Sniper's future is soon to be changed; Different Ammo

[sneaky-fab]

Hey guys

 

I found this article at Renegade Recon, where ppl aks things from Mr Koba

 

and talks about that he busy with a new type of "BB" and its gonna like a soft pellet

 

Link: http://www.renegaderecon.com/kobascorner3.php

 

Hi Mr. Kobayashi,

 

My question is regarding the following. I was wondering if you ever think that airsoft bbs will evolve into a pointed projectile? (much like modern bullets.) I would think that it could be a possibility though I'm not sure how much change would be involved. (i.e. magazines would need to be redesigned and so would the loading tools.) If this ever did take place then pieces like your twist barrel would become even more useful and I would imagine that engagement distances would lengthen some. I am interested in what you have to say. Thanks for your time.

 

Koba: "I think the pursuit of best trajectory performance has already reached the limit. Therefore, if you require higher quality of trajectory performance, BB should change it’s shape into different shape from round. We are researching soft pellet that is not ball shape (like BB), but this is not ready to present at this stage. When this soft pellet has been completed, it is mandatory for structure of loading tool to be different as well.

 

At this point, the Twist Inner Barrel is just one example of irregular trajectory adjusting method as “unique trajectory of round bullet” with the combination of hop up effect. With the soft power pellet, which is not ball-shape, the result might be different. Unexpected incident is not only the 911!"

 

 

 

 

I agree with him about USA's hype to exceed with FPS's. its crazy , on airsoftforum.com they would like to have 600 FPS sniper rifles, crazy heh ?

hell, 300 fps still leaves a big welt at my skin at 10 m

[TDS]

Ive tried it, shaped rounds are less user-friendly due to drop, but much more accurate,

 

I really doubt your average end user has the IQ and know how to properly compensate for drop, but like most kobe guns they aren't really directed at an average user.

 

I user a "super high power" rifle, and have never even made someone bleed with it in ~5 years, it can be done if the person behind the trigger is responsable

[Swerve]

off the top of my head after reading the above:

 

tictac shaped rounds

 

 

To prevent them tumbling in flight, have them with spiral grooves along the longer axis. Self rifling.

[w733commando]

The only problems with shaped rounds is increased probability of them penetrating your skin, and the fact that we'll have to come up with a new mag design to make the BBs feed properly.

[gunfighters]

and lets keep in mind the link posted is over 3 years old..

a rifled Bullet shaped projtile would not be great for AS use

let me start off by saying any talk of anything but a round ball with hop up is just plane silly. any one who talks about "fined" projectiles or rifled barrels doesn’t have a firm grasp on the ballistics involoved, end of story. Yes it works well for heavy, fast rounds that have the purpule of killing, not so great on ones you don’t want imbedded in some ones skin. Most of the gain(but not all) comes for the increased weight of the projectile, not the shape. Not something we can really do for safety and eftiviceness reactions.. 200fps 1.5g rounds any one???

it goes in to a very slipery slope. Any yes it has been done before, Asahi "Blade Bullet", RAP4 "airfin", and Masudaya 7mm "long range" are a few examples

the longer cross section is more prone to wind drift, using fins to create gyroscopic stablation after the round leaves the barrel causes range robbing drag and as it takes the round some time to "wind up" it can be inconstant. a 1j gun with the hop up adjusted for flat flight will put about a 1916 revolutions per sec of back spin on a .2. using the engey of the gun to creat the rotation is far cleaner then using the projtiles energy. this of couse leads us to the "why not rifled barrels" argument that allways pops up..

gyroscopic action dosen care what way its spinning, just that it is, and how fast it spins. you hear a lot of 1 in 12 and 1 in 10 twist in RS, thats one roation in blank inches to get the same level of stability on a 1 j .2 you would need a 1 to 2.4 twist, 1 twist every 2.4". thats realy tight and builds up a lot of friction, if you run the Greenhill formula the "ideal" RPS for stability of a .2 would be in the 3050 range, thats 1 twist in 1.3" @ 1J

while an exreatme example think of a nut on a threaded rod, you push down on the nut and nothing happens, even tho it is free to spin.

