Flatline Answers

time out here.

first. they don't have accuracy. (killernoodle) no matter what you define accuracy as.
How would you know? You just admitted not ever using one. Unless you've tried it, you really don't have the right to comment on it. At least the other negative reviews are from people that actually tried to use the barrel.

Second. why go threw all the troubles of the cleaning probs and accuracy being lacking, when you can get a ultralight or boomstick and have accuracy make up the stupid range.
Every barrel requires cleaning. And the Flatline is plenty accurate at the same range as someone with a regular barrel. They start becoming more inaccurate the longer they are in the air, but they'll be in the air a lot longer than a regular barrel, no matter how much of an arch you put on your shots.

Three. Range, r u guys to scared to get up and close. you have to sneek around and shoot people in the back. form 100 feet more away.
Actually, I play in the front. And I do sneak around people, I'm usually the one that pops up in the middle of the enemy's base, allowing me to tag people from further distances. I love the range on the Flatline, but I love the flat trajectory more.

four. when a ball breaks you might as well play with out a barrel. it will be more accurate than the grose, slimey flatline.
See response to your first statement.

Five. what do you clean the barrel with when it chops. (not sure) but since the barrel is bent can you even use a straight shot.
It comes with a flexible squeege, just like all of the other Tippmann products. For the A-5, you have to take off the barrel. For the 98c, you drop the feed neck and push the squeege through the chamber.

Six. yes, i know you need to match the paint to the barrel. but how often can you decided to play in a last minute game and find small bore paint. you might be able to but not every body can.
The barrel can be used with medium bore paint as well, it just performs better with small bore. And guess what! ALL barrel perform better with the right paint to barrel matches. IE your boomstick would perform better with the right paint to barrel match.

Seven. holding of 6 guys doesn't prove any thing. they just could have sucked. maybe they where chickens and stayed behind the bunker, instead of movin because the flatline might get them.lol. you can keep people down just shooting at the right times. it doesn't even have to be at them.
Actually, I was the one hiding behind the bunker, and they were the ones that had me surrounded. But because of my range, they had no idea I wasn't actually in the bunker in front of them, I was about 5 feet further back hiding on a hill. They moved up and surrounded where they thought I was. If I didn't have the flatline, they could have moved up a lot further without wasting as much paint. And guys with team jerseys, 6+ hoppers, and high end markers probably aren't as bad as you think.

Eight. back to accuracy. why? they don't have it. they have range i will give them that. but does it matter when u can't hit any thing.
See response to your first statement.

Nine. i would want some one to cover me, if i am making a move, with the flatline. you guys might like them but i don't trust the for any thing
So, you don't like them, but you like them enough to cover you? If you didn't trust them, then why would you have them cover you?

just to let u all know i don't own a flatline. i just have heard a seen to many of them brake paint. yeah yeah paint and barrel. but like i said above, not every one can do that. i would take a boomstick over a flatline any day. Look and see what the pros use. BOOMSTICK.

i quess thats for cents now. i don't mean to p any body off i just don't like them and don't trust them.

That's just the thing, it has enough accuracy that you can hit people with ease just like any other good barrel only you can make the longer shots more easily because you can reach without lobbing the shots. It's good to have a barrel that can give you flat trajectory for long range because sometimes low-hanging branches don't allow you to lob your shots. Remember, you're talking to a bunch of woodsballers most likely and in the woods you don't have an open sky. At the fields I play at, it's very common to have trees preventing you from lobbing shots out there and I know that from experience. With the flatline, I can easily shoot right under them and not worry about the ball hitting the ground at the target's feet. And I do get shots on target, that's why I can keep people pinned from outside their range. I can hit people through the brush if I have a firing lane. With a normal barrel I have to worry about the ball dropping too low and hitting a branch but with the flatline it will fly straight through the path until it reaches the target. Obviously you can't do that at like 300 feet but around 100 feet it's possible and your chances get better as you get closer. That may not sound that great but with a normal barrel your chances are slim even at 50 feet in this situation.

