Lets get this show back on the road, Shall we?
I've been meaning to do a write up on my apex 2 tip for quite some time now so what better time to do it than now?
I'll start off by saying that it is quite a beautiful piece of equipment and a great addition to any marker.
I have run it with about 3 different setups and being short medium or long (pending paint quality - I'll get to that) great performance.
Retailing at about $50 taxes in you can't go wrong with one. An Empire/BT apex 2 barrel is ready to be used out of the box coming in standard 14" or 18" in either BT/A5, Cocker or 98 threads. The barrel that it comes with is a great barrel but I would recommend swapping it out and throwing on either a 10"/12" Flasc/Lapco barrel, as I just find the stock barrel to be to long. It can only be used on certain barrels or an attachment that lapco and flasc both sell, I'm not sure if any companies make an adapter for it but it would be cool if it wasn't barrel specific.
What makes an apex tip great is its ability to send paint longer distances in a flattened trajectory almost in the same sense as what flat line does but I've found much much more accurate.
How does it do this you ask? Well quite simple actually by adding back spin to the paintball it cause the paint ball to spin backwards as it leaves the barrel which in turn makes the paintball fly more straight or fly upwards, varying from a little to a lot.
Now as I said before pending paint quality. If you are using poor grade paint with your apex on even at the first setting, its going to be going everywhere.
A quick picture of an apex 2 tip
There is 9 different setting to choose from each of increasing intensity (you can see in the picture above there is a little tab that slides forward and back), I recommend using around the 4th or 5th setting, anything more than that causes the paint to dip down as it leaves the barrel, then fly straight up, (I believe that empire calls this the "low and long" shot) it's great for those REALLY long shots, like we're talking like well over 120 ft+
but you start to loose accuracy at that great a distance and the paint has slowed down to much to even really break, again, in my tests anyway not to say that other people haven't had different experiences with it.
I've found that shooting on around the 4th setting, shooting good quality paint, a nice good quality barrel and fair weather conditions. Preforms as follows:
Short distance 15 - 30 ft. Not really to much to notice here, you will notice on about the 4th setting you paint is hitting slightly below where your aiming. but only slightly.
Medium distance 30 - 60 ft. Here is where your going to really notice it, where your aiming is more or less where the paint is going to hit, no arching of your shots needed, until it start to get to the far end like 90 ft
+
Long Distance 90 - 120 ft. At the 90 ft mark you are going to have to start arching you shots increasing as you start to shoot further. You will still notice a huge difference in how your shooting compared to shooting just a regular barrel.
So we have got the flattened flight path (almost flatline mimicking), the "low and long shot" but it has two more settings as well, the barrel tip also has the ability to rotate on the barrel a full 360 degrees.
Rotating either to the left or to the right 90 degrees with the tab clicked up a couple notches will cause the paintball to literally hook from left to right depending on which way it's turned. Personally I feel these shots to be cheap, but hey, to each his own, it works so why not use it. Right? This particular shot is used for hooking around cover (i.e bunkers) If you play around with rotation on it you can get a variety of effects from the hook, hooking just around the cover, or lobbing the shot up and hooking on top of you target. A nifty effect to use on a paintball marker.
The last setting that the apex has to offer is the "Dive Bomb", by turning it upside down or 180 degrees from the start position you are able to make the paintball actually come out of the barrel and go over cover if Hooking from the side is not an option. again you can play with this rotation doing a combination of any of the four methods thereby getting paintballs to actually do some pretty cool shots.
Empire Paintball Here is the link to empires page for their apex 2 tip as you can see by the picture the different shot it is capable of doing. *Please note that the hook shots do not actually suddenly turn at 90 degrees when reaching their target*
Breakdown of the tip is fairly simple and I will cover that in a couple of days, just itching to get this done.
All in all I love my apex 2 barrel the silencer look has a great tactical feel to it, and will give you a great tactical advantage at a reasonable price too!
My rating for the apex 2 barrel and tip is 8.5/10
Pros
Pros
- Great tactical look
- Able to sling paint over long distances
- Fairly straight forward to use
Cons
- Has to be barrel/attachment specific
- Breakdown is a little tough to do ( I will cover in next article )
