Updates!

It has been a busy month and I will have some write-ups coming up!
I will be talking about the MILSIG M-Series Paradigm Pro 2012. How it has been so far and how I have enjoyed it.

On Saturday the 17th of November was the Lindsey Stirling concert in Vancouver, BC, Canada and my future employment with MILSIG Canada.

What is this? Clear skies!

The sun is out for the weekend and that means I should get my butt out of the house and enjoy this glorious weather. Going to go out to play some paintball tomorrow and snap some pictures. Buckle down and study and get bunch of work done. :)

MILSIG magazine collar comparsion

I should note that the magazines I am using is an older gen 19 round magazine for both MILSIG and RAP4.     Since the release of the MILSIG Paradigm Pro’s new magazine system, the square head collars, many people have asked the question “What is the difference between the round collars and the square collars?” “How do they operate from each other? Pros and Cons”.

    Throughout the years before the Paradigm Pro square head magazines were introduced it is frequent that people did not really have a clear understanding what the differences are between the RAP4 magazines and the MILSIG magazines. At most people knew they are interchangeable and compatible with each others markers. Thus the question is, what really separates the three magazines in terms of operation mechanics.

    I will start with the new MILSIG Paradigm Pro. The current square head magazines is designed for the Paradigm Pro What is new about the square head collar is the head is constructed from polymer. The only metal parts is collar detent and the spring that holds the detent bar up. The MILSIG square head collar replaces the ball bearing round collar system. There is a bar that runs lengthwise across the farther side of the opening with both ends of the bar protruding out the sides of collar body a little bit. When the magazine is inserted into the magwell; there is a little ramp within that will push the bar down as the magazine is inserted. The balls than are clear to enter the chamber without being hindered by anything.

                                                                 
    In comparison to the round head feedneck collars; the round collars uses 3 ball bearings to hold the balls in place. When the collar is depressed it creates room for the ball bears to “roll back”. With the spring pushing the paintball rounds upwards , the paintballs squeeze through and then is chambered by the bolt. The problem with the ball bearing design is shooting low to mid-grade paintball or paintball that have not been storaged properly. These are the paintballs that are oblong, dimpled or a shape that is not spherical. The problem is non-uniform paintballs get stuck in the ball bearings which leads to either a misfeed or a ball chop. 

    The RAP4 magazine uses 6 ball bearings as opposed to the MILSIG’s 3 ball bearing collar. However, the RAP4 ball bearings are smaller than the MILSIG ball bearings and this leads to problems with smaller paintballs. In my personal experience when storing the magazines upside down (feedneck facing downwards) smaller paintballs in the 0.679 caliber region will roll out past the ball bearings. This is the main difference I have discovered between the MILSIG and the RAP4 round collar feedneck and can lead to problems for some users. The RAP4 has a shorter collar clip and the MILSIG round feed neck has a taller collar clip.

                                                                 
    I hope this helps clear up some confusion between the differences in the magazines. I often hear people wonder what the differences are between the RAP4 and the MILSIG magazines and excluding the internal mechanics, physical differences of the winder and what not, the feedneck ball bearings is the biggest difference.

In the next article I will talk about the MILSIG Paradigm Pro magazine in detail. Stay tuned and thank you for reading!. Visit www.magfedpb.com for more magazine-fed paintball information!

MILSIG Paradigm Pro - First Impressions

On Friday, 28th of September 2012, I picked up the Paradigm Pro from the MILSIG Canada office. I have been eagerly waiting for this ever since it was announced and after decisions and questions from announcement to release, it is now in my possession.

I should note I will be mostly writing this in comparison to my Paradigm 1. The K-Series is roughly the same size give or take.

This passing Saturday I brought it down to my local paintball field, North Shore Paintball where people were anxiously awaiting for me to show them this new toy. My initial impressions when I brought the Paradigm Pro home is the look and feel. The coating is a different from the Paradigm 1 nor the K-Series Mk II. It has a nice texture and feel to it in its own form. The platform has been working out and shedded some weight!. The Paradigm Pro is lighter than the Paradigm 1 and K-Series Mk 1 and features a brand new one piece, 400mm rifled barrel which has been rifled for First Strike rounds and of course, is First Strike round capable! The marker is also equipped with MILSIG’s new spool-valve blow forward internals known as the HEAT core.