even if you got it rifled and could spin the BB @ the same RPS , the accuracy would be no different than a hop up one, and the hop has the benefit of extending the eftive range of the gun by providing a flat trajatiory

the fact that if it penetrates the air better (and it does) also means it penetrates skin better and such rounds would have a lower safe muzzle engery than a round ball of the same weight. top this off with the chance of the round striking something in flight an hitting some one back wards with sharp little fins

and most of all, the lack of hop up to give a flat flight path. you end up arcing your shots, realy arcing them, to the tune of the bore angle needing to be put yards above the target.

lets mock up a more bolistic round

say 12 mm by 6mm, and bring it down to 4.5mm half sphere @ the tip. call it .43 grams

so a 2.8J gun would shoot it @ 365fps and the "ideal" would be a 1 to 1 twist

no "real" math here as I don't have time to run all the numbers.

but lest "say" its a 33% improvement in its drag vs a round BB .43,

ok

@ 200' it has droped 60 inches (5') and @ 250'+ you are looking @ the very real posabilty of the muzzle of the gun interfering with the line of site on the target

compare that to a BB .43 with hop up that has droped 12" @ 210'

top it off, this round would have about the same skin penetrating effects as a .177 steel bb… not somting ya want to get hit by

the force of gravity is the problem, what ever the projtile is drops @ the same rate (unles Hop up holds it up) it doesn’t matter if its real steel or a plastic "toy" bullet, the range is a pure factor of FPS and engery retention VS gravite

imagine a completely flat field with a 2.8J AS gun and a .50 cal MBG leveled and 60" off the ground and fire them @ the same time

in .8 sec a non hop up .43 and a .50 sniper round will drop the same distance and impact the dirt @ the same time.

The difrance is the .43 traveled 140' and the .50 travled 2400'ish

this example also shows the flaw in the argument that changing the shape for better ballistic coefficient is going to give us great range when compared to hop up. A .43 has 2X the mass and the same drag ratio (well realy less because its flying slower) of a .2 and has droped 60 inches @ 140’ with a 200’ “hit” being out of the question do to the high arc needed to get the bb there, yet a .2 with hop up has only dropped 12” @ 200’ when fired @ the same energy level (2.81J)

lets look @ simuntion as a great example of what a 6mm rifled, conical shaped round would be like as their .223 fits in to an Airsoft ballistic model quite nicely http://www.simunition.com/upload/doc_4.pdf

its a 5.56MM .23 gram shaped projectile fired @ 650ish fps threw a rifled barrel..

the company states the accuracy to be a 16 inch group @ 100',heck even a crapastic Well AEG will do a better group better than that. Following MOA thats a 32" group @ 200'!

and lets be real thats what the company is saying it does, many users of the product will tell you its hard to hit anthing @ 100' in still air, if there is a bit of a breze, forget it.

top all of this of with the fact that’s its fairly easy to do a good polishing job on balls, not so easy on 2mm high fins and outher little bits of cast plastic

the bottom line is yes, round balls have a horrible ballistic coefficient. BUT given the limitations on weapon power for safty reastions the hop up efect over comes most of this and makes it the most suitable ammo type for our sport. I highly dought we will see a "ground breaking" change in our amo style any time soon

 

 

(this was cut and pasted form some of my outher writings.. all engery levels are provided as an example)

[sneaky-fab]

ofcours, if a mature and responsible person handles a power gun it will be safe but too bad there moments that bad things happen

 

I shot my little brother in the face , very close cuz i shocked that he flanked me downhill. I regret that my reflex took controll of my trigger finger

 

But in real life, automatic weapons shoot the same velocity as a normal snipers rifle such as an m700. The difference is that the sniper shoots more accurate and so achieves more effective range but has the same max range as an AK 47 ( up to 800 m, any further and the bullet is no more subsonic wich results inaccuracy )

 

So why not cap the velocitys of the AEG's and snipers the same ? to round 350 ? So we can make the MED ( Minimum Engagement Distance ) very short

Snipers rifles such as VSR's has much better accuracy then AEG's

 

 

@ Gunfighters

 

I agree with you, and i forgot that the article is 3 years old wich means that the project failed ( i guess )

 

We need to except the limitations of airsoft and get off the FPS madness cuz i sh*t in my pants while searching for sniper with 550 fps and praying that he will remember the engagement rules

[gunfighters]

Snipers rifles such as VSR's has much better accuracy then AEG's

not really...

power levels and ammo choice really make the difrance..

