In part 1 I covered my first and subsequent pump guns up until the advent of the semi-autos.  This was, approximately the latter half of 1989 -1990.

My team had transitioned from a "anyone is welcome and we play all kinds of ball (Muthers of Destruction) to a small group of individuals focused intensely on tournament play (Werewolves Competition Paintball Team);  We cut the Muthers from about 45 players to 7.

We started with a mix of pump guns and were picked up by LAPCO, being the first team they sponsored with Ghosts.  We used our pump guns throughout the 89 season and into the 1990 season when semi-autos were just beginning to appear.

At that time, we kept really good game and performance stats and we knew that before going with the Ghosts, players having down guns  during a game was a serious problem.  Our records  indicated something like 1.5 guns going down every game on average.

Unacceptable, to lose a player and a half every game just to equipment failures.  Despite an initial hiccup (Colin had seriously underestimated the number of shots a player would put through a gun and the sears on his hammers "mushroomed" after just a few days of practice, but he quickly corrected that problem), the Ghosts, when properly maintained, dropped that average to well less than one per game.

So when it came time to giving serious thought to transitioning to semis, we knew that a key factor was going to be reliability...and none of the guns on the market at that time showed any signs of being reliable.

Yes, they were just teething problems with the new tech, but we rejected Illustrators, Golden Eagles and a good handful of other semis (including level 6.5 Automags because the "C" clips used to retain the valve tube kept failing).  We continued to play, effectively, with pump guns against semi-autos through a good portion of that season.

Then, the beast arrived - PMI's PMI-III or VM-68.  Way too big, way to heavy (13 freaking pounds) and not the greatest gun in  cold weather environments.  (We were all still using CO2 back then - and the 'Wolves also stayed with 12-grams and AGD SixPaks, because you couldn't freeze them solid with rapid fire and they were more versatile, giving you the opportunity to shoot a bit hot through supercharging or depleting them for "blooping" shots, useful against players cowering in a nearby bunker.

When nice and warm, the VM performed reliably and consistently, but we almost rejected it because of the cold weather performance.  Then someone (might have been an All Americans player) discovered that if you took the valve spring out of the valve (and bored out one of the valve holes to a  wider diameter), most of those issues disappeared.  Throw on a newly available "Expansion Chamber" (Black Rains in our case from Air America) and problem solved.

We went with the VMs.  They were still very "smokey".  If you fired fast enough, the cloud of CO2 vapor coming out of your barrel could obscure the field.  And all of us spent some time doing one-armed curls with a fully loaded gun, just to be able to one-hand them when needed.

And as was mentioned previously, they were BIG.  You practically had to play at least a foot off of your cover to give the barrel clearance.  On the other hand, they had very good consistency and accuracy, supporting our long ball tactics.  There's a pic of me in The Complete Guide to Paintball, shooting that gun at a 45 degree angle, but my eyes don't line up with the barrel, because I'm looking at a tree branch about 150 feet away and am angling shots just over that branch, in order to rain on a bunker.  That's "long ball".

One other VM-68 story before moving on.

On one of the paintball forums of the time, someone was praising AGD because they "had techs to support their gun at every event".  Having experienced the 6.5 issues and not being up to date on the Mag's evolution, I offered the flip response of "That's because they need them".

Now you have to know that while we weren't a Mag team at the time, we knew AGD and Tom Kaye very well;  we'd been big advocates of his 12-gram quick changer, the SixPak+.  You also have to know that the Paintball rumor mill was as fast back then as it is today.

I got a call no more than 15 minutes after posting the above from someone  telling me that "Tom is not very happy with you right now."

I had no clue as to why.  It never occurred to me that my flip answer would cause a problem.  The origin of the upset was explained to me, I called Tom up, apologized, explained I was just trying to be funny and offered to take the post down.  He explained all of the improvements that had been made to the gun and we yada yaded for a bit, defusing the situation.

But I knew I had to go a bit farther to heal the relationship and was determined to do so.  At the very next event we were both at (don't remember which), I marched up to the AGD booth, VM-68 in hand, planted myself in front of the booth, caught Tom's eye, said "Watch" and dropped the gun on the ground.  I then jumped up and down on it a few times, finishing up with mock spitting*.

Tom's smile was all I needed to see, and soon thereafter I was using a level 7 Automag, subsequently modified by boring out the air passage on the reg, PTP spacers instead of springs and a J&J all brass, straight rifled barrel.

A short while after that it was equipped with an Apocalypse air rig from Air America.

Despite my praise for Ghosts and other earlier guns, that Mag was the best gun I ever shot.  Consistent within 2 fps shot after shot after shot.  I used to call it my "fire and forget" gun, because I could (and did) shoot out a player and turn to shoot out another because I did not have to wait to see if the ball hit the target.  I KNEW it would.

Around this same time, everyone got really serious about chronographing at events, adding on-field testing for suspect guns, and I really enjoyed frustrating the refs.  I'd clock onto the field at 298 (298, 298, 296) and every single time the chrono ref would say "are you sure you want to go on with that?  We're testing on the field", followed by instructing another ref to make sure they check me during the game.  I never got a hot gun penalty (and no, I wasn't cheating somehow, the gun was that consistent).  Some of the AGD techs said it must have been a Wednesday gun.

It was especially fun when I'd put a Pro-Team Products "mini" Armson barrel on it, maybe 6 inches long.  That thing barked like a hell hound and scared the paint right out of opponent's pods.  "Check that gun!"....298, 298, 298....

*Truth to tell, I knew that I could have driven over that gun with a semi, or maybe even a tank, and it would not have been the worse for wear.  But it was the gesture that counted.