...the 98 has quick threads for a reason, so u can take the barrel off with only three maybe four turns. take the breech off and wacth paint fall all over the places because you ion a hurry. then make sure you turn your revi off so the enemy doesn't here the noise so you don't blow your cover. NO, its not a pain to take the breech off compared to unthreading your barrel on squeeging it out.LOL and like you said its a pain with the a5. you have to take every thing off.

If you know what you're doing, you can get your 98 squeegeed and ready to go in no time without a problem. I don't have the 98 flatline but I have a pro team barrel kit that can't be removed without tools so I go through the breech and I don't have trouble at all. All you do is shut off the hopper, tilt the gun to the right to allow the paint to roll into the hopper, release the elbow, tilt the gun back up (without removing the elbow), pull the squeegee through until the barrel is clean, hold the elbow, roll the gun to the right until the elbow is on again, and then you hold the gun upright and flip on the hopper. Sounds like a lot of steps but if you try it, you can do this very quickly and it works well. Of course just unscrewing a 98 barrel is easier but doing it this way isn't horrible, just takes an extra 5-10 seconds.

...what ever you want to call. but like you said you like to be on the front line, boomstick, why won't a boomstick be good. more accurate in every way. why get the flatline if your not taking long shots. i believe in flanking, but take some one with you and tear threw the back. don't just sit bak there and take some pop shots. then you would have help and wouldn't try to argue about being outnumbered so you have to sit back and take long inaccurate shots, as said by shooky, the longer its out there the less accurate.

It's not that I like to be on the front lines but I just end up there all the time. People sometimes are reluctant to be aggressive and they just sit and trade paint until somebody decides to lead them forward. If I see nobody else taking the lead, I yell for them to move up and I go. Usually people will follow if they see me make it. I get them moving up and then I take a look at the situation. If it looks like we can't take them head on then I take a few people and disappear out to the flank while the rest of the team holds them off. Then we get ourselves behind the enemy and we move back in on them. We make sure they don't know about us until we fire and I tend to like hit and run tactics for this. I find a good firing lane from a place with good cover and I take well aimed shots once every 5 seconds or so. Since they're distracted with the fight in front of them, they usually don't notice until a shot hits them and by then it's too late. I'm usually at the edge of their range when I do this so the chances of them hitting me are slim because they can barely reach me and I still have enough accuracy to hit them. It works very good actually even though I'm sure I'll get criticized by people for this tactic.

...yes i can blame it. alot of barrels will self clean. it just gets balled up in the barrel and doesn't put the right spin on the ball. when this happens you can shoot around trees. if your aiming to hit them

Yeah, ok. The J&J ceramic is supposed to self-clean and mine doesn't. I got one for my SL-68II and a ball broke when I was target shooting one day. I tried shooting it clean and after a good 10 shots I was still getting poor accuracy, it didn't clean at all. I don't think it was small bore paint so I doubt the paint was too small to push the paint out of the barrel. Nobody I know will keep shooting after a break and be happy with their accuracy. The only reason I shoot through breaks on the flatline is because I need to make sure the enemy is pinned while squeegee since I'll have the cyclone off and I can't act quick if they move and get an angle on me. Accuracy loss is no more on the flatline than with any other barrel after a break. In fact, I think the ceramic handled a break the worst to be honest (in comparison to my bigshot and my flatline).

...after it takes you minutes to get that off. when with a normal barrel you would just take it off rfast and clean it.

It doesn't take minutes to get it off actually. You would think that it takes forever and it does take a while the first time but I think, after you get used to it, you can do it very quickly and it isn't such an issue. I first did it on the beach at d-day this year and it only took about 5 seconds to get the cyclone off. The problem I had was with the stupid little hose. For some reason I couldn't get the hose to connect so it took forever but I think I may just find a longer hose and leave it connected when I do this. In the meantime I'll probably just get used to doing it and it won't be a problem anymore. Other than that little problem it didn't take very long at all and I'm sure that if I got the hose on the first time then it would have actually been very quick. I just need time to get used to it and I'll be able to do it very fast.

