Think of a futuristic looking field with cone shaped bunkers that you can
hug right into, and stay close to to get those hard to shoot angles.
One that inflates as easy as turning on a switch! How about a field
that you can set up and take down in an hour, one that you can pack into
the trunk of a car? If you thought of a Sup'air ball field, you're
right on target! I had the experience of learning how one goes together
recently, and I wanted to share my newfound knowledge with you.
This is predominately, a speedball field of sorts, used in tournaments across the world. Although I wasn't given exact dimensions, I will guess at approximately 30 metres by 80 metres. It makes quite a nice-sized field. A marker with good range can shoot from end to end. To start off with, the field comes in a couple of zipped up canvas bags. Heavy bags, mind you! I had trouble lifting the big one. Inside is enough to put up a 5 man field.
The field I helped put together came as a double set, so that a ten man field was possible. However, we only used one set. Once you unpack the field, there are bunches of green tubes of various lengths, some bigger green pieces, with some yellow and pink pieces too. We spread out the contents and subsequently became completely confused! What goes where? Instructions were found at the bottom of one of the bags and off we went.
Once we had figured out what the general idea was, it became easier. You see, there is a grid of the green tubes that is the base for the field. Long pieces for the sides, and shorter pieces for the ends. This is held together by corner pieces, with one corner having an outlet for the fan to inflate it. Attached to this grid with shorter green tubes, is the bunkers. I'll get to those in a moment.
The grid was the first part we had to put together. The outside border was assembled and then a series of tubes went all the way down, attaching to each side. I compared it to the yard lines on a football or rugby field. They were fastened every second attachment (a zippered hole in the tubes) all the way down. My thoughts at the time were that people were going to trip on the middle cross pieces. However, this was not a problem the next day. The one thing I did notice about the putting together the grid was that it was hard to zip it all together without any twists in the tubes. You had to make sure they were flat before you put both ends together, otherwise you would have a problem! As well, you had to make sure the ends you were putting together matched. One needed a zipper attachment, one needed the little piece to start it out. I compared it to the female and male ends of plumbing fittings. Seemed to make sense to me, although I got some weird looks for it. Once we figured out which pieces went where, we had our grid in place.
Now, we looked at the map and attempted to figure out where the bunkers go. Some attached right to the edge of the field, and some attached via longer tubes so they could be out in the middle. Bunkers were placed and things were starting to look good! We had a hard time figuring out which bunkers were which, as the directions didn't state colors, only shapes. The large yellow cones and the smaller green ones were the same shape, so we had to guess which one went where.
The bunkers were either cone shaped, cylindrical, or large triangles. The end bunkers, from which the teams started from, were like goal posts with a tube connecting them at the top. A Sup'air ball sign hung from here. One thing I noticed about the end pieces was that they had a hard time standing up during the day. This may have been because the generator was not strong enough, and it was windy. The bunkers stood up very well though. One person on the crew helping to set up the field attached an inflatable sheep to the top of the large pink bunker. That poor little sheep took a beating the next day!
Once we had it all zipped together, we had to patch all the attachment holes in the hoses (just the one we had nothing attached to) with little round zipper discs. I went around with the little patches and zipped them up to cover the holes (very neat idea in all). The zippers basically go around the opening twice to completely seal the joint. This was the same as all the tube attachments. I wondered how a zipper could keep air from escaping, but it was a pretty airtight seal once we got it inflated. I was suprised at the material too. It seemed to be like a tent material, and I wondered if it had been treated to keep air inside, and not leak through the material. Ahh the wonders of modern technology and physics!
The generator was brought up and hooked to the fan (which was hooked to
one corner of the grid) , and someone started it. As it was inflating,
we discovered we had a slight problem. We had put the field together
upside down! The sides had the connector holes pointing out instead
of in and the bunkers were getting twisted around to the outside!
As well, the ends were upside down! Oops. We turned off the generator
and scratched our heads for a moment. How did we end up doing it
that way? We weren't sure, but most people thought it was quite funny.
One person suggested picking up the entire inflated field and turning it
over (like a capsized boat). We looked at that person and told
him to get serious! We would have to deflate it.
Well, the solution to the problem (after a break and a couple of beers in the shade), was to switch the ends and sides, and also swapping them end for end, which seemed to work. We ran tandem across the field with the tubes and clotheslined unsuspecting people standing out in the middle (who soon learned to duck!) Once it was all zippered up again, we started the generator and fan. Our solution seemed to work better, although we had forgotten to untwist the tubes. More fiddling, and then voila... the field was ready.
The next day, the field performed very well. The paint hammered some of the bunkers, and stood up very well to it. Having tied them down with tent pegs, people hit them with force and they didn't budge (too much). The footing was chipped wood, so it was soft landing, and you could literally get underneath some of the bunkers as the footing got strewn away from traffic behind them. They were soft if you happened to hit them too! I remembered the inflated carnival trampolines I loved as a kid, and these reminded me of them.
So all in all, it was a neat field to watch players on. I wanted desperately to pick up a 'gun and try it out, but I'll have to wait for my chance. It looked like a good field to play aggressively and forward, although the back bunkers gave you plenty of angles in which to target (Definitely different than any other speed ball field I had ever seen). At the end of the day, the field cleans up with rags and water. A pressure washer would work too! I wondered if the pink paint residue would ever come off the some of those poor guys hands who got stuck on clean up!
One thing I remember is that the instructions tell you it takes around an hour to put up. It took much longer than that, although we didn't time ourselves. I think it was because most of the people there had never put one together before, and the instructions were kind of vague. We were also goofing around a bit (paintballers goofing around? Never...) My suggestion to anyone putting one together more than once, label the parts with a marker and tape or something, and tie all the same type of pieces together so you don't have to look for them if you need one. We found that if we needed a certain type of piece, we had to hunt through a pile of canvas to find it.
My rating? Two thumbs up to a superior product! It was very player and spectator (and ref) friendly, stood up to a day of play (over 60 games), and once we figured it out, easy enough to take down! It was definitely a refreshing change from the usual tire or wooden bunkers!