Paradigm Pro @ North Shore Paintball , Vancouver, BC

The new square head magazines for the Paradigm Pro is a big improvement over the traditional round magazine heads. The traditional round collar heads have 3 ball bearings that retain the rounds and thus occasionally you could get oblong balls stuck in the bearings. This would result in either a misfeed or a chop. The new square head magazine collar uses a sliding bar so when the magazine enters the chamber; the bar is depressed allowing the rounds to be fed and chambered. This eliminates (I would hope so) a lot of misfeed issues. The user does not have to worry as much about oblong shaped balls getting stuck during feeding.

The Paradigm Pro features a nice egro grip handle and a smooth trigger pull. Although I think in the future having a switch safety will be pretty wicked. That just complicates the mechanical aspect of it. The trigger has a small amount of slack giving you ample amount of space to get to the razors edge and then a smooth pull to the rear to fire.

The weight of the Paradigm Pro has been reduced. I don’t have the exact numbers yet but reciever of the Paradigm Pro vrs the Paradigm 1 is noticable and feels ligther and more versatile. Not having that steel hammer in the action group probably helped reduced the weight too.

In the next part I will write about the magazines, the operations, advantages and disadvantages (that I have found so far, although so far I have not found any negatives yet).
I am looking forward to more games with the Paradigm Pro. Overall I am impressed at the overall build. It feels solid, balanced weight and operates quite smoothly. The sound report is also not as loud as the previous K and M series markers and does not blurp when the marker is out of air.

MILSIG Paradigm Pro "unboxing"

Here it is, everybody. The MILSIG Paradigm Pro. Although this is belated from the day I actually got it. I have no had a chance to do a video of it. Slowly starting to get into the whole video aspect of things.

I am eagerly waiting for this upcoming weekend to come up so I can play. :) Anyhow; through the series I will be doing videos of shooting, reloads, dry fire with reloads and anything else that I can come up with. Magazine overview and the marker overview itself. Some will be more in-depth and some videos will be just a video of me doing something.

Upcoming posts!

     In the next week or two. I am hoping to get some posts up. I will be putting out the first part of MILSIG's new flagship marker, the Paradigm Pro. I also will be writing my little adventure into modifying my Musical Fidelity X-Can V2. Literally not having ever learned how to solder it was quite an adventure. I know eh, someone who loves electronics and loves building stuff as much as I do, I have never learnt how to use a solder nor solder anything. Never got the chance. Least to say, it went pretty well. I did a lot of reading, videos and asked my friends for advice and help. The overall result went smoothly and I did not end up with any cold joints!

Northshore Paintball - May 6th 2012.

    The weather was peaking beautifully on Sunday. On Saturday I was contemplating if I wanted to go because I was feeling sore from basketball on Friday. However, this Sunday is the first Sunday of the month which means free entry for gun owners. I had to break the trend of being lazy and I figured with the way things have been lately I am going to go. I woke up in the morning around 0800 and looked out to the window I saw the sun shining in.

    However, that morning I'm still feeling sore and did not really want to be running around carrying a marker that weights 3kgs and probably 10lbs on my chest rig. I cleaned my pump off and packed it in my bag and put it into the car along with my Milsig. I arrived at the field around 1100 and parked my car. A fair amount of people already have arrived and I'm thinking today won't go too badly. A group of young kids had a planned a birthday party and a few scattered group of renters. I unpacked my pump, put my knee pads on and then went to air up my tanks. After the air tanks were filled up I went to grab my pump, put my mask on and went to the chrony range. A moment of truth awaits me as I cock my pump and put it over the chrony. HUZZAH! My pump is working! (I will be talking about this a bit more in a different post). After a good year and a half since I put it together. With the help of various friends with their knowledge and experience; have given me insight in figuring out a few extra steps to getting my pump working. This is great because I don't have to run my Milsig setup for the day. Saves me having to lug all that weight around!

