so I've got a spare tank(48/3000 psi) from my competitive airsoft setup, (yup semi cringe here ) and was thinking on how I could save some money buy using this, has anyone ever switched over to HPA just to try or are the rules only allowing you to use Co2?
HPA works fine functionally. (the tanks are pretty large compared to most CO2 tanks we use so fit can be a problem depending on ship internal space.) The real issue with HPA is logistics for transportation/refill. You can make it work if you want but CO2 is easier/simpler. Rules wise it depends on which ruleset you're talking about. https://rcwarshipcombat.com/threads/co2-vs-compressed-air.442324/
so its easier to fill the Co2 bottles ? are there actual stations that you can get for refilling ? I do have a scuba tank for refills so I never got into the co2 side of things.
that's interesting that they don't allow it in certain leagues. good to know, and after reading through that tread I can see that its a bit dated and they have smaller tanks now for HPA and in my experience the Co2 isn't as efficient as HPA at 100 psi I'm around 380 fps with 0.28 g projectile and can get about 1,440 shots before refill , but I will look into the Co2 setups as I not exactly sure what the group home goes by atm they haven't been as active in recent years so idk if they are even going to go the same route or not. be nice to see two different leagues here in my opinion.
I have tried both HPA and CO2. Although both do the job, there are serious reasons to stick with CO2. 1) energy density. A CO2 bottle stores about twice as much usable propellant as an equal-sized HPA bottle. I can't show the math, but practical experience over three battle days showed that my Big Gun battleship could run two sorties plus change on a 20oz CO2 bottle, but barely lasted one sortie on the equivalent HPA bottle (48cu.in/3000PSI). 2) refilling HPA is quite an involved procedure compared to CO2. CO2 is simple, you use a siphon tube to drive liquid CO2 into your bottle. This siphon tube allows you to get a proper fill even when the filling station is running low, as long as there is some liquid in the fill station tank. HPA, since it is a gas, can only be raised to an equal pressure with your fill station, which in turn lowers the fill station pressure each time. After a couple fills, you're only getting 3/4 of a full charge. To get a proper fill, you need several HPA fill tanks, which you cycle through from lowest to highest pressure to get a proper top-off. This is a lot of hardware to haul around compared to a single 20lb CO2 tank, and is more complicated to use. 3) the whole purpose behind HPA is to avoid freezing issues when running around, holding your CO2 bottle at odd angles, and sloshing liquid CO2 into your regulator. It is quite good at that. But in model warship combat, the bottle is held fairly constant, so sloshing and other effects in paintball are not present. The freezing problem is easily avoided with an anti-siphon tube or the simple expedient of angling your bottle up slightly. In short: can you do it? yes. Should you? not really, it's not worth it.
ok that's good to know, is there a refill station I could get ahold of ? or are they built by people??
google "CO2 Refill Station", take your pick. Or you could build your own, they are just some connections, valves, and hoses. but that's probably not worth the time/money unless you need it custom for some reason.
