I've seen a lot of stupid things over the years, and one of my favorites is the idea of adjusting your hop for different ranges. Combat zones are dynamic rapidly changing environments. You can't afford to be puttering around with your hop trying to get it zeroed for a specific range for each target and then trying to find your hold. What you need to do is get your hop set and your scope dialed in for a "level" trajectory and to engage at targets beyond the bb's level flight you take a higher hold. The advantage of the R-hop is that you don't have the same sort of rapid destabilization at the end of the bb's flight like you do with conventional hops so its especially easy to just hold above your target. This way you can rapidly move between engaging distant and close targets predictably and accurately. Its much like the downward theory of spear throwing.
In terms of what specific flight pattern you want to adjust for is a personal preference. My personal preference for hop setting is to maximize level flight distance "within a range." What this means is that you normally engage a target of X height (lets say the height of a person's head). Your bbs also won't all go along the exact same flight path, but will form a grouping. (shocking I know) Combine the radius of this grouping with the radius of your preferred target size and you'll have a quantifiable distance at a specific range which your bbs can deviate from the perfect level of their initial trajectory, ergo you may over-hop by that amount while still holding your crosshair on center mass and still strike the target. This is a quantifiable explanation for what can be simply put as: I slightly over-hop all rounds to maximize what will be perceived as level range, but in fact deviates slightly above strictly level.

If you're shooting on a range, rather than on the field, all this goes a bit out the window though and you can try whatever wacky crap you like. You're no longer under the same time constraints and don't need the same rifle familiarity, so you can play games like over-hopping your bbs so they'll fall out of the sky on your target at your EXACT range or dynamically adjusting your hop for the minimum required hop for various ranges.

Does all this make sense?

Yup, and what your essentially saying is this. You will set your bb's with a slight over hop, and will adjust your scope to hit a target at, around say 200ft for example. However, beyond the target the BB's will still be arcing up slightly. Correct?

The exact distance depends on velocity and bb mass, but yeah thats the general idea. Its the pattern of exiting the muzzle, traveling flat, lifting slightly up (we are talking maybe a foot deviation upward from level), and then dropping. At no point do you really see the bb "climb" like you do with real over-hop.

It seems my shooting patterns are the exact same as hunterseeker5's. Flat as possible trajectory, with a very slight overhop, and my scope is zeroed looking down the length of my shot, not set for any specific range.

Where is the "like" button on this forum. :P Here how about I give you this instead:

I suppose I should have worded what I said a bit better.

It doesn't really matter much because as long as my Flat Hop is somewhat on, I still peg targets easily at 300 feet, for the 300+ feet shots I like to personally increase the effective range by adjusting accordingly which is fine as what possible airsoft threat do I have when engaging at 300 + feet, where I play, Zero.

This may have been covered already, so forgive me if I missed something, but what is typically the lifespan of the R-hop? (say for a 400 fps 25rps-ish set up) I would assume it lasts quite a bit longer than the G hop and isn't prone to the same problems? (assuming you install it correctly)

Also, is a tightbore barrel beneficial at all with the R hop? (I have a Madbull 6.03mm)

This post has been edited by Stealthmaster14: Aug 12 2011, 01:00 AM

If I understand correctly, it's not really worn out until there's nothing left.




I may have found the fastest way yet to get the R-hop down to size. I took mine to the bench grinder. Once I got close to the correct size, I just flicked it on and off really quick to get it to spin slower. But, I destroyed my first one because I didn't realize my barrel window was too shallow. I haven't tried again yet, as I'm waiting on some parts for my gun.

Just a quick question, but if the R hop is overhopping, where should it be cut down to reduce it?

Here:



or Here:

[/quote]
^here, use a chainsaw sharpening bit on a dremel at low speed or with 400 grit sandpaper glued to a small round dowel. Test often.

Actually the answer is it depends. You see for excessively shallow barrel windows you will actually, and counter-intuitively, need need to remove material from the sides there otherwise there will be too much of the R-hop present and the hop rubber and hop unit will be driving it down into the chamber too far. As I said before tune to make the R-hop flush with the OUTSIDE of the barrel first THEN tune for bb passage and correct hop on the inside, usually by removing material from the inside as Anachro12 said.