    There I am excited to get the day started as some of the regulars start to show up. First game of the day for me starts with Two Fort flag push. We started on the right hand side (facing down the field), Kiernan and I went up the left side of our spawn towards the field exit and it was a mad rush as we started to engage their team. Kiernan is in the front while I am in the rear covering his open side on the right. For the most part he and another team mate (I don't know how to spell his name!) is moving up around the left an all of a sudden Russel pops over the barricade. I see Russel trying to stay tucked in behind a tree as he tries to shoot Kiernan. I line up my marker and fire two shots. I miss a little bit so I adjust my position to be a bit more stable; I wait for a clear shot; just as Russel moved leaned forward I fire a shot and splat. The paintball hits him right in the masks mouth guard. At this point I am grinning massively because not only did my shot hit someone at distance; I hit Russel!. Overcome with joy we finished the game and won via elimination. For the rest of the day I could not stop being joyful. It felt right that after such a long time the pump is finally working. This also meant that I did not have to use my Milsig gear for the day. The game ended and we all met up, refilling our airtanks and the likes and discussed the game. It is always great to start the day with a good game. It gets your mood going and in my case I felt fantastic

    The day went along pretty progressive and nicely. I got out of the house despite being sore and played for good portion of the day. As the field got really busy I decided to take a break and help the staff out. They needed someone to man the air station while they dealt with the front counter. Throughout the whole day I reveled in the fact my pump is finally hitting the sweet spot. All I need to do is fine tune it but other then that it felt great. I hit the field next Sunday and I look forward to putting the pump through its paces. The highlight of the day was smacking Russel in the face with a shot. It feels like a fire has been relit after my pump clicked together. Anyhow, I will have a post more about my pump coming up next seeing as I kept mentioning about it but really that was the main highlight of the day. :P

Objective for February

    School started in the first week of January and my goal among many things is to fully cut back on gaming. This also means spending more time to myself and not trying to run amuck doing things for others and maybe cut down on hanging out when I should be doing productive work. Since the start of the 2012 I have taken things in positive light.


    We all underestimate how important it is to get the right amount of sleep. We try to burn the midnight oil thinking that we need to cram as much information into our head before we sleep. That usually does not work out because you end up impending your short-term memory. Your brain is working on fumes and is not able to recall functions as fast. The more work a person uses their mental energy consciously and/or subconsciously they will feel more drained when they do not get the appropriate amounts of sleep.


    My goals for February is to get into bed by 10pm on the weekdays and probably 11pm or 12am the latest on weekends. Depending I might just keep it at 2200 across the board. It doesn't matter if I feel like I didn't do enough work. On the long run you want to carry your energy over instead of expending it all and running dry.
Cutting back on gaming and getting the proper rest is required. With that said, I shall go sleep.


Shroker

School!

    I have been pretty busy with school lately and still trying to work out the whole getting to bed thing and just knowing when to ignore people and getting into bed myself. One can only do so much but never comprise yourself too much. Especially when you know its an issue.

    Quantum Creativity is my little blog/journal thing I started up last month. When I get around to it I usually write in my journal and decided that some of them I might write into here and expand on the topic. I sometimes will just write what is on my mind or my feelings. Sort of similar to my Xanga but different in a way. Anyways, I hope my project continues to grow and create a place for friends and friends of friends to find interestin artciles to read about. Pictures that I might put up of my own or others or even music and other art related things.

    Shroker's Corner will hopefully grow once I get it going. I know its not as grand as I make it out to be but I can hope right? I know I have some friends who enjoy the stuff I put up so who knows!.

Shroker

Dead USB Host controller

Two nights ago, I woke up in the morning to find my computer not waking from the monitor sleep.
I figured maybe my computer crashed.but nope!.

I might overhaul the system all together while I wait for the warranty board.