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As you can now begin to imagine, the task that lay before the engineers at WDP was becoming a nightmare. Perfection is never achievable, never. WDP saw that there was nothing on the market at that time which could be altered or modified to produce the kind of performance they were looking for, and that the time had come to inject some new technology into Paintball to catapult it into the Twentieth Century. With a totally blank sheet to work from, the possibilities were endless, and with at least two other companies doing the same kind of work on new-breed guns, a mini arms race began. MEET THE FAMILY SPECIAL EDITION ANGEL DARK ANGEL
The rise of the Angel and it's acceptance at every level of the game has proved that electro-pneumatic guns are here, and here to stay. Jack Wood presents the definitive guide to the divine marker.
The last 12 months has seen the meteoric rise of a top-end Paintball marker by a virgin paintgun manufacturer. The most ambitious product that England's WDP had produced up until a couple of years back was an air system - the Govnair. After a few teething troubles it went on to be a massive success, selling all over the world and powering teams like BC Maryland, Banzai Bandits and Avalanche, but it was still a far cry from a state-of-the-art, world-beating, high-tech Paintball gun.
With their sights set very firmly on the heavens, and not willing to make any compromises in quality, mechanics or design, a brief was laid down that was set to break new ground in almost every area of paintgun operation and performance. Cost could
not really be an issue, as the specification meant that it incorporated features never seen on a Paintball Marker before, and many that had never been a standard feature even on the most heavily customized markers. This gun had to have everything: it had to be peer-less, otherwise it would never be anything special. What the Angel had to be was what every player "wanted" not just a proportion of players, but every player. It had to be
desired by all.
See cut away picture here
Unfortunately, when designing a product from scratch to meet strict criteria, there are many stumbling blocks and almost all new components, let alone complete systems, have to be individually checked and proven, making the whole process very long and laborious. Any short cuts at this early stage could lead to a complete failure later on, and costly mistakes mean increased overheads and running costs. With electronics now involved, the number of new areas that the gun was entering into presented a whole new minefield of possible problems. And many were skeptical of the arrival of the electronic age, so every care had to be taken not to give them anything to feed on; that area of operation had to be as near perfect as possible, and fool-proof to boot.
Not only did this gun have to be the ultimate marker, but it had to be right first time. Bad press at its release could kill not only the future of the gun, but also the company that was developing it. So once the design was laid down it was a simple step to the pre-production models that were to do the rounds within a small community of players.
The prototypes were seen all over the world in the hands of various players for over 12 months before the gun went into production - and these guys were not just posing with it, they were using it where it was designed to be used. The World Cup,
Pittsburgh, Hyperball you name it, it was there being put through its paces.
This is the stage where so many companies fall in their quest for a reliable product, with too little field-testing in the conditions that the product will be used in.
Anyone who has ever worked on Paintball guns will know that you can have a gun firing thousands of times, day in and day out, every day of the week, as long as it's in the comfort of a workshop. But get it out on the field on a cold Sunday morning and things seem to mysteriously stop working, causing frustration and headaches. At this stage there is no substitute
for good old-fashioned field-testing and the Angel had its fair share. It's at this stage that extra features were added to the design of the Angel, features that turned out to be real bonus items, such as the variable fire rate. It was obvious from early on that the actual mechanism of the gun could cycle so fast it was impossible to get a ball into the breech in the milliseconds that were available between shots. So instead of giving the cycle length a fixed value, it was just as easy to make it variable via a control on the circuit board.
The other area was the ram and its relationship to efficiency and velocity. Attaching a pneumatic ram to the hammer that strikes the valve required holding it in place until there was a sufficient build up of pressure to accelerate the ram. Rather that a slow build up of speed, the hammer needed to be catapulted to top speed in a very short period of time to have the momentum to strike the
valve and release a sharp burst of air, rather than a slow long burst. This difference in gas pulse to be the difference between 500 and 1600 shots from a 1.9 litre tank. Quite a difference. And that's why the ram has a Snap-Ring, to hold the shaft in place until a suitable pressure has built up.
Those are just two examples of the kind of developments that took place over those 12 months that led to the final design of the Angel. So, after many months of development and trials on the first two guns, tools were laid down for the extrusion to produce the body, breach block and grip frame, and the first 50 guns were built. These showed up one final major fault of the Angel - the paint feed tube. This had been a conventional 'fish-lip' design, which was retained into the body with a combination of interference fit and high strength retainer. However, once the seal was broken the feed interfered with the bolt and stopped the gun from working. So, after serial number 50, the body and feed went to a screw-fit so that even if the feed does twist,
the gun will function and feed absolutely perfectly. Apart from that, the only other two things that were altered after that initial 50 were a small component modification to the hopper drive circuit on the board, and a redesigned bolt to reduce ball breaks and spin. Both proved successful at the second attempt and caused no further problems.
