Phosphorescent Fun

While most paintball games take place in the daylight or in brightly lit indoor environments, but there are milsim games that take place in dark or near-dark areas for specific scenarios. In more important applications (i.e. with real firearms) the common method for illuminating iron sights of pistols and rifles is the use of tritium-filled vials, but obviously this is a complete extravagance for paintball. So what do you turn to? Flashlights are all well and good, but as Mike recently touched upon, they illuminate you as well, and common phosphorescent paints you find at stores really suck. So what you really want is a company that makes awesome glow in the dark products, that are safe and last for a ridiculously long time (for less than an arm and a leg). Somebody like this:

Woodsball Injury Prevention

Paintball is statistically one of the safest sports activities, behind even Baseball, Basketball, and Football in injury rates. Trips, sprains, and falls are now the leading causes of Paintball injuries, with strict mask enforcement at Paintball fields having almost eliminated eye and ear injuries.

But with all this emphasis on protecting the eyes and ears, what's being done about the trips, sprains, and falls? When was the last time you heard a field owner or ref at a safety briefing warn players to watch their step in muddy conditions, or to be careful around a treacherous drop near the side of the playing area?

In this article I'll go over what you can do to minimize your risk of getting injured, so that you don't get sidelined for all or part of the season. This is a must-read for field owners and staff as well, in order to reduce the chances of one of your customers getting injured, and slapping you and your insurer with a lawsuit.

G.I. Sportz Winter Balls

G.I. Milsim has finally released their G.I. Sportz Winter Balls (Ballz?) to the public. This is great news for us Canadians, stuck in freeze-your-winter-balls-off hell for 3 months or so of every year.

The good folks at PBL Paintball took the time to demo the product somewhere just South of the Arctic Circle (actually I think it's Montreal):

Grey Ops Will Not be Shooting the Empire Axe This Season!

Grey Ops is super duper excited to let absolutely everyone know that Grey Ops will not be shooting the Empire Axe this season! The Empire Axe is totally not our style and we're proud to not be in partnership with Empire Paintball with this endeavor that will not be undertaken!

I thought that it would be appropriate to announce this, as just about every non-milsim paintball team in North America just can't hold in the fact that they'll be shooting the spiritual successor to the Mini, thereby cluttering up my RSS feed with the umpteen different paintball news sources and blogs that are reporting on it, and are apparently equally excited. You see the kind of run on sentences you people have drive me to? You make me sick.

Future of Paintball: Paintball UAVs

Paintball fields have the luxury of normally taking place outside of urban centres and frequently on large stretches of private property. That makes them perfect for flying large radio controlled vehicles in, and with the price of radio controlled machines continually dropping over the years (now you can pick up an out-the-box flyable plane from an electronics store for <$20) the machines are now accessible to the general population of gadget lovers (i.e. a large portion of paintballers). Milsim paintballers will be happy to know that some companies already offer ready to fly or assembly-required RC planes that resemble real-world drones.

A-TACS Danner FTX - Testing Update

Just a quick update on my testing of the A-TACS Danner FTX (GTX version). I ran them through what I've dubbed Montreal's "desert simulator", aka Action 500 Paintball. As you can see from the above picture they got a thorough covering in sand, and I have to say the match between them and the grimy sand of the indoor field was superb. Not an ounce of sand found its way into my mouth and they had terrific grip on the slimey paintball-infused sand coated concrete floors. So although this may not mean much coming from a Canadian, they've got my approval as a footwear choice for a desert camouflage set-up. 

Mike's Rant of the Month: The Gran Torino Lineup

I’m generally a pretty Zen, relaxed guy. But every once in a while, with no warning, I come across something that makes me angry...VERY angry. This conveniently happens around once a month...so why not turn it into a monthly feature on Grey Ops?

The following opinions are mine alone, and don’t necessarily represent the views of Connor or any other writer on the Grey Ops team. Please direct all wrath, angry comments, law suits, and profanity towards myself (Mike), and spare all innocent parties.
****

During this month of love and bliss, I'll be toning down my rant somewhat. Instead of ranting against one particular injustice or travesty with a vengeance, I'll be focusing on some things in Milsim Paintball that I don't exactly hate, but really don't like either. Do you remember the way Clint Eastwood's character in Gran Torino would see something and growl disdainfully? Well that's what we're talking about here.


The following things in Milsim Paintball make me spontaneously growl in anger:

Milsig T8.1 Marksman Barrel Prototype Pics

From Milsig's forums:

Pic with Milsig Fake Suppressor

Down the bore

Source: Milsig Forums

Ugly Milsim Markers 4 - Resurrection

They won't stay dead...

A "bullpup" TM7. Note judicious application of duct tape.

Back by request, say hello to the latest and lamest ugly milsim markers! Be sure to check out the previous installments of this feature: 1, 2, and 3. 

RAP4 in 2011

Purdy New Logo

Last year I ran a bunch of interviews asking paintball companies what they had in store for 2011 and it had some good reception. I've repeated the same interview process this year and a bunch of big companies will be able to say their piece via the blog. Up for today, RAP4 - Real Action Paintball.

Q: What were some of the challenges RAP4 encountered in 2010?

A: Actually for the good part of half a decade, RAP4 has been challenged with making more new products that allow players to play Magazine Fed Paintball. Our challenge last year was to help that become more main stream.

WTFPB CADPAT MOLLE Rig Giveaway

WTFPB is one of if not the most innovative custom paintball gear manufacturers today (imo), with a coolness factor and construction quality to match. They are unique in their inventive paintball soft gear solutions, and in the excellent range of patterns they offer for their gear. Among those patterns is the very sought after and popular CADPAT (and they were in fact the first company to offer custom CADPAT paintball products), so I'm sure many of you would be very interested in winning a free custom made MOLLE CADPAT vest!

