64
The Top Historical Paintball Product Innovations, P
2000, Tippmann
Flatline Barrel
Over the years Tippmann has had a
knack for being on the early side of
paintball product trends and innovations. They designed the first fully automatic paintball gun with their SMG-60
in 1986 and they were among the early
semi-auto releases with the 68 Special. They also released one of the early
(not first) paint grenades and in 2001
released the first barrel to put backspin on a paintball, giving your marker
greater range. That barrel, known as
the Flatline Barrel, was controversial
early on as players were skeptical that
the barrel would actually increase the
range of your marker, and even if it did,
would paintballs break on their intended targets at a greater distance?
The answer to the first question was
a resounding “yes.” The Flatline barrel
did in fact add 75 feet to a Tippmann
marker firing a paintball at 300 feet
per second, shot at a 45 degree angle
(according to Paintball 2Xtremes Magazine testing in 2002). The answer to
the second question is “sometimes.”
Like a paintball fired from any marker
with any barrel, there are a lot of factors that go into a ball break. Does it
hit the target on the ball’s seam? Does
it hit something “hard”? The obvious
answer here is the farther away your
February 2013
dECEMBER2015