With that as a brief history
behind the development of the WDP Angel, the story from there is pretty plain for all to see. With production up and above 4000 units manufactured to date, and still a long waiting list, there appears to be little let-up in the rush to get hold of one, and with the States proving to be the initial boom market, things are starting to heat up in Europe too. Although initially
aimed at the very top end of the sport, it has been accepted as also being the ultimate Rec-baller's choice, the Pro players not being the only ones who wish to have the superior firepower.
At first glance, the Angel has even the most technically-minded gunsmiths quaking in their Tanels, as the gun and its components have been put together differently from everything that has gone before, and people are always scared of something new. Although the layout of the Angel is unrecognizable, and the components themselves are not as you would see them in any other Paintball gun, there are a lot
of parts similar to those on other guns, even if their function is not identical. For example, there is a dual-acting ram, the same as one a Cocker, but it doesn't cock the angel or move a back-block. There is a 3-way that controlled the ram, but not like you have ever seen on a Cocker. So once you know the function of these parts, it becomes obvious that they have
been used in different applications on different guns.
Here's a run through of just how the gun works, but first there's a brief description of some of the key components of the gun so you will know what I'm talking about later on.
IN-LINE REGULATOR
This is situated at the front of the gun and is screwed into the front vertical mount, or flash tank. It is fed by air from the gun's gas supply at a pressure that should
be set at about 850 psi. This regulator is used to adjust the gun's velocity and its output will depend on what velocity the gun is shooting at, but is normally between 550 and 650 psi on a standard gun. The Angel comes standard with an excellent regulator, yet this is still one of the first things that people change, especially in America.
RAM ASSEMBLY
LPR stands for Low Pressure Regulator. This has nothing to do with low-pressure operation as many people wrongly think. The LPR is simply a regulator that supplies low-pressure air to drive the ram. It does no more that a sledgehammer or rock regulator on and Autococker. Its output determines how hard the ram drives the hammer against the valve. Ideally, this should be set to approximately 90 psi for consistent performance. Its output is adjustable via spacing shims and is located adjacent to the valve chamber form which it takes its air to regulate. It is accessible from one of the plugs at the front of the gun, and is held in place by a pin through the bottom of the body.
14-WAY VALVE
Based on a modified Japanese control valve, the 14-way is the interface between the electronic and mechanical sides of the Angel. In lay terms, it is an electronically controlled 3-way
valve. All it does is take the regulated low-pressure gas from the LPR and direct it to the front or the back of the ram. Depending on the direction of the gas, the ram will either be in the rear position or the forward position. Instead of having a 3-way actuating rod, as on a Cocker, that is connected to the trigger to control the position of the valve, the 14-way
in the Angel is controlled by an electronic signal from the circuit board. The reason it is called a 14-way is down to the number of gas channels in the body and an effort from WDP to baffle you with numbers. Unfortunately, the 14-way is not as simple to strip down as a cocker 3-way, so don't try it.
VALVE ASSEMBLY
This is the final and most active mechanical part of the gun. The valve assembly of the Angel is almost identical to that of the Autococker, which was in turn used in the Sheridan range of guns, so you can see that it has some pedigree. It comprises of a valve guide and an exhaust valve in the same arrangement as in the Cocker,with the valve spring sitting in a large valve chamber. The exhaust valve
has a crimped in seal that is the cup-seal, and the exhaust valve looks just the same, but slightly shorter, that a Cocker one. The valve guide sits in the same chamber as the LPR assembly and is held in place in the same manner, with a pin, which is hidden beneath the grip frame.
PCB
The Printed Circuit Board is the control center behind the Angel. It connects the actions of the trigger to the operation of the gun cycle in a way that completely unifies the two actions. The actual trigger for the gun acts on a micro-switch, which sends a signal to the PCB. The PCB takes the signal from the micro-switch, processes it and then sends a timed square-wave pulse to the 14-way valve. This pulse is then converted via the 14-way, switching the ram one way and then back the other, forcing the ram into a physical action that loads and fires a paintball and resets the gun ready for the next shot. Not until the full cycle is complete can the gun be fired again and any pull of the trigger during the cycle will be ignored. The two controls on the PCB allow for adjustment of the two portions of the rams cycle, the first being the valve dwell and the second the rate of fire. The PCB is powered by a 6-volt rechargeable battery that is housed in the opposite side of the gun to the LPR, ram and valve assemblies.
