Paintball History

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The Game of Paintball

Paintball began in 1981 with 12 competitors playing capture the flag with air-powered pistols. Since then, the game has exploded into a multimillion-dollar sport with amateur and professional tournaments across the United States and Europe, offering cash purses and prizes in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Daisy (manufacturer of pellets, B.B.s and air guns), Crossman (manufacturer of airguns), Scott USA (manufacturer of ski poles and goggles) and JT USA (manufacturer of motocross safety equipment) are just a few of the companies that have expanded into the painball world. Today, tournaments are sponsored by companies such as Budweiser and Pepsi-Cola

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Playing the Game
What is paintball? Well, combine the game of capture the flag with chess, mix in hide 'n' seek and add a large dose of adrenaline. Painball is challenging and fast-paced. As few as two or as many as eighty can play

The basic game has two teams, each with its own flag station and matching color armbands. Each team starts at its own flag statioin. A starting signal is given and each team tries to reach the other team's station, grab the flag and race back to it's station. When a player gets tagged -hit by a paintball- he/she is out of the game. If a player is carrying a flag when tagged, he/she must drop the flag at that spot, then leave the game.

Equipment
The basic equipment you need for play is: paintball safety goggles and face mask, proper clothing (camouflage jacket and pants, old fatigues or plain old blue jeans and a jacket), extra paint tubes with painballs and the desire to have a great time

How a paintgun works
All paintguns use air pressure from an air tank or 12-gram cartridges to fire a painball. The velocity of the paintball leaving the barrel is usually 250 to 300 feet per second (fps). 300 fps is the maximum allowed at tournaments while 290 fps is the maximum allowed at most playing fields. Air tanks come in different sizes. The bigger the tank, the longer you can play before requiring a refill. Sizes begin at 4 oz. and go up to 20 oz.

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Paintgun types
The guns of the paintball world vary from the basic pump pistol to the high-tech semiautomatic.

Semiautomatics
Semiautomatic guns have a painball loaded into the gun automatically after the gun fires. The gun can shoot paint as fast as the player can pull the trigger.

Pumps
Pump-action guns have a manual pump mechanism that loads the paintball into the gun. The player must pump-load after every shot.

Velocity Check
To check the velocity at which a paintgun is fireing, a chronograph is used. The radar chronograph uses a small Doppler radar to measure the velocity of a paintball. The paintball is fired over the machine. The radar picks up the paintball and records the speed of the ball on a digital display. If a gun is fireing paintballs at over 300 fps, it is adjusted to lower the velocity.

The first chronographs used light. The paintball was fired over the machine. Light entering the machine was broken, starting a timer. The machine measured the time the light was broken and calculated the velocity of the paintball.

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Friday & Saturday: 10am - Midnight
Sunday: 10am - 6pm

Paintball Arena Open Play Hours
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Friday & Saturday: 2pm - Midnight
Sunday: 2pm - 6pm

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