The qloader
Developed in 2003 by Ancient Innovations, the qloader is a unique force feed loader system that uses spring loaded 100 rnd. pods in place of a traditional hopper. The paintballs are held in a spiral keeper inside each tube which rotates when feeding or loading. A special loading tool is used in conjunction with a gravity feed paintball silo to load and wind the pods between games.
Setup is quite straight forward. The pod holder is clamped onto the marker and a flexible hose is connected between it and the feed neck. The length of the hose is set so that it holds a whole number of paintballs with a little clearance. This is to allow for pods to be fitted and removed with ease (if there is a paintball sitting across the gap between the pod and the holder it may be difficult to remove).
In use the pods are cam locked into place which unlocks the spring causing the paintballs to feed up the hose (I always pre fill the hose with paintballs first to avoid any breaks when fitting the first pod).
In use the system works quite well. The only negatives are that the pods are quite heavy and only hold 100 paintballs. You are also vulnerable during the reloading process because you can only shoot what’s in the top of the hose.
All in all this is probably another solution to a non existent problem. So unless you want to shoot gangsta style, a modern force feed hopper will fit the bill. But in saying that, the qloader is definitely an 11 on the paintball geek’s scale of cool.