Lighten Your Load: Paintball Remote Line

Everyone knows that paintball is a game of skill and speed. Having a light setup can definitely benefit you in the quickness category. Using a paintball remote line on your marker is one way to reduce the weight of your gun thereby increasing your reaction time and speed. Remote lines consist of a few basic parts. The part that connects to the tank is called a universal fill adapter (ufa). It's a small cylinder that's threaded inside. There's a screw knob on the outside top of the ufa. Your tank gets threaded into the universal fill adapter. Once completed seated, turning the top knob will depress the tank's pin valve allowing the air to flow through the remote line. The line itself is typically made of either stainless steel or a high strength plastic. The plastic lines are coiled to stretch for increased length or recoil to stay compact for tight places. Lines are usually rated by a 'burst pressure'. This is the pressure that must be exceeded before the integrity on the line will compromise causing air to leak. Most heavy duty remotes have a burst pressure rating of about 10-12,000 psi. This far exceeds the pressure in an HPA Nitro tank of 4500 psi or a CO2 tank of 850 psi. The next part of the setup uses a quick disconnect. This is a two piece fitting consisting of a male and female end. The female end attaches to the remote line and the male to the threaded air source adapter. Quick disconnects are used to allow you to easily detach and reattach the remote from your marker. Without the quick disconnect you would have to constantly unscrew your tank or unscrew the ASA from the bottle adapter on the gun. Lastly, the male end threads into an air source adapter (ASA). This piece converts the line into the gun's bottle adapter. Obviously a paintball remote line will greatly reduce the carrying weight of your marker by allowing your tank to be remotely located in a tactical vest or pod harness. This is valuable to Woodsball players as replica scenario guns have stocks, mags and handguards which can add a lot of weight.

Instant On-Off: Remote Slide Check

If you were to disconnect your remote line from your marker while the tank was still connected to the line, air would continue to flow. Adding a coil remote slide check to your remote will help cure this problem. In paintball, normal quick disconnects alone do not shut off the airflow as in other pneumatic devices such as an air tool hooked to a compressor. The paintball slidecheck is a one way device that's inserted between the quick disconnect and the line. It can only be installed one way because one end is male and other is female. On the fitting you will notice a small collar. This collar can be slid back and forth. The collar is responsible for stopping or allowing the air to flow through the fitting. This prevents you from having to constantly unscrew your tank everytime you want to disconnect your gun from your remote line. The only install tip to keep in mind is to make sure you wrap all metal threads with a basic teflon or plumbers tape. This helps keep the fittings from leaking while under pressure. At RTS, we also stock the remote slide check as well complete paintball remote lines and replacement parts.