I do have one in a box. Some of the pods fed wonderfully, and others always gave me trouble. I had it on my Blackcell Ion, and with the virtue board and ramping, that thing sounded like a m134. But I took it off mostly because I didnt like the balance. It would be interesting to see if you could make 50 round pods for a more compact setup.
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I think it may be worthwhile talking about what your usage pattern and conditions are. I say this because I had one for a couple years and, I ran into many of the same problems and solutions you did (breach stack height, using a warp feed adapter instead of the Qloader one, tuning the number of balls in the feed tube, fixed feed tube length, reducing pre-winds, etc). One of the final nails in the coffin for me is that I could get it working in my apartment flawlessly and absolutely ripping (I'll link a video here later) and when I took it out the field, the very next day, with the same case of paint (RPS Marballizer when they were putting out their best product), it was nothing but blending.
I surmise that the reason came down to two factors to me:- I'm a sneaky player, when a game starts, I may go several minutes before I start shooting (i.e. as I'm doing a deep, J-hook flank). With my pod engaged (because you never know when you may make contact), the drive spring is continuously pushing on the balls in the stack and, the ball in the breach gets slightly compressed and / or dimpled and, now more than one ball fits in the breach and the second shot gets clipped by the bolt and it's all over at that point, and also, now an odd number of balls fits in the feed tube and you can clip the balls in the socket end.
- I tended to play in the warmer months and, here in Virginia, that means more humid too. Heat and humidity make the balls softer which means the aforementioned problem happens even more readily.
The only setup that worked reliably for me was a direct mount on my SP-1 (over the top) with the Winds at six or maybe 1-2 lower (I can't remember for sure), unfortunately, it was ungainly, it defeated the primary reason I used it (getting the hopper off the top), and I had already migrated my Woodstalker Ion over to the Warp Feed and, a year or two after that, FS rounds came out.
I always wondered about the Qloader SSI and how well it did /does (I suspect a lot of the used pod market would be going towards keeping those guns relevant).Originally posted by Tom Kaye, in response to FS price critics:
Unfortunately all of you have played the one "speedball" game of paintball for so long you can't conceive of other ways to do this and hence any new ideas seem stupid.
External Ballistics | Rifled VS Smoothbore FS Barrels | My FeedbackComment
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This is the best write up I've ever seen on them.
My only issue I ever had was getting the terribly designed "silo" to work as intended.Comment
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Yeah, for sure. My recent usage was at Supergame which saw a pretty good mix of play. There were periods of aggressive "front" type play, and other periods of nothing fired for 10+ minutes on the field. I didn't make any efforts to keep the pod disengaged while not in use. I loaded up at the campsite (Supergame is a 3day event with camping on site) and locked the pod in before making the walk up to the field. I'm certain there were periods of at least 30 minutes of pod engaged without a shot fired.Originally posted by uv_halo View Post
I have experienced the situation of balls becoming compressed before like you describe... however that was pre-hiatus and I don't remember the details of how things were setup well enough to be of any use today.
I think your point about heat and humidity is very relevant. I'm in western Oregon and we aren't desert dry, I'd call it moderate humidity. I've experienced North Carolina and that is a completely different world to someone who's used to Oregon weather. I assume Virginia is similar.
I'm not sure I'd have the same results with the humidity you have out there. I might start taking note of temp and humidity and see if there's a correlation with performance issues.
Please post up anything you think could be helpful. I remember reading a lot of your posts back when I was actively trying to sort this thing out.
Also... I was running the pre-winds around 7 ish. So we are in the same ballpark there.Comment
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You addressed many of the same things I did- For the elbow issue, I had a custom, tall-feedneck made (by Tarantula Customs) and I used the pro-team warp adapter. This allowed me to cut down the height of the feedneck until my stack was the right height and not bound up (the pro-team warp feed adapters also do not have a 90deg inner radius).Originally posted by Levi View Post
Something that may turn out to work better for you is that you're using a left feed. I never used one, most people didn't so, there may be a slight geometry difference (IRT the detents, etc) that migh make this side feed a bit better suited.
