A-5 cyclone feed

Enos Shenk wrote: Ive never figured out why people claim the a5 uses "excess" gas. It siphons gas directly heading to the powertube to propell the ball.

On a stock Tippmann, it is "excess," in the sense that Tippmanns waste gas with every shot - might as well use it for something.

In stock configuration, with a fixed drive spring, the same amount of gas is used for each shot (more or less), regardless of velocity settings.  This amount is quite a bit more than is required to actually operate the mechanism.  Some of this excess can be redirected to an RT or a Cyclone, but adding either of those does not change the amount of gas being used per shot.  Therefore, "excess" or waste.

Now, on a Tippmann with a regulator or RVA, having a Cyclone or RT will limit how closely you can tune your gun's efficiency, since the Cyclone and the RT need a certain amount of this "excess" to operate.  It is very possible to set your A-5 RT, using an RVA, so that the gun will fire flawlessly at high velocity, but neither the Cyclone or RT will do anything at all.  In this sense, the Cyclone does lower potential efficiency, but it does not affect the efficiency of a stock gun at all.

For this same reason, when you get low on air, the Cyclone and RT are the first to give.  If you manually pump the Cyclone you will get another 15 (give or take) shots from your A-5 before you are empty.  This gives the illusion of lower efficiency, when what is actually happening is that the A-5 simply needs a slightly higher operating pressure than the 98, because of the Cyclone.

jim_wilson wrote: ...no not really electric hoppers dont eat up bat juice that much just carry 1 spare 1 w/ u thats all and besides then ud have ur gas for shootin, not in the cyclone feeding and yes thats a great idea

Please read the previous posts before joining a thread, you obviously didn't read what was said already. If you did then you would know that we've already gone over how you don't lose any gas to the cyclone, it just uses the gas that is normally wasted.

Good idea but the hopper will feed faster and longer on gas

imo, i think  the A-5 uses more, my friends 98c used 1 12 oz. i used 3 on my A-5.  Every game i was next to him and we shot about the same amt of paint and speed of shoting.