Good question. I think it was covered somewhere already, but to reiterate it a LONG time. Based on observed wear patterns, pressure applied, wear resistance, durometer rating, and material present we're talking several times as long (probably about an order of magnitude longer for the ER-hop) as a regular hop rubber will last you. Honestly though we just don't know because nobody has come even close to wearing one out yet. Suffice to say that the reason I've not got a rough number for you is because its so long nobody has been able to actually experimentally determine it yet. If you do wear one out send it to me along with the attached hop rubber for analysis, I'd love to see it. In all seriousness though you'll have worn out your hop lips long before you wear out one of these contact patches. Lifespan of this mod is one of the things you just don't have to worry about here, especially if you properly attach it to your hop bucking.

Awesome, thanks for the reply.

Oh, one more question. Is a tightbore beneficial at all for accuracy/range with the R-hop? Or does say a stock JG barrel with the R-hop perform about the same as say a Madbull 6.03mm with the R-hop? The fps will obviously be a bit higher with a tightbore which could have a small effect on range, but overall is there much of a noticeable performance difference?

This post has been edited by Stealthmaster14: Aug 14 2011, 06:59 PM

Decreasing the barrel's bore will reduce accuracy, so smaller bore barrels of equal precision will tend toward reducing accuracy. I hate the term tightbore, its the sort of dimwitted non-technical marketing term that pinheads like the guys at the SOCAL retailers use to get you to buy a product. What you want is a high precision barrel of 6.03mm, or larger if you don't mind giving up a few FPS. Its the PRECISION of the barrel that is critical, and yes upgrading your barrel in that regard will be highly beneficial when paired with the R-hop.

I have said, and stand by the statement, that the R-hop and ER-hop increase your system's ability to tolerate a less than ideal barrel, be it too small a bore or just imprecise, but lets not forget you are still trying to maximize accuracy here. You WILL see improvement from using a quality barrel of an appropriate length and bore.

Alright....back to the OP for a second here.

I have installed A LOT of R-hops. I have a pretty nice system at this point. Here is what I normally do (sorry, no pics ATM):

First, eye it up on the barrel. Estimate how much you will need to take off.

Now, get a sharpened pare of scissors (yes, scissors), and CAREFULLY cut that some off. I generally mark where I am cutting, and cut a little less than that.

Now, put it on the barrel window again. Take more material off if necessary. Get it to fit just perfectly in the barrel window.

Look at the sides now. If the are over the edge of the barrel window, you need to take some material off. Now, I do this part with a diamond bit on a dremel. I take a little off one side, and a little off the other. You want them as even as possible.

I then carefully slip the bucking over it. Test it in the hop-up. 90% of the time, it will be way to much, and over-hop. Its perfect though, if you are shooting 400 fps, and use .4g bbs.

I then take a small sanding stone on my dremel, and CAREFULLY take material off of the side of the contact patch (that touches the edge of the barrel window), and take a smidge off, then put it back on the barrel window.

I do that, until the R-hop patch is almost flush with the barrel.

Now, re-install it into your hop-up, and, if you think its shallow enough, give it a test fire. Chances are you will have over-hop, so do the following:

Take the contact patch out, and get your smallest rat-tail file, or one that is about the size of the rounded out part already on the patch. Take a bit of material out. Not to much though.

Re-install, and test fire.

Repeat that 2nd to last step, until you get the desired hop.

Glue the contact patch to the bucking when you are positive on your results.

Done.

This post has been edited by major9: Aug 14 2011, 07:53 PM

Major9 you use .4g bbs @ 400 fps? I just finished installing my R-hop and it is great. I have not been able to get to a big enough area to test the full potential of it. As of now @ 400 fps with .28g I have great groupings at 225-250 feet. The only thing that I am not fond of, is how much slower the bb travels while using .28s. Perhaps this is just a personal pet peave, but as it is, I could not imagine using .4g bbs @ only 400 fps. The bb would travel so slowly that your opponent could practically catch the bb before it hit him.

You can run .36s at 1J if you're looking to maximize accuracy and effective range. Also downrange heavy ammo doesn't bleed its velocity so it'll actually overtake lighter ammo after enough distance. A .4g bb with a kinetic energy of 1.5J (400fps with a .2) will be traveling at 285fps. Its just a guess, but I'd expect that after about 110 feet your .4 will be pulling even with the .2 and is ahead thereafter. Since CQB engagements rarely occur inside 90 feet it stands to reason that the increased accuracy and decreased flight time to target offered by quality .4s past approximately 110 feet would more than offset the couple milisecond advantage at closer range offered by lighter rounds. Slow really is fast. Just look at perhaps one of the best chamberings for the M4: the 6.5 grendel. Remember it only takes a .2 about 30 feet to be down around 280fps. But don't take my word for it. Drop .4s in your gun, tune your R-hop for it, and have at it. You might just surprise yourself at how much more effective you become.

