Final stretch boys and girls but this part of my history in paintball is a long one so get comfy!
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| One of many configurations I came up with for my K-Series |
Late in 2009 I started to develop a great affinity for guns which used A5 barrels, stocks, and other accessories. I loved my Milsig and as a result and started to miss my trusty A5 a fair bit. Variations of the BT4 began to catch my eye, as did the Inspire BFG, the X7 Phenom; if it took A5 barrels, stocks or even one of the two I was quite interested and started to acquire A5 related goods, mostly from Milsig.ca. I started to do a total redesign of the accessories on the K-Series and ended up with many neat combinations of furniture to put on the marker such as what you see above and what will be included below this post.
To pay for playing dress-up with my milsim gun I had to sell a lot of old parts which I decided was going to be a very difficult task, after all, it's easier to sell the whole than the sum of a gun's parts, no? I lucked out and made a trade with a fellow online: my parts for 3 guns: a Smart Parts SP-1, Ion, and an Ariakon Overlord. Should be easy to sell these right? Well here I am a year later and I just finally sold the last gun a month ago.
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| BT TM7 |
Come Christmas time, I came to the decision that the Vice also had to go, it was expensive and dragging down my game, making me too cocky on the field. In a trade with a friend for the vice I received a BT-TM7, a new A5, and other milsim related goods. I never touched the TM7 and sold it before summer came. I played with the A5 very little but did some more modest upgrading of this one, no SAW or heavy machine gun parts on this A5. This A5 has since been sold as well since I liked my Milsig more and if I ever purchased another Tippmann as a paint thrower it's going to be an X7 Phenom. A Tiberius T8.1 was also acquired over Christmas 2009. The good news about all these guns coming in and out was that I started getting good at selling ice to Eskimos; I was getting great prices on all the markers I was selling and was breaking even for the most part by sweetening the deals with little insignificant accessories that came with all the guns.
A problem arose for me around season start time though: I was away from home, without a car, and the local field was up a mountain, outside of town, off the grid and I had no reputation in Kamloops, no paintball connections, nothing. I really lucked out on two occasions very early in the season where I was able to get rides to the field with the owner of Kamloops Paintball Games and Proshop, Aaron Webber, since I was literally sitting on his route to the field. This was an infrequent occurrence however, and I started opting to go with another smaller group who played outlaw and met down town, so when the occasion arose, I'd ride my bike down to them, dressed in all the milsim gear and meet up to play. Around this time school was ending and paintball was a nice, albeit slightly lengthy break from studying. At this time I'd maybe played 4 times in the 2010 season.
A couple of weeks into the summer I got a call back from one of the places I'd applied for work. I nailed the interview and so was hired on... at Source Adult.... didn't last long there at all for reasons best not explained in the blog but my ceasing work there came at an excellent time. Within a couple of days I got a call from Aaron from paintball field. He needed another referee and apparently I was an attractive candidate for the job. I took it, even though it meant sacrificing most of my play time. In total I played exactly 10 times that season and was a very sad panda when I compared it to the previous season's 3 times a week.
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| Invert Mini!!! |
There are a lot of good and bad stories I can share from refereeing paintball full time at Kamloops Paintball Games, too many to cram into one post so I'll share those individually later on and skip ahead to the rest of the seasons events. At this time I owned a Milsig K-Series, a T8.1, and a Tippmann A5 which would soon be sold. Something came over me that made me want a paint thrower again. I know I know, totally didn't need one but this time I did some thinking. This gun needed to sling ropes of paint but I didn't want to restrict myself to woodsball with this purchase. Keeping true to Milsim style, but not wanting to rule out speedball altogether (I love everything paintball, not just milsim), I invested in an Olive Invert Mini and modified my red Rotor Loader to match. I have to say, it's an impressive gun for it's price today and I'm totally keeping it! Around this time I also purchased a Nikon D5000 SLR camera to film and take pictures while I reffed, if there wasn't a gun in my hand to shoot with then there was going to be something else. The camera is actually is turning out to be a profitable buy as people who can't afford a pro but don't want point and shoot pictures are plentiful.
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| The Milsig M-Series Paradigm |
Did I mention I reffed a whole lot that summer? Snap forward to school starting and one morning as I lay in bed, a thought occurred to me and I started running some calculations: let's see, Milsig prices went up with aluminum prices, I have some nice stuff on my K-series, could get maybe 700 if I throw in other goodies, don't like the MATS system, so that's 200 more if I sold it... plus employee discount..... Holy Crap! I could get an M-Series Paradigm! And I totally did, I engineered a sale that allowed me to purchase a Milsig Paradigm and break even. I'm happy as a lark with it.
A good deal of the following is opinion but this is where I stand marker wise today: Tiberius T8.1, arguably the best magazine fed paintball pistol out there rivalled only by the Tippmann TPX. An Invert Mini, truly a marvellous gun at it's price range. And my pride and joy: the Milsig M-Series Paradigm #394, I don't know if there's any doubt it's the most solid mag-fed paintball marker to date, an expensive buy but very low cost to run with magazines and picking your shots! And you know what? There's no other gun I'm lusting for, I'm super happy with this gear and don't see myself making any new marker purchase till these fall apart, mind you, I do need mags for the Paradigm and Tiberius...
My clever dealings in gear aside, I did invest a lot in paintball, I have been somewhat arrogant and greedy in my thinking when I made some impulsive purchases but I feel like the payoff to this date has been enormous. I went into the game overweight, introverted, and lacking in the social circle department. I'm now 30 lbs lighter and I know a lot of that was from activity paintball supplied. I became an admin for the 2 Facebook crews in Williams Lake and even became one for the business here in Kamloops' Facebook page. This game has given me social skills, confidence, a hobby, sport, workout plan, employment, and tons of friends and stories to share. I really hope I can stick with it for years to come.
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| Paradigm with an added airsoft masterkey |
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