General Reminder: Gaming in Poor Weather

[pestobanana]

General reminder to everyone out there:

Gaming in the rain is fun, hell yeah! But if you must play in a torrential downpour, try to stick to GBB or an AEG without a MOSFET. If you decide to play with your fancy computerized gun anyway, leave your gun right side up when you're not using it, so the water doesn't drip into the trigger get to the trigger board (if you have one).

ALWAYS remove the battery when the gun is not "active", when its sitting in a general area and not being used. When game day is done, NEVER leave your batteries plugged in, and please give your gun a wipe down. Even if you don't wipe your gun down, taking the battery out will save your electronics.

The reason for this is because even though your gun isn't being rained on, it's in an extremely damp environment in a wet case, and the water will continue seeping deeper into the gun. If it gets to your electronics and you have a battery plugged in, you're gonna have a bad time ie. a guys gun went full auto while he was at home sleeping because water got to his Spectre and his battery was left in. If there is no current going through when it gets wet, then there likely won't be catastrophic damage.

A MilSim this past weekend with heavy rain killed several PTWs, and two BTC Spectres fried overnight because people got home at 5 AM, and went straight to bed, so tired that they forgot to unplug their batteries or wipe their guns down. The two Spectred guns I ran that day got drenched but survived to frag another day because I always removed the battery when not in use.

Operating in the rain is 1337. Having to replace expensive and possibly extremely rare electronics is much less 1337.

-Z

[BioRage]

TL ; DR

GBB Master Race!

[Desmodus]

OP: Black Oak should be unofficially known as OP: RIP PTW

[Ricochet]

As a PTW owner I have dealt with this first hand. You can play in the rain easy enough, but if you suspect your gun has been moisture compromised unplug the battery immediately as stated. You can get the sealed front optics and newer versions of the computer inside the cage are better at not getting wet. That being said, if you drop it in a deep puddle, are in torrential downpour or just have one weird misfire, unplug that battery. Go home, strip down your gun and use duster cleaner to clean it immediately. DO NOT USE HEAT!. This will kill your boards faster than water. Pull it all apart, dry out the boards and motor with a duster can and let the rest sit and dry. I've played through severe rain storms multiple times without incident with my PTW without issue, but the first huge rainfall I tried to dry out my gun using heat and didn't disconnect the battery right away. Everything ended up fried.

[Danke]

Save up those packs of desiccant that come with everything for times like this. If something is wet pack a bunch of them around it to absorb the moisture.

[Ricochet]

Originally Posted by Danke

Save up those packs of desiccant that come with everything for times like this. If something is wet pack a bunch of them around it to absorb the moisture.

That's a great idea actually. Little packs often come with bio BBs.

[DrDoUm]

A teamate fried his PTW board no later than last week-end while playing... we got caught by a storm during action.

[Styrak]

Originally Posted by Ricochet

That's a great idea actually. Little packs often come with bio BBs.

Or, you know, rice.

[Ricochet]

I also run with a poncho, specifically the OPSEC. Not only is it light-weight and tough, but it can adjust to fit over a full load-out including a ruck-sack and completely cover a rifle. Honestly it wouldn't matter what kind of platform I was running, such as GBBR or AEG, you don't want to operate them too much in super wet or damp air. It's a good idea to carry a garbage bag in a pouch to protect your equipment, such as guns, batteries, radios, etc. torrential downpours don't often last long, even if it keeps raining it will lighten up, so don't be afraid to hunker down if needs be. That much rain makes your shots shitty anyways. Wrap and shoulder your gun, draw your secondary and go to town.

[FirestormX]

Originally Posted by Styrak

Or, you know, rice.

The efficacy of rice is an oft-toted exaggeration. Rice is hygroscopic, but nothing amazing. It just means that it absorbs moisture from the air.

For drying things, you have two options: get air flowing over it, to get water moving, or place the item in an airtight container for a very long time. This will let the trapped air circulate through, with the water in it, so that the rice can absorb the water from the air, rather than going back to your electronics.

Here's the first result I found on google:
https://www.gazelle.com/thehorn/2014...xy-everything/

Test 2: Is rice king?

The Experiment

We wanted to see if rice is really all it’s cracked up to be. We tested six common household materials to see which could absorb the most water from a wet sponge in 24 hours:

Cat litter
Couscous (pearl)
Classic rolled oatmeal
Instant oatmeal
Instant rice
Silica gel (crystal kitty litter)
Uncooked rice

Rice is most definitely not king

Dry, uncooked conventional rice was the worst of the seven options we tested. It absorbed the least water in 24 hours, losing out to silica gel, cat litter, couscous, instant oatmeal, classic oatmeal and instant rice.

More importantly, the sponge that we left in open air performed far better than any of the drying agents. It’s possible that the absorbent materials could have matched open air if we’d used a lot more. But it seems that leaving your phone on a shelf may be the best option.

[BloodSport]

https://youtu.be/WYlDVimu1s0

[pestobanana]

The secret to leaving it in rice overnight is not the hygroscopic quality of the rice, but the Asians that come overnight to fix it.

Originally Posted by FirestormX

The efficacy of rice is an oft-toted exaggeration. Rice is hygroscopic, but nothing amazing. It just means that it absorbs moisture from the air.

For drying things, you have two options: get air flowing over it, to get water moving, or place the item in an airtight container for a very long time. This will let the trapped air circulate through, with the water in it, so that the rice can absorb the water from the air, rather than going back to your electronics.

Here's the first result I found on google:
https://www.gazelle.com/thehorn/2014...xy-everything/