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AirTech Liquitron Mod

AirTech Liquitron mod:

My goal was to test the effectiveness of the AirTech Liquitron modification. The mod involves draining the tube and punching a hole in the rubber seal so that the tube becomes a secondary air tank. In theory, this should have a small but positive effect on range. I wanted to demonstrate, with a high degree of accuracy, how effective the mod actually is.

The primary difficulty in this test is isolating the variable - air volume - from other factors that might influence the results. To this end I did a 5" PETG single barrel mod on an AT2k and did not plug the overpressure release valve in the pump. The barrel size was chosen because I felt that 6" would be too long for the unplugged pump and unfairly bias the test in favor of the Liquitron modded gun. The pump was left unplugged as a simple way to control the pressure in the tank given a variable volume.

I tested the gun before and after the Liquitron mod. For each sample, 20 shots were fired at ground level with a 10 degree barrel inclination. This configuration was chosen for repeatability (I used a gun rest to obtain consistent height and angle) and because the slight angle considerably reduced dart skipping on my concrete test range.

In order to properly compare the numbers, I created an Excel worksheet that performs statistical analysis on a set of sample distance data. The numerical mean is a useful piece of data but other numbers are required in order to judge the significance of the average. Hopefully this type of analysis will be used in the future by others and the community will benefit from the extra degree of statistical rigor.

Control: Before the Liquitron Mod

 

Experimental: After the Liquitron Mod

The data show no evidence of any change at all in the range of the gun. The relatively low (and similar) standard deviations and clean histograms indicate consistent procedures. The nearly identical mean, median, and range make it clear that this mod is not an effective way to enhance range.