...how many people use the flatline in tournies buddy, or as you would say pal. you get the flatline for range. and you don't need alot of that at tournies. even if someone does play in a tourny, what about when you wanna go play with your friends. medium isn't bad but not good. what about the large bore pal.

I think I said before that a tourny player is better off with a normal barrel like the bigshot since range isn't needed, maybe that was a different post. Anyway, I agree that the flatline isn't the best speedball barrel. The reason is that it's main features (range and flat trajectory) can't be taken advantage of at such short ranges. The accuracy is good enough but for about $120 it's not worth it since you can get a bigshot for half that and it has a little more accuracy. However, in the woods, you can make use of the long range and flat trajectory and then you have a reason to pay an extra $60 for it. You'll have accuracy close to that of the bigshot but a LOT more range and your shots will not drop until they reach almost maximum range. That makes it much easier to take people out at longer ranges in the woods. By longer ranges I mean just outside of normal range and a little farther. That would be the flatline's effective range, not the max. When you shoot the same distance as a flatline by lobbing it, you're out of your effective range and just pushing your maximum range.

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how in the world did you get that. wiht people like that you just have to shoot straight up in the air and they duck. and who said they where at a range. and he said instead of being righ in front of them he was a huge five feet back, thats anought to make a huge difference at close range. i can hol people down at ranges with my teardrop. i have shot alot of barrels threw my gun.

There's a difference between just holding people back and holding them back with a chance of eliminating them. Any gun can make the enemy stay put at a distance if the paint is able to break on or around the bunker but that doesn't mean the shooter can actually hit the person if they were trying. You can reach but your accuracy isn't going to be too great at that range. With the flatline it is much more likely for you to hit the person at that distance because you just aim straight at them instead of aiming a few inches above them. The shots will get there faster because of the flat trajectory and probably at a higher velocity too (since they fly straight instead of in an arc).

...like you said once in a blue moon you hit someone like that. i have done it with a $40 teardrop.

I'm talking about the very long shots with the flatline, not long shots with a normal barrel. The shots I was talking about are at the edge of the flatline's maximum range which is beyond hope for a normal barrel. There are some shots you can land by lobbing the paint like you said, I'm not denying that. Heck, I've done it before. What I'm saying is that the shots you wouldn't even bother attempting with a normal barrel are sometimes possible to make or are at least worth attempting with the flatline. At west point I got a headshot from probably 200-250 feet away. It took about 10-15 shots but the guy shot back a lot more than that and didn't even come close to hitting me, they just bounced at my feet, literally. I may have even hit him sooner if he wasn't being blocked by thorns. That is a perfect example of why I prefer the flatline.

...i just think htat there not as good as what every body makes them sound. its just that the don't want to go around and say the just bought a piece of crap barrel.

I'll admit that some people exaggerate when they comment on their flatlines but that doesn't mean that the barrel is crap. I honestly had no intention of buying the flatline before d-day 2003 (not including when I was a newbie). I had read up about it and it sounded good but my friend got it for the 98 and I wasn't impressed. He also had a lot of problems getting the thing adjusted and he hated it so I stayed away from it. I heard a lot of negative stuff about it here too so I just forgot about it. Then I went to D-day about a year later and skirmish has tons of fields with trees that hang low which made lobbing shots nearly impossible. Because of that my range was ridiculously short and every time I came across a guy with an A5 flatine I made sure to stay nearby because they could do damage from much farther away, it was a huge advantage. I liked what I saw and the owners I talked to there liked them so I started to change my mind about it. Then I started seeing a lot of stuff about the flatline on the forum and there were a lot more people supporting it this time, including some of the more experienced players who were against the 98 flatline. I had always trusted them in the past so I trusted them again and I don't regret getting my flatline at all. In fact, it's now the only barrel I use on the A5 and I usually use my A5 before any of my other guns mainly because it has the flatline. Maybe you're right that some people don't like the barrel but are too embarrassed to admit it but trust me, I'm not one of them.