TACAMO Conversion Kit Giveaway with Tactical-Mod.com

Grey Ops, in collaboration with the TACAMO Canadian distributor Tactical-Mod is very excited to bring you a giveaway I'm sure a lot of you have been hankering for, the TACAMO conversion kit! I've been having a lot of fun with my kit, and I'm sure you will too.

How to win:

1. Become a fan of Tactical-Mod on Facebook
2. Comment on this post (in the form below) saying, "Tactical-Mod rocks!"
3. Profit (that was easy eh?)

MCM K1

Alright, you've got my attention.

While looking at a website I was directed to through MCB (looking at an upcoming 8CI HPA tank), I came across the "MCM K1":

RAP4 Test Kit Magazine Issues

Those of you who watched Wolf's evaluation of the RAP4 MK5 magazine-fed test kit definitely noticed the constant problems he had with the clear magazines that shipped with the kit. Connor also had some feed issues with a magazine, as you can see when he shoots the kit here. I received 6 of the same magazines with my T68 Operation Endwar packages, and had similar problems with 2 of them. In this post, I'll show you what causes these problems, and what needs to be done to fix them.

FEAR CAMO

I've been following FEAR GEAR and their camouflage system for a while now, but wanted to wait until they had a good amount of ad copy and pictures out before I did an article on them.

MK5 Conversion Kit Testing Update

First up, a video from when the Grey Ops crew visited Action 500:



Now check out RAP4's response to testing so far!

Cheap Electrosight Batteries

EB Airsoft and other Chinese Airsoft suppliers are great sources of replica electrosights for your Milsim marker. Unfortunately, these replicas are usually powered by exotic Lithium batteries, and finding replacements for them at a reasonable price can be a challenge. This post will bring to light some cheap Canadian sources for them.

Giveaway - FLASC Micro Barrel Kit

Remember those sweet Micro Barrel Kits from FLASC? Well Grey Ops continues to be the leader in bringing you free stuff, and the generous folks at FLASC want you to have a Micro Barrel Kit! Let's keep this shorter and sweeter than Kristin Chenoweth and get down to business!

How to win:

1. Become a fan of FLASC's Facebook page.
2. Become a fan of Grey Ops' Facebook page.
3. Comment on this post (in the form below) saying, "FLASC rocks!"
4. Profit (that was easy eh?)

First End-User Video of Tacamo MK5 Conversion Kit

So yeah, I kept calling it the M5K, it's the MK5 (my bad).

The Grey Ops crew will be headed out to an indoor field in Montreal on Wednesday, so stay tuned for a shooting video of the conversion kit soon after that. What do you guys want to see tested out?

Grey Ops Forum - Post Your Gear!

The Grey Ops Forum has its own Gear Section where you can upload photos of your markers or loadouts, for other Milsim Paintball players across the planet to admire/drool over. Works of art should be shared, not hidden, so if you've got something worth looking at, post it!


Although our big orgy of Christmas and New Year's giveaways is over, Grey Ops has more giveaways ahead. Pretty soon a requirement for all Grey Ops gear giveaways will be that participants MUST have at least one pic of their gear posted in the Gear Section of the forum. So get a jump on our contests now by showing us what you've got!

Future of Paintball: LCD Goggle Lens

Fast-Tint Protective Eyewear (FTPE) is a new type of military ballistic eyewear. The glasses use electronic LCD technology to lighten or darken the tinting of the lenses in response to varying light conditions. On an operator fighting outdoors in bright sunlight, the lenses will be at their darkest. But when that same operator enters a dark room to clear it, the lenses will turn clear and colourless.

Although photochromic lenses already exist (like the well-known Transitions brand of lenses), these can take anywhere from 10-30 seconds to go from one extreme to another, which is far too long for an operator who needs to move quickly from one environment to the next. FTPEs are perfect for warriors needing to make split-second decisions, because they take a split-second to change tints. Less than half a second, in fact.

Yukigassen

The whistle sounds, and you sprint off the break into the fight. As you slide across the snow into your bunker, your lens fogs up in below-zero temperatures. You take a knee, post up, and pop to your side of your snowy bunker to snapshoot at your opponent with...SNOWBALLS?

Every now and then we at Grey Ops come across the strange and unusual, and bring it to the attention of our readers. The wide world of sports is full of oddities, but I was still surprised to come across a winter sport very similar to Speedball called Yukigassen.

New Flasc Tiberius Barrels

Flasc Paintball seems to be constantly innovating, always coming out with something else up their sleeve. In the latest news from, they'll be producing a line of specifically Tiberius barrels. How do these differ from the myriad number of other Tiberius barrels out there? Flasc has taken their universal barrel system concept a step further and developed Tiberius "threaded" (in quotations as it isn't really threading in the conventional sense) backs that can be used with the huge array of Flasc products already on the market. 

Like most Flasc products, you'll have a choice of bore size, length, porting and tips. I'm impressed. What are your thoughts?

Marker of the Month (January 2011) - PP-19 Bizon by CHE$HIR3

This marker of the month comes as a bit of a defeat for me, as I had attempted a similar mod but fell flat of CHE$HIR3's amazing mod!

January's Marker of the Month:

Specs:

• BT TM7 guts
• QLoader feed
• AK safety functioning like a selector switch
• Duracoated black
• RAP4 Recon barrel

What a perfect implementation of the QLoader system! For more photos and details on the build, check out the original thread on Milsim Empire. I pity the person that faces this beast on the field.