In a follow-up I didn't want to get lost in the comments of an old post here's what VFTD regular Frederick Rodrigues from France put up in comments yesterday. (Thanks, Fred!)
A little update about pricing. Laurent Hamet - Millennium, Sup'Airball and Facefull owner announced on a french board that the .50 cal box will be 50% cheaper than the actual .68 cal. Yes you got it, 50% cheaper!! It means that tournament players could buy their high grade tournament paint at a range of 24€ to 30€ ($36 to $45) Since few weeks now, the french market is suppressed with the whole .50cal marketing process. L. Hamet claims that the .50 cal is the only way to save paintball, Profusion - official GI MilSim dealer in France, broadcast tests about accuracy and new range of products, Kingman, Dye and Eclipse also joined the party. Oh! And last but not least, L. Hamet let us know that the Millennium Series could feature both of caliber on his fields in the upcoming season.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
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23 comments:
Having both paint sizes on the same field will definately be a litmus test for the whole "revolution" that is pushed on the players. It will be interesting to see if there are some other adjustments to the rules to level out the reported performance differences - such as a reduced field size? If that happens, we'd need a set of other offsetting adjustments to gameplay as well..
I will be amused if the guy who told us fields should all be 125'x150' now comes along 7 years later and tells us they should change again.
Just in the nick of time to help paintball in Germany out. Maybe no more SWAT teams raiding German paintbal fields in the future.
Now THAT's a proper argument for the .50 cal. I think that the German legislation is using the force of impact as basis for the fps regulations they have, right? The .50 is well below the threshold even at 300 fps.
I believe it's 5 joules which is almost exactly what 1.21 grams works out to at 300 fps.
And there was an anonymous tip to the police? How convenient, a 60 million people market up for grabs then.
But even with .50cal you runt to the issue with adjustable regulators. If you can adjust your marker to go over the joule limit no matter .50cal or .68cal its still a no go in Germany.
Why would there have to be an anonymous tip. I'm sure the police hav always been aware that paintballs were being shot at speeds higher than 214 fps. But the timing is an odd coincidence.
I think the law is 7.5 joules. Going off the 214 fps, it's pretty close with a 3.2g paintball. So maybe it's 7. If it is 7, that lets you get a 1.21g paintball up to 352 feet per second. That's probably not enough margin of error to have 300 fps and adjustable regulators. It might be OK at 7.5 joules though.
Just checked, 7.5 joules. That's 365 fps for a .50 cal paintball.
Thanks Raehl for clarifying. I was going off what someone on MCarterBrown posted, which is obviously incorrect.
7.5 joules should be workable with .50 cal and the right marker/reg combo. Maybe they will have to adjust their F-stamp law and work that in somehow.
I'm not a fan of .50 , but it would be better than no paintball.
How did we go from ".50 caliber = fail" to ".50 caliber? I'll have two, please." ?
Changed continents.
I'm tired of hearing save paintball - paintball is fine. Anyone with any business sense knows we are going through a very difficult change of economy. Something that the world as a whole hasnt experienced at the same time. Problem is paintball never foreseen it coming nor was able to adjust in time. Will the .50 cal help - that has yet to be seen. I'm not a fan of the main drivers of this movement. Honestly I think we need to look at the leagues and formats first.
Back to the .50 cal paintball - lets assume for a minute it really is half price for a case of paint. DO YOU REALLY THINK THE FIELD OWNER IS GOING TO EXTEND THAT TO THE CONSUMER?? Come on these guys are hurting for many different reasons, will a decrease in price help - sure but not the impact i think people are projecting. Paintball is expensive sport, players are not buying high end guns anymore, not buying accessories, clothing etc. When the economy heals so will paintball and every other industry thats hurting right now.
"In accordance with 2 section 4 German Weapons Act (WaffG) together with appendix 2 section 2 undersection 2 number 1.1 paintball markers can only be bought by persons of 18 years of age. A precondition is that the marker has a muzzle velocity of less than 7.5 joule and that the F inside a pentagon plus manufacturer or importer sign is mounted in accordance with 24 section 1 and 2 WAffG i.V.m 25 section 1 WAffG 25 section 4 number 1c.
Violation of this standard may lead to substantial monetary penalties and prison terms.
PRO (retired), why do you feel field owners wouldn't pass the savings along? They always have in the past due to competitvie forces (one does it, they all do it). If it were possible to have larger margins and they are hurting due to the economy, wouldn't they just raise current paint prices to ease the pain? No, because they feel they can't, again due to competitive forces. I don't think along those lines, but I know most other field owners do.
As the Asian region bases it's rules on Millenium the word is next year if .50cal is available they will allow both cals at tournaments. The big boys here are convinced it will help their effort to expand paintball in the region. I'll await the facts and figures to decide. With Youngblood, Ceranski, Hendsche also in Malaysia this week for the World Cup Asia it will be interesting to hear what they have to say about .50 cal debate.
As a field owner I would like to see 50 cal work as long as there is a definite price difference. And you bet I would pass that along to the customer! The more customers I have that can afford to play, the more revenue I make. Lets be positive out there.
Stark
There's never any question about the law over there but it is curious that by and large authorities have ignored paintball in the past. Now they are suddenly motivated to send out riot police? Curious. Btw, I would be amazed if all the confiscated guns didn't have their F stamps.
Houdini
If you hear anything that seems interesting coming out of the event drop me a line if there seems no otherwise appropriate place to post it up. Thanks.
Anon, revenue and profit are not the same thing.
Weird thing is, I get less customers at my (recreational) field with a substantial price drop of paintballs. Not immediately, but after a while.
I'm looking for the actual original german text of the law if anyone can find it. Not what paintball people think it says, but the actual word-for-word law. I'm curious as to what language puts paintball guns within the scope of the 'firearm' definition, but not other items.
I have been able to determine that the law does NOT say a paintball gun can't fire at greater than 7.5 joules directly. It's just that anything that has a muzzle velocity under 7.5 joules is not considered a firearm.
The law APPARENTLY also has exceptions for things that fire non-lethal incapacitants, so someone with a smooth lawyer might be able to wiggle everyone out of trouble.
Changed my nick from my first name (Sam) to the same I use at p8ntballer. I remembered I had that "official" translation available so posted it up incase someone might have use for it.
But yes the timing was quite something with the raid so we can just speculate. There had been common ground between the German goverment and retailers in Germany until now. Its not like officials wouldnt have known all this time whats going on in tournaments.
As for MS and .50 cal I bet we will hear whats gona change for next year officially just before the season start, as usual. Also as usual I think we will start soon hearing "rumors" from industry people thats involved with MS on what their plans are.
raehl
The big players in Germany have quite competent people working for them and lawyers so its quite safe to assume that if they could have they would already have found that loophole. ;) That quote I put earlier is from one of them.
As a side note propobly not alot of people know that here in Eruope, in Luxembourg paintball markers are compleatly illegal unless you have firearm permits for them.
On one of my trips back home from an MS leg I had with my friend return flight back from Luxembourg to Finland as we had some vacation days at the same time. Was quite a suprise when our markers got confiscated after our bags where checked in. Luckily trough mine friends EU connections we got our markers back a few days later with fedex.
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