On Saturday, I did my typical routine showing up to the field around 10am. I paid my fees, purchased some paintballs, and got ready to get playing. I always have my marker disassembled and in my case, so I assembled it, put a battery in, loaded it and headed to chrono it. I normally set it around 250 to 270 FPS which seems to give me the best consistancy in reguards to paintball accuracy. I size my insert for the paint, and I headed back to my vehicle to get my pods and other goodies.
I played most of the day, then about 3:30 I noticed my first air bottle was getting close to 1000psi which is where I normally change out to my second bottle. I switched, played one round and then got ready for center flag. I was the forward deploy, and one of the refs wanted to spot chrono-check some of the players. I am actually embarassed at hot my gun was really shooting, but I will say that it was well in excess of 300 FPS. I couldn't believe it, I actually made the ref repeat the number twice before it processed. To get my marker under control, I shut the high pressure regulator down with the allen screw and worked my way back up to 250 FPS.
At the end of the day, all I could think of was maybe I lost a piece of the HPR, or I assembled it inproperly when I cleaned and lubed it. I took it apart and had a quick look, I wasn't sure how many washers go in the stack, but they looked to be assembled properly. I went home and through about it while I cleaned my gear. I looked at the directions, stripped both the LPR and HPR off, cleaned and lubed it all and put it back together. I still couldn't figure out how it jumped up so much between the morning and afternoon. I know it happens with CO2 because temperature differences change the pressure of the CO2, but air is very stable. This was something that I just couldn't let go.
Sunday, I called up a friend who plays a lot of woods ball and has his own chrono. I borrowed it, got a box of paint, and went to work in my back yard. To my suprise, despite all the cleaning my paintball marker was still set very near where it was when I left the field. I put about 500 balls through the gun with a +/- 10 FPS varriance. This wasn't helping me figure out what was going on. I messed around putting another 500 balls through just shooting and checking the speed every once in a while. The pressure in my tank dropped to about 1000psi and I changed it out.
First shot on the new tank, 170 FPS... as were the next 10 shots I fired. I switched back to the other tank, back up to 250 FPS. I did a little more research and found that I have one tank with a high pressure regulator on it and one with a low pressure regulator on it. When I set my marker on the one that gave the gun 450psi, it worked fine until I put the 800psi tank regulator on. The tanks look the same, feel the same, and are made by the same manufaturer, but the regulators are two very different animals. Moral of the story... IF YOU CHANGE ANYTHING ON YOUR MARKER, RE-CHRONO IT! No one got seriously hurt out of this, but that was nothing but dumb luck on my part. It ruined my whole day to think of how much damage I could have inflicted over something as stupid as not knowing my own equipment. I know that from now on, I will check my marker every time I leave the field for paint, overkill... probably, but I never imagined that changing an air tank would so drastically affect my marker speed. Hopefully, this little story will prevent someone else from making the same mistake that I made.
Now THAT... is going to leave a mark!