Okay, one of the things I've noticed here is that all the experienced people are in agreement that high FPS for the sake of high FPS is worthless. However, at a certain gas gun site that I go to, I've seen a discussion thread about someone trying to achieve 550 FPS from a WE M14, no real reason given, he just wanted to get 550 FPS with .25's. An interesting read. I was quite impressed by the technical knowledge the guy seemed to have and all the steps he went through to get his results. Not a single person questioned the need to get 550 FPS, which I also thought was fine. Maybe it was going to be a sniper rig or something.

I thought, "Well, maybe since the impulse in a gas gun is given for as long as the BB is in the barrel rather than in a single initial burst it will leave the barrel with a more stable flight path." But then he got into discussing using the gun in a game and he described how at 150 feet, the BB would hook like a MOFO every single time--which would seem to confirm the FPS article here. He also said how he was still able to pick a couple of guys off using "Kentucky windage," which is fine, but then any optics you have would be worthless past 150 feet. Not great.

So is this a common difference between gas gun and AEG guys? Or is it just that one board? Or that one guy? He certainly didn't sound like a Newbie, he was doing some very complicated (and expensive) surgery on that gun.

Just because you know how to upgrade a gun, doesn't mean you know how to use a gun.

The debate isn't so much that high fps is dangerous, but that all the newbies that don't know how to safely use such a high fps gun come here saying that they "need 500+fps". Most of the time, they are coming here, asking us to spoon feed them the info to do it. In the end, its more of a maturity/understanding limits thing.

I assume he was using just the .25's he built if for? You can get an AEG to the same power levels, but use the same weight bbs and you'll just end up with the same problem.

Speaking from personal experience sniping about 7 years go, having that high of a FPS with only .25's sucks. You can get consistency to around 200 feet and after that you just have to see where the shots hook and adjust for it.


I used to have a completely upgraded TM VSR-10 Pro Sniper that shot 580 FPS with 0.2's. That's around 520 FPS with .25's, so we're in the same velocity neighborhood. When using BB's that light, even if they were VERY high quality just a little bit of inconsistency with the BB's in any way ruined your shots. You could get some good groupings, but nothing to write home about. You have to remember that the air resistance that the BB's feel at those speeds is much greater than once the BB's slow down.

Yeah, I saw some charts for .177 air rifle pellets, and even up to ~.45g. In the test they showed how much extra range you got with additional initial FPS. I don't remember specifics, but I do remember a) how quickly they lost speed, and b) how increased FPS ran into rapidly diminishing returns in increased range. So yeah, a .25 round bb... no contest.

This post has been edited by No_6: Jun 10 2012, 01:49 AM

500 fps and over I am going to run a .43g bb. If someone is using .25g bbs it is foolish to bother doing the upgrade, if your bbs are hooking at a certain distance from using .25 (although I suspect that the hop up is not optimized, barrel is unstabilized, not clean, etc.)

With AEGs often people will just throw a heavy spring in without doing the necessary mods to get the most from that FPS. Makes a world of difference. An AEG with just a SP150 dropped in is not a DMR although there are many people that will try to do just that.