When I started this site back in 1996 my only aim was to provide a meeting point for online paintball players and a selection of interesting articles. Since then the number of paintball related web sites has grown at an amazing rate and there are now an incredible number of sites to choose from.

Over the years I have received support from many players around the world with their donation of articles for this site. I have also been most fortunate that in the early days I was allowed to reprint selected articles from the Australian Paintballer magazine and the fabulous UK publication Paintball Games International. The Australian publication is now history but Paintball Games is still going strong and a year or so ago launched their own web site.

My first game was in 1989 and I still remember the anticipation that I and my friends had on the lead up to that day. Funnily enough, the poor maintenance of the Tipmann SMG-60 rental markers did little to ruin our fun. I was lucky in that being the group organiser, I was handed a brand new Phantom pump fitted with a twenty round stick feed. I still wince when I think of the crappy mismatched camos that I'd bought at a disposal store the week before. That's one photo that's not going online! And boy, was I sore at the end of that day. I don't reckon I'd run that hard before in my whole life.

Soon after, I ordered my first marker, a PMI III (the first one in the state). I bought a 150 round Sight Feeder, two Indian Spring pouches and 4 seventy round tubes. For safety gear it was U-Vex goggles fitted to a face mask, boy did that combo fog up!- The JT Snapper had just been introduced but with my meager knowledge I'd chosen the U-Vexs' - if you have a pair of these don't use them, they just aren't safe and never really were. After a few games I found that the 7oz tank just couldn't cut it particularly in Winter. I fitted a 10 oz and then looked to improving the accuracy. I ordered a Smart Parts barrel, one of the really early ones. They were one piece, hand drilled and fitted with a whopping great muzzle brake. That marker rocked and surprised alot of the pump diehards in the early nineties.

My next marker which I bought in 1991 was a Typhoon. These are made by hand by Glenn Palmer and are the markers that Bud Orr saw that inspired the Cocker. Of course this was in the days before the Viewloader agitator hopper appeared so it was shoot a few shots, shake the hopper, shoot a few more. It wasn't until I purchased an early viewloader that the Typhoon became a religious experience. Nothing could come near it in the mid ninties for accuracy and firepower. It saw me through the Victorian 3 man series (we came second one year) and right up to the end of the century. Now I'm not bagging it, but it is a very old Typhoon. The trigger pull is very heavy by modern standards. Because of the difficulties of getting it back through customs (Australia treats markers as real firearms) if I sent it over to Glenn for an upgrade, I decided to retire it from front line service and buy one of these new fangled electro markers in 2001. Whoa, what a difference!

Being short of the folding stuff, I picked up a second hand Bushmaster B2K from a friend (thanks Neil) at a good price. Better still, he had already spent up to fit it out with a Boomstick and a high rise feeder. Fitted with a 114ci tank and AA reg it was a hose monsters dream. Of course I had to get a 12v Revolution to feed it and whilst in spend mode, picked up some Dye sticky grips and a Redz bottle cover.

I had a tough time coming to grips with the light trigger and still have a tendency to shoot my own barricade. The other difficulty was not being able to sight down the barrel like my other markers (the vertical feed is right there in the middle). It took quite some time to come to terms with this with the amusing result that in the first few games shots went in all directions.

With the effective banning of commercial paintball in the state of Victoria where I live I had a hard time keeping any enthusiasm for the game. Many thanks to the guys at the Peninsula Paintball Club (check out their discussion forum on this site for Aussie news) for getting me out of the slump and back onto the field and motivated enough to rebuild this site.

Recently, things have begun looking up and I've re-discovered all my old markers and regularly take them with me to the field. I've rebuilt my Typhoon and it's again taking its fair share of scalps. The "Golden Gun" my PMI III is a real "put a smile on your face" marker with its agressive recoil and can still go head to head with todays hose monsters. Even my Stirling pump has made it out to the field for a bit of exercise lately.

I've just finished adding an online store to the site too. It offers a range of T-Shirts, Mugs etc. The money raised from which will go towards the running costs of the site. Things like hosting and domain name registration.

I'm still looking for material to add to the site and make it more useful to visitors seeking information. If you wish to contribute an article or two, please feel free to email me.

Cheers!

Mike Wallis - Editor
editor@paintmagazine.com

Paint site design and contents Copyright Mike Wallis