 

it would be fairly easy to tune a m-4 to you suggested limit and make it shoot on par with a bolt gun..

sure there a bit of difrance on paper

but but in the field after I load the mag with .28s and fire a 10 round burst your way , much less dump 1/2 a hi cap on you postion

[sneaky-fab]

u have to find me first and when you come close you got a BB at your head without hearing anything ( no AEG noise )

 

[gunfighters]

agreed..

but thats a style issue, not performance..

I can hide in a gilly with a foamed gear box

[sneaky-fab]

to make an AEG like that you must be hardcore

 

thank God that not every body is hardcore

[TDS]

not really...

 

Yes really, aegs don't have a consistent air seal+velocity solution, a well setup sniper rifle has a +/- 1fps variance, havent even /heard/ of an aeg that has anywhere near that, I guess it could work if your site has no fps/ammo/anything restrictions, but if thats the case, you might as well be playing backyard scrimishes.

 

<-- airsoft tech 5 years running

[sneaky-fab]

TDS

 

would a 450 still be more effective then a TK twist setup at 50 m ?

[TDS]

TDS

 

would a 450 still be more effective then a TK twist setup at 50 m ?

 

I haven't run a TK twist setup before, but ive built them I'm guessing yes. A TK setup is excellent for a field rifle since you can have a very reliable gun (because its shooting low power) with a decent rate of fire, firing VERY far for its power range, its probably the ideal gun for places like the UK where your power is limited to 1J or so.

 

The idea/trick is to have a very consistent output, some people use gas guns with external rigs, some people use spring guns, but every inconsistency between shots is a huge hit on your groupings, in cases of more than a few fps, it causes flyers.

 

Second is having a stable setup, goes with above, your inner/outer barrel setup needs to be secure and dampened so that any vibrations sent through them is quickly delt with, figure the difference between a normal and tightbore barrel, is about a hair width, you need the same tolerance throughout the whole rifle. Everything needs to be secure, but not over tight, its probably the biggest pain. O rings and plumbers tape are your friends, if there's even the tiniest bit of play between anything toss an O ring in there, making sure its not too much and stresses the gun once you tighten everything up.

 

 

[starburst]

Even if the Americans are insane enough to have a shaped round, firing at their velocities, it isnt going to happen here as thats likely to make an airsoft more dangerous and likely to push it into the weapon catogory.

 

Americans are so crazy with their demands for such high powered sniper/AEG/GBBs

[Stealthbomber]

TBH, I reckon discussion of different-shaped projectiles is a bit pointless.

 

I'd certainly be interested to compare the accuracy of a tictac-shaped 0.2g round and a normal round one. I'd also be interested to compare (somehow) stuff like force of impact and penetration.

However, that's from a technical POV. From a practical POV I just can's see anything non-spherical taking off.

 

Any proposed shaped projectile would need to be plastic and NOT a "soft pellet".

What's the point of, as TDS says, building a super-accurate gun and then firing a projectile that won't act in a repeatable way when fired?

Using rubber slugs in airsoft guns, with rifled barrels, has already been tried with the RAP airsoft conversions. It didn't work because the soft projectiles would randomly bind against the inside of the barrel and suffer dramatic inconsistencies in flight because of it.

 

I can see a hard plastic projectile working when fired along a rifled barrel.

The main problem with it would be the magazines and the breech assembly. I guess it'd be easy enough to cast correctly-shaped components out of plastic but, unfortunately, I just can't see manufacturers bothering.

There's several things about airsoft guns that make you think "I wonder why they don't change that?" but the philosophy within the industry seems to be "The current stuff might not be perfect but it'll do" and, while that attitude prevails, I just can't see any really fundamental changes happening.

[gunfighters]

TDS I am not saying there is no difrance... i am saying the difrance is not that big in field conditions if bolth guns are running a what we in the us would call a low fps... the 350fps example used..

IE a bolt gun and a aeg, same fps, same ammo

the target a guy hiding in some light bushes 150' away

who is more likly to get the kill.. the bolt gun and a single shot... or a long burist from the aeg..

 

"aegs don't have a consistent air seal+velocity solution"

as a "tech" you know this isn't true

the piston head air seal to the clinder wall has NOTHING to do with the cycling action of the gun(bolt vs aeg)

the fps variance has more to do with the piston not being quite in the exact same spot when it is let free..that and the rear ward momention of the piston..

lightened piston and vented clinder can go a long way to tameing that.. ages can be tuned tight, espicaly @ lower fps

heck, my stock(as in never opened the box) clone beta will shoot 263-267 fps with .28s all day long thats +-1.5fps.. granted the extra mass of the .28s probly dampens it a bit.

