fire. All done with no electronics or batteries involved!

Electronic guns use a circuit board and solenoid to control firing. The board is programmed to accept different settings and changes in modes of fire. Some of the most popular modes are full-auto, 3 burst shot and 6 burst shot. Tournament level players use other modes during legal play that although are still considered semi-auto, will ramp the firing potential of the gun the faster the trigger is pulled. Like many others on the market, the Smart Parts markers are electro-pneumatic. The solenoid controls the airflow. The solenoid itself is controlled by the circuit board which is activated by the trigger. The firing is smooth and very fast and the boards are highly programmable. Some electronic paintball guns like the Smart Parts SP-1 can also operate at a lower pressure. This means less kick and less force on the paintball with better accuracy per shot than higher pressure guns. It used to be that many electronic guns could not be used in extremely moist conditions. Today, manufacturers use silicon and other additives to protect the boards making them water-resistant. This allows them to be used in the worst of rainy days.

Paintball Guns Examined

A paintball gun is a device, or a replica of an actual firearm used to mark an opposing player with paint in the popular game of paintball. It uses different types of propellants such as expanding gases to propel a paintball through a barrel with a muzzle velocity of approximately 300 ft/s to break upon impact.

Firing Systems in Paintball Guns:

In the Electro-pneumatic firing system, electrical power from an onboard battery is used to drive a motor that turns gears inside the gun to compress and release a piston, which creates a blast of air that propels the paintball. These guns are capable of multiple firing modes, such as three-shot bursts, six-shot bursts or fully automatic. Most of them are capable of firing 300 to 900 rounds per minute (RPM) and their muzzle velocities range from 200 to 400 feet per second (FPS).

In mechanical or spring-powered firing system, the paintball guns are mostly single-shot or spring-cocked devices the spring has to be cocked by pulling back the slide or bolt before firing each shot. In some devices, excess air not used to propel the ball is then used to re-cock the hammer which is known as a blowback system. Mechanical paintball guns are able to fire at a rate of 200 to 275 FPS.

Gas-powered firing systems use pressurized gases like propane and HFC134a refrigerant to propel paintballs. They are also capable of using blowback mechanism, in which on-board or magazine-stored gas storage system is used to propel the paintballs and the same compressed air that propels the paintball is used to pull back the slide. So they are also capable of automatic or semi-automatic fire.

Types of paintball Guns:

There are various types of paintball guns which come in different sizes, configurations, styles and designs. Pistols are the smallest, running off of twelve gram CO2 cartridges. They have to be reloaded after ten shoots. Since pistols are less powerful with smaller paintball capacity, they are normally used for back-ups.

With pump guns, the user has to manually load the paintballs into the chamber, they cannot be automatic. They are much cheaper, very accurate and powerful in comparison to other paintball guns. Some of them come with a constant trigger so you can hold the trigger down and just pump it to shoot.