For loading the pods, I used a Viewloader 300rd Tripod (which needs a new home) that I had a strap attached to and slung it over my shoulder (like a bag), I had a length of hose that put the socket down by my waist and allowed me to load sitting or standing.Originally posted by Tom Kaye, in response to FS price critics:
Unfortunately all of you have played the one "speedball" game of paintball for so long you can't conceive of other ways to do this and hence any new ideas seem stupid.
External Ballistics | Rifled VS Smoothbore FS Barrels | My FeedbackComment
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Never fully grasped how to use a Q-loader. But this guide has convinced my to dig my Tipx drum mag project back out and give it another try (when I actually have time to work on projects again). Problem I kept having was the last ball would always chop with out fail. Now I have an actual list of things I can try, checking prewind, may not have given a half turn when I loaded, or I just built it wrong and the spacing was off by half a ball.Comment
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Really good info on this. I dug out my old Q-loader and after going through everything found that all my pods still function properly. The only thing I really need is the mounting socket as the one I have is way too far gone. I'm probably going to do a Automag build with a warp body and a classic valve.
I look forward to any more updates you have!Comment
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Most likely the standard one. I don't recall the CMS version.Originally posted by Levi View PostComment
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Ah well it would be the CMS version.
I would love to find someone capable in 3d modeling to make a model of it so we can print it considering the patent holder isn't in business and seems to have abandoned the product. -
I realized something while going through a bunch of Qloader stuff another member here sent me. The main body part on the CMS came out of the same mold as the main body of the loading sockets (the one with the hand crank). The parting lines in the mold are identical between these two parts. The difference is the CMS has some machining done inside that removes the boss that holds the crank and allows the metal center pin to go there instead. So it looks very feasible to restore a CMS by machining the body of a spare loading socket. I'll post more on this once I have a chance to try it.
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Awesome stuff! I always wished someone would take this idea and make a LI battery operated socket because I loved it when it worked but man it was a struggleComment
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Here's another tip that makes things easier... Having a spare loading socket crank to manipulate the pods is handy.
Back when I bought my first Qloader I emailed the company and asked to buy a spare crank. Not sure if they ever replied to my email, but a week later one showed up no-charge. They were notoriously hard to get in touch with, but pretty liberal about just sending out parts & pieces for free. This works great in the staging areas for unloading pods, topping off, or backing out the top few if you have paint splattered into the opening. At Supergame I was really wishing I had it out on the field with me a couple times. Unfortunately it's too bulky & weirdly shaped to carry around comfortably. So I made a more compact version.
I remember fumbling a full pod a couple times during reloads on the field. Dropped it on the end and the hub disengaged causing about 15 paintballs to come flying out. If I had this at the time I could have wound those balls back into the pod right there in the bunker. Also remember one pod having a leaker only a few balls down in the stack, I could have carefully extracted it on the field and used the remainder of the pod.
It has a hole through the center & I epoxied in a 6-32 screw for reinforcement. The lanyard loop is a piece of 1/16" stainless TIG filler rod with the ends bent around so they are captured under the head of the screw. The whole works is then epoxied in with some black potting epoxy I have on hand.
Also making another version. This is the "key" style... being mostly flat it should ride comfortably in a pants pocket. The printer is working on this right now.
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I think I like the key style better. Much slimmer and easy to just shove it in a pocket.
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Very cool. If you don't plan on selling them, it would great if you could add these to the STL repository here on MCB.Comment
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Just registered to hop on this thread.
I just got back into the game over the last month and pulled my Qloader out of storage. Looking to mount mine to my EMF100 and have a pretty minimal setup with a 13ci tank. Thinking of 3D printing some new sockets with some picatinny rails and creating a more rigid feed tube like you have here. I'll post the STLs if I get some time to create them. I know they created some similar stuff after I bought mine but I don't feel like tracking down the parts and I'm too interested in printing right now.Comment
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I think the two most important will be:
1. A slim feedneck to get the lowest profile on top of the gun or modifying a magazine that connects to the the qloader feed tube. This is probably the easiest solution as I've seen some of the warp feed adapters, so I could fork that project.
2. A new socket and mount. Unless I put a small foregrip to attach the qloader to. That would be straightforward but I'd like the picatinny mount for the support as well as for some quick disconnect options in case I decide to run a hopper or straight magfed.
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