With those components of the gun explained, the actual description of the gun's operating cycle
should be a doddle, and it is. Now you know which bit does what, the rest is straight forward.
THE CYCLE
With the gun gassed-up, paint in the feed and the power switched on, it is ready to go. There's a paintball in the breach, held in place by the anti-double ball, and the ram, hammer and bolt are in the rear most positions. The trigger is pulled and the cycle begins. The PCB sends a signal to the 14-way and the ram is actuated forward, pushing the hammer and the bolt. The bolt pushes the
ball into the barrel and closes off the breach, just as the hammer strikes the valve. The hammer knocks the valve open, releasing a burst of gas through the valve that is directed up into the bolt and fires the ball down the barrel and out of the gun. The PCB then tells the 14-way to switch back and bring the ram back to the rear position, opening the breach and allowing
another ball to fall into the breach area. The cycle is complete when the bolt has remained in the rear position for the designated period of time set by the rate of fire control. This is set to a minimum value to allow a ball to fully fall into the open breach before the next shot can be fired, and obviously prevents the chance of chopping the next ball that's falling
into the breach.
That is the cycle, and it also explains how the rate of fire control works. The other variable control on the PCB controls valve dictates the period of the forward (first) stroke of the ram, and hence how long the valve is held open for and how much gas is released. There is no point releasing gas after the ball has left the barrel because it would just be wasted. So you should be able to see that the actual theory behind the operation of the Angel is very simple:
now theory is all well and good, but it's when the thing is put into practice that the crunch really comes, and unfortunately it's all in the set-up.
If you didn't already know,
there is more than one kind of Angel available these days. What we have brought together here for your delight and delectation is pretty much the definitive Angel range to date, starting with the stock Angel and moving on to some custom models. The range is still very small in comparison to, say, the custom Cocker market, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Each of these custom models is approved by WDP and carries a full warranty
through the entire worldwide service centre set-up for the Angel. It doesn't matter which of these models you have or want, you know you can get it fixed at any service centre.
BOLT-ONS
As with any popular make of gun, it hasn't taken long for the usual custom shops to come up with bolt-on accessories that all Angel users can upgrade their guns with. As I mentioned at the start of this article, it is impossible to make a truly
perfect gun and WDP have shown that by offering a custom model of their own.
So far, the majority of the upgrades have been designed and produced by Paintball Planet, who have a range of performance and fitting upgrades. One of these that is also
made by several other companies, including KAPP and Warped Sports, is the Flash-tank replacement that allows the fitting of a standard threaded regulator, such as the Uni-Reg or Bob Long Regulator. It's a simple attachment that means you can use your choice of reg to control your velocity.
Whilst on the subject of velocity, Planet produce two products that are designed to lower the operating pressure of the gun and also improve consistency and speed. The Eclipse Low Pressure internal kit is a whole set of lower body internals, exactly the same design as those used in the Eclipse and Junior Eclipse Angel. They are designed to reduce the operating pressure of the gun by about
200 psi. The kit include a modified valve assembly and LPR assembly. The other product is the Volumizer that is designed to increase ram speed and improve consistency by stabilizing pressure to the ram from the LPR. Several other companies also produce Volumizer type product, but be careful as there are some that don't fit too well and may damage the fine threads of the body.
AKA also produce a low pressure Tornado valve system and modified LPR assembly that further lowers the operating pressure of the Angel, but we have not tested it here at the
magazine. If it's as good as the Cocker version then it will be a decent product.
As for double triggers, a Cocker double trigger can be used with a modified single trigger to produce
the double trigger action, or you can get the one-piece designed affair from Planet. The Planet one also has twin adjustments and comes with instructions to set up a mega-short trigger pull. Warped UK produce a barrel adapter that allows any Cocker barrel to be used on and Angel and was very handy for Cocker users swapping to the Angel, but with so many manufacturers
producing specific Angel barrels now there is less need for them. Every company must now be producing barrels for the Angel - Smart Parts, Dye, 32 Degrees, ACI, J&J, OTP, the list goes on.
What every body is looking out for is the next big thing and there seems to be a race on to produce a better bolt. I will do a group test on bolts very soon to see what all these companies have come up with. But what I will say right now is DO
NOT use any kind of aluminium bolt in the Angel. They will destroy your gun. Please don't do it. Over two years ago Planet developed aluminium bolts which went on to destroy a couple of guns mid-way through a tourney. The high velocity that the Angel bolt travels in order for the gun to work causes the aluminium bolt and body to friction weld together until the bolt is welded into the breach... not a pretty sight. So as with all accessories
it is worth paying a little extra for the quality and approved and tested products. After all, you wouldn't stick furry dice in a Ferrari, would you?
