sniper upgrades

modwerdna wrote:

I am restoring 6 tippmann procarbines and would like to trick one out to be as accurate as possible with good paint.
I really want to play sniper,

There are no snipers in paintball. If you wear a ghillie, hide in the bushes and shoot people without warning, that is an ambush. The technology does not yet exist to allow "sniping." (Although, the new ammo that Tiberious Arms is coming out with may change that fact.)

and I know markers will only be but so accurate but I would love to hear what everyone thinks. on these points

1- Hpa instead or co2

HPA is generally a good upgrade. The superior consistency of HPA over CO2 can increase accuracy by making the marker performance more consistent from shot to shot. However, some older (pre-model 98) Tippmanns seem to work better on CO2 in their stock configuration. I recommend borrowing an HPA tank and testing performance before spending the money on one.

, 2- over bore

Assuming that you are using the firearms definition which refers to a barrel that has been bored slightly larger than stock, my answer is no. Boring a stock barrel is a waste of time as the stock barrels are generally crap and when you were done you would just have an over-bored POC. Boring an aftermarket barrel is a good way to ruin an aftermarket barrel and waste the money you spent on it. You can buy larger bore barrels, but you really get the best performance from mid-range bore-sized barrels that can handle various paint sizes. For better performance from paint to barrel matching you would need to look into a barrel kit that used different sized inserts or barrel backs.

, rifled,

I'm not a fan of rifled barrels. In my experience the only rifled barrel that I've seen actually improve accuracy was made by Armson. Any rifled barrel becomes absolutely useless once you break paint in it

long

Because paintball velocity is limited to 300 fps for safety reasons, barrel length really does not affect accuracy or range. You need at least 8 inches of barrel to get the ball up to speed efficiently and to sufficiently stabalize it for reasonable accuracy. Anything much longer than 16 inches tends to decrease efficiency and can cause breakage issues with more fragile paint brands. Most people (myself included) recommend barrels in the 12-14 inch range as being optimal.

or what barrel,

The best basic one piece barrels are probably the J&J Ceramic or Lapco Bigshot.

3- sights?

There are very mixed feelings about sites on paintball guns; the following are my opinions: Magnifying scopes are useless for any purpose other than scouting ahead on large fields during long games, I like red dot sights and believe they are very useful for getting the first shot on target when you have time to use them. However, you will not always have time to use them so should learn to snap-shoot proficiently as well.

Many people believe any sight is useless on a marker and you should just snap-shoot at close range and walk your shots in at longer range.

I would love to be able to take a 200 foot shot and hit the first ball

This can be done; but with the current technology it will be very rare and would be 99% luck.

,without blowing my cover all the time

If you have to fire more than a few shots (and at 200 feet you will) then you can consider your cover blown. On the plus side, you will be out of effective range of their return fire just like they were out of your range.

, and having to spray for effect.

At the long ranges, you don't spray for effect, you spray in order to have a chance to get a hit or break.

Thanks