Just like we've caused things like the original TM gears, pistons, motors, electrical, etc to become obsolete with our power, and ROF, increases so too have we caused the original TM hop to become obsolete. We're not running at power levels where a .2 or .25 is thought to be appropriate. To that point even the japanese 1J guns benefit from running at least .3s, so to think that .28s are appropriate when you've already added 50% more power is absurd. The only real disadvantage to .36s and up are the production technologies used to produce them which result in an inferior bb. Benefits usually outweigh costs, but I can understand why people running normal battle rifles will occasionally choose to run .3s. Anyone in this country though who is trying to run less than .36s in their "precision" rifles is kidding themselves. You'd be just throwing away effective range and tolerance of environment insults while increasing delivery time.

This post has been edited by hunterseeker5: Aug 16 2011, 11:39 PM

I'm not kidding myself. I bought some .36g bioshots.

So HS5, do you run the r-hop in your "normal" skirmish gun?

eh I'll run it in just about anything. There is so much performance improvement with no downside why not.

I've run into a stroke of progress! The new madbull barrel came in so I installed the r-hop and tested it.

460fps(2 Joules) +/- 2fps

Bioshot .3g BB's

Madbull 6.03

Was able to score some good hits out too 270ft, at 310ft I scored maybe 2-3 hits. Target was a torso sized cardboard box. About the only issue is that I'm still suffering from spin inconsistency. I'm going to secure the rubber to the barrel with superglue, now that I've got some testing done, I'm hoping that the source of the inconsistent spin is that(even though I sloped the front of the rubber) the bb's are pinching it as they go down the barrel. Though if anyone else has any other ideas as to why, I'd love to hear them.

I was kind of disappointed that the madbull barrel's hop window was too shallow, had too chop quite a bit of the r-hop down, But still managed to get the shallow "u" profile.

**Update*

No evidence of BB's pinching the rubber, so it has to be something else. Will remain unglued for now while testing. That leaves the nub I am using which is essentially a copy of the firefly buffer rubber, but made out of some hacked up bits of sorbo padding, which leaves me stumped since I thought that should be soft enough.

This post has been edited by sniperelite7: Aug 17 2011, 10:52 PM

I'm sure this has been asked and I just missed it, but what type of nub should I be using?

What if the problem is your ammo not the hop? Did you try washing it? Does it have something like grease on the surface, or could some be getting on the ammo from your hands? Also can you please quantify the inconsistency for us? Saying "inconsistent" is a bit vague.

This post has been edited by hunterseeker5: Aug 18 2011, 01:56 PM

Mostly is testing, but I have heard that firefly nubs are very good. (Flat)
I am currently looking for the firefly nub and I am having a hard time finding it.

I have a flat hop. Would that work? It's made out of plastic with a piece of bucking glued to the bottom.

As long as you are able to apply flat, even hop over the length of the patch, then it will work. I fashioned a firefly buffer rubber to apply a flat hop along the length of the patch. It is working fairly well for me. If you make your own, just be sure that it sits flat, and applies even pressure along the length of the patch.

Well, the bioshots are probably about 6 months old or so, stuck em in an ammo box. So maybe they degraded slightly. Yes I washed them, and my hands are grease free. Next test run I;m going to try some new ksc .3s. Which will have to do until my order of .36g bbs get here.

What I mean as inconsistent is, I'd set the gun to overhop the BB's slightly. During target practice looking through my scope, I'll shoot, say 3-5 times, the bb's over hop slightly as I've set it too. However, the over hop effect would disappear during another string of shots and bb's would just arc into the ground probably falling about a foot short of the target assuming I've held the cross hairs aimed at the same point. It'd behave pretty sporadically doing this on and off. Like the hop wheel was being turned up and down(which I have ensured is tightly secured, it won't move unless I undo the screw holding the wheel in place).

I might be asking a question that has already been answered but I was wondering; Where do you get the R-hop patches from?

You can purchase them from HunterSeeker5.

Okay. Does he have a website or something? Or do I just have to PM him for details. I'm thinking of elongating the hop window and installing a long R-hop into a very custom Tanaka M24A2 using HPA (may be doing it to the Asahi WA2000DX if this turns out good). I'm already hitting 300-350+ feet at human size targets consistently, but I would love to get even more consistency than I already have, and maybe a flatter bb flight path. Works great as it is, but I would love to make it even better.

LeStath

He does have a website, search for Hunter Seeker Armory. Find his email on there, or just send him a PM.