STOCK ANGEL
SPEC. SHEET
Let's kick off with the stock model. There is very little that has changed on the stock Angel since the first one came off the production line. The circuit board has been upgraded to cope with extreme temperature conditions, and has been a free issue retrofit with all Angels not carrying the new board. In the last couple of months the in line regulator has lost its gas isolator switch. This one smart little feature received more failures
and complaints that any other fault on the gun. A shame really, as they had just got it almost completely sorted and reliable before they pulled the plug on it. From the very early guns, the wooden grips have been replaced by rubber wraparound ones, which are just as comfy and less slippery. The barrel diameter has been reduced in line with the decreased paint sizes and is presently at 0.689. 14" is still the stock barrel length and produces excellent results in all kinds of conditions with all kinds of paints. The step bore one-piece barrel has served WDP well, and I'm sure it will go on doing so. It is an excellent design using top quality machines to produce the highest quality finish. As far as other standard features go, the frame is still aluminium 45 style, incorporating the electric isolator switch. The plug on the back plate of the gun is still compatible for both the charger and the hopper upgrade lead, though the VL2001 upgrade is probably not as effective as the Revolution on its own.
Every Angel comes with a mini spares kit and Allen key set as standard,as well as a 12-volt in-car charger and instruction manual. The ram assembly, valve assembly and LPR assembly are all as they were (save minor modification). Out of the box it out performs most guns, including much more expensive
ones from the top custom houses. With many bolt-on upgrades coming onto the market, it is getting increasingly easy for players to internally upgrade to an even higher specification. The stock gun is distributed through WDP's dealer network throughout the world.
SPEC. SHEET
Barrels: 14" Infinity step-bore one-piece
Frames: 45 frame
Trigger: Double, shortened length
LPR: Modified
Valve: Standard
Ram: Standard
PCB: Select Fire
Colours: Various single colours
Supplied by: WDP
This is WDP's custom version of their own gun. At every major show they do, they produce a very limited number of Special Edition guns of individual design, never to be repeated.
This of course gives players the opportunity to get a very special Angel that will be owned by only 10 or 20 players around the world. These guns are cosmetically different to the standard Angel, as well as internally different, and boast features such as select fire boards and special colours. Previous special colours have included bronze, gold jade and many more. Their individuality is their greatest asset, but looks are matched by a
bit of special performance too.
SPEC. SHEET
Barrel: 14" Infinity step-bore one-piece
Frame: 45 frame
Trigger: Single or double, shortened
LPR: Modified
Valve: Standard
Ram: Standard
PCB: Select fire
Colours: Red,blue, grey
Supplied by: Warped Sportz US
The only official custom Angel made by a company outside the UK is the Dark Angel, from the lads at Warped Sportz US. This custom package is used by members of Avalanche, notably that smooth dude Lasoya and his side-kick Rocky. Having been present
at the birth of the Angel, they probably have more experience with the gun than most in the US, and use upgrades in the Dark Angel that they were using in stock guns before the Dark one was born. The body is machined and carries distinctive 'tear-drop' patterns and its own little red devil bubble sticker that makes it unmistakable. As with the Special Editions from WDP, they are only really available in single colours, but you can have a choice of single or double trigger, though the double trigger model doesn't include a guard. A select fire board is also fitted as standard. If Chris Lasoya uses one of these then it can't be at all bad... have you seen the dude play?
ECLIPSE ANGEL
Produced in the UK by Paintball Planet, they Eclipse is the longest running custom Angel. Working with WDP from the start, the close links have made it possible to produce this top specification gun in quantities that have not left people too disappointed. However, with a waiting list of still over two months that are still very sought after. For those who can't stand the wait, Planet also offer the Junior Eclipse, which is a Stock Angel with all the internal upgrades and modifications of the full-blown Eclipse, but none of the external machining or anodizing. The Eclipse Angel is the latest in the Eclipse Family and is the most expensive gun Planet produce. The Eclipse has 'tram-line' and 'swoosh' body machining externally, and a range of optional bolt-on accessories as well as a hefty list of standard features. It is the only gun here that is available in splash, with a wide range of Planet's own combinations. All the bolt-on bits are also available in matching splash for the tailored look. Until recently the Eclipse was not available with a select fire board, but now one's fitted as standard. This is also the only gun here to have
a modified low pressure valve guide, which drops operating pressure by as much as 200 psi and works hand in hand with the modified LPR assembly. Either single or double trigger, having twin adjustments to further shorten the trigger pull. The Eclipse Angel is distributed through Planet's own network of dealers around the world, who also carry the bolt-on extras.
Jack Wood
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