 

back to my point..

witch was

if a bolt gun is limited to the same FPS as AEGs, and the aegs are allowed to shoot hevey weight ammo. it becomes more a matter of style than range advantage to use a bolt gun..

 

Stealth it would look like this

http://cybersloth.org/airsoft/trajectory/07-B-06.htm

even if the "tictack" magically had 2X the BC of the bb... it would still drop 60" @ 100' of flight..

and as I stated earlyer (jumbuled I know) it would need a ridicules 1 in 2.4 twist to get the same level of stability on a 1 j .2 with hopup

[sneaky-fab]

Thats oke with me, Snipers do need stealth style and some times when they have to shoot ( not often ) , they only got a couple of shots to hit. Bolt actions provides the cheap accuracy and stealth at the same time ( gspec )

 

aeg kiddies are just rushers, so let them rush into my crosshair

[TDS]

the target a guy hiding in some light bushes 150' away

who is more likly to get the kill.. the bolt gun and a single shot... or a long burist from the aeg..

 

You need to pick a different thread if you want to compare a single shot to a long burst, not this one.

[Stealthbomber]

"aegs don't have a consistent air seal+velocity solution"

as a "tech" you know this isn't true

the piston head air seal to the clinder wall has NOTHING to do with the cycling action of the gun(bolt vs aeg)

the fps variance has more to do with the piston not being quite in the exact same spot when it is let free..that and the rear ward momention of the piston..

lightened piston and vented clinder can go a long way to tameing that.. ages can be tuned tight, espicaly @ lower fps

heck, my stock(as in never opened the box) clone beta will shoot 263-267 fps with .28s all day long thats +-1.5fps.. granted the extra mass of the .28s probly dampens it a bit.

That's not quite right.

 

With an AEG several of the key components in the firing mechanism are in motion as the gun fires. Crucially, the tappet plate is moving forward and taking the nozzle with it. It should be plugging the hop-up as the gun fires but it's relying on a spring action, which will never be entirely repeatable, engaging the nozzle with the flexible lip of the hop-up sleeve which, again, might not always sit in the same place.

 

With a boltie you push the bolt forward and it locks the nozzle into the hop-up. Sure, there's still a chance it won't be seated properly but, because it's all happening much slower and more smoothly, it's much less likely to go wrong.

Added to that, the whole mechanism of a boltie is much simpler which creates consistency.

 

aeg kiddies are just rushers, so let them rush into my crosshair

Way to respect your fellow players, dude.

[gunfighters]

valid point stealth..

my post was longwinded enuf as it was

a new spring can help that a lot..but I was just countering the piston seal issue TDS brought up, well I was adressing it as such..but in retro it could be extended to nozzle as well

 

"the whole mechanism of a boltie is much simpler which creates consistency."

agreed

I am not saying a bolt won't shoot better. just that there are many bigger factors.. maby if i reverse things..

hows this

if all snipers had to downgrade to 1j and only shoot .2s, many would give up on there bolt guns

 

lol, TDS so call it a rapid follow up shot for a dmr...

you are taking an exazartion I used to make a point out of context...

i guess we are done here

[Trasher]

I'd prefer perfectly round and homogenous BBs, airsoft rifles with field target air rifle quality internals and externals, before monkeying around with shaped rounds.

 

[Senor Bear]

not really...

power levels and ammo choice really make the difrance..

 

it would be fairly easy to tune a m-4 to you suggested limit and make it shoot on par with a bolt gun..

 

Oh god not another one.

 

[charlieboy69]

the whole point of sniping (not so much with AEGS) is that you spend loads on your gun to get it to shoot better, without getting reidculous - i.e ...this....

anywho this would be stupid...

i got shot by a .177 pellet in the leg ...wasnt fun

[sneaky-fab]

thats what i just figured out

 

an expensive sport it is...

 

just for those rare weekends

[Walton_County_Firefighter]

With sniper weapons in airsoft, do you really want the guy with the most accurate gun on the field shooting bb's at over 400fps at your noodle? I know that I damn sure dont, an aeg with 350fps is way more manageable vs a sniper with a 350fps velocity. The shot placement between the two is so different. When you shoot at someone with an aeg you generally aim at the center mass on somebody. When you shoot a sniper at someone you aim for the head or upper body.