Strange velocity problem

[shadowspar]

Hey all!  Long time, no see.

I've been out of the game for a few years (no local field) but I'm hoping to get my Phantom back into action and take some road trips in the coming months. 

Just wanted to check and see if anyone's experienced anything like this before.  I've got a strange velocity problem where every other shot is way low.  F'rinstance, if I dial in at 280, my shots will go something like 283, 230, 278, 229, 273, 218, ...

I've got a VSC setup running a 3.5oz CO2 tank.  Everything in the marker body looks fine, so I imagine it's either something in the valve (maybe some gunk in there, or a kinked up spring) or a problem somewhere in the gas supply.

Anybody seen something like this before?

[thkyle]

The most common cause of this is bad paint. Paint that ranges in size like your velocities do, or is not round. If you have some rings or barrel inserts, test some to see if they vary a lot. It could be an issue with the internals, but lousy paint is usually the culprit. You can also just put the paint in the barrel and look through it. It you can see a lot of space around some balls and not others, this is going to affect the velocity for sure.

[Kenny]

I had the same problem, lucky for me Mike Casady was there to provide the care that he is famous for!  the problem for me was a broken power tube.....so check that!