Who would ever have guessed that my website was such a secret. I guess the google is a well kept secret as well. If you google R-hop Hunterseeker5 I think its the third link down. (although you can just PM me here to order as well)



I have no idea what the hell is happening there. You're saying that a complete burst will exhibit consistent hop but the next one won't? What on earth would cause that?
Since the problem clearly isn't the R-hop we should probably diagnose this in another thread, but I'm just going to quickly throw out a random guess: one bb passing by the R-hop has degraded, has something on it, etc and leaves a residue on the hop/barrel. The rest of the burst will then be contaminated by that. By the next it will have rubbed off and will be back to normal. Hell I have no idea. If you want to start diagnosing this you'd best produce some groupings so we can see whats what here because your symptoms are absurd. I've been doing this for years and NEVER seen burst to burst inconsistency like that. Its always in some sort of pattern based on something. Your relatively vague descriptions and quantities aren't helping.

Last I saw, Airsoft Atlanta had them, however they might be out of stock by now. I suggest you make your own nub as it is much cheaper and just as effective. Check out the Flat Hop guide pinned in the Internal Tweeks & Modfication's guide at the top of this section for more info and tips on making them.

I've seen a few people ask if the R-hop will work in a UTG L96. It will, that is, if you have a few files and a lot of time. I've been working on mine for a while and I think I'm almost done. The barrel window on the L96 is very shallow and has to be filed down for the R-hop to work. First try, I ended up with the R hop perfectly flat when I put the bucking on.

The second time, I filed the barrel window down quite a bit, and it seem to be pretty much working now.

I also realized that you can cut the R-hop in half (the hop up window is shorter than most, so if you cut the R-hop in half and it will still be long enough), so you have a second shot at it if you mess up the first time.

Now I just have to do a little more filling on the R-hop and wait for my trigger box to arrive so I can test it.

This post has been edited by Airsim14: Aug 18 2011, 09:22 PM

Well, I'm willing to bet that its the BB's as I've gone over the rest of the gun and found nothing. I'll just wait until the .36g ones get here before posting results.

For the record I can also re-cut the barrel windows on just about any rifle to accept the R-hop. Due to its rigidity and design it can also be used by essentially any hop out there as well. I say "essentially" and "just about any" because, while I haven't found an existing hop which isn't able to be modified to accept it, there are a few obscure systems out there I haven't tested yet.

Also you can technically cut the R-hop in half, but you'll also be significantly reducing its efficacy. It works based on length so you're essentially shooting yourself in the foot to cut it in half. You'd be better off machining your hop window to accept the full length contact patch.


*shrug* still don't know what to say. For all I know it could be your barrel. As I recall though you started with accuracy issues in that particular barrel group so moving to the R-hop may not be solving the problem. Try and work backwards to bug out the system by yanking everything and exchanging it with something else one part at a time ammo included.

I don't mean to double post but its come to my attention that some people here aren't aware of what the ER-hop is. This is a quote I pulled from a conversation I had with someone else to try and concisely explain it:

I was thinking of testing out this type of hop up soon. Is the barrel window on the Prometheus a good depth of this mod?

Currently I have an effective range of ~210 feet with .28g bbs in a ~410 fps setup (measured with .20g). I am hoping to boost my range to at least 250 feet with this mod.

Unfortunately, that won't work for the L96. The bucking is shorter than that of AEGs. I could lengthen the barrel window slighty, but not much. And the way it is, I accidentally cut one half slightly longer than the other, so now the long half is perfect for my Madbul barrel, and the short one fit's my L96 lol.

I also found out that the hop up arm also has to be modified. The L96 doesn't have a nub like other guns. Instead, the "U" on the hop up arm has it's open ends in line with the barrel; in other words, if you put a nub it it, it will be sideways.

My old barrel was a prometheus.I found that the barrel window wasn't quite as deep as it should be, and thus required filing.

With prometheus barrels you can either cut the window deeper or make the R-hop shallower. Not all prommy barrels have the same depth window annoyingly........ Generally though I do recommend them.


You can use your U shaped arm as-is to press down on the contact patch. Madbull barrel windows are pretty long though. How you got one long enough for the L96 and madbull barrel in one cut I'll never know. (feel free to post pictures)

Here's a picture of the madbul and r-hop.


The pic wasn't very clear, but the R-hop fits very snug. I'm going to have to remove a little on that one.

Here's the L96.


I got the inner barrel stuck inside the outer lol. I was trying to make a full length stabilizer or whatever that's called.