Forward The Eraser as well as the Tracer pistols have been hyped in the paintball media for a few months now. I first heard of them just mid last year from a confidant at Kingman, or Spyder as they prefer to be distinguished currently. The Eraser and Tracer are a part of the new product line released by Kingman in March of 2009 labeled as 'Kingman Training'. Seems the Kingman Training line focuses on training exercise and simulated environment play. I suppose in Laymen's terms that might be deciphered as close quarters urban scenario play or for police and military training exercises. There are other products offered in this Kingman Training line as well such as soft goods, masks, laser sights and 11mm(.43 cal) paint. I'm confident even more offerings will be added to this new line of equipment in the near future. The Eraser and Chaser pistols are offered in a black colored base but depending on model, may be chosen with green, yellow or grey accents. Both models come in an all black version as well such as the one portrayed in this review. Currently the full MSRP of the Eraser is $249.95 and the Tracer $199.95. If you hunt around you can find them at the slightly lower MAP pricing from various Kingman dealers.

From The Box Brand new from the box Kingman supplies you with the pistol, (1) 9 round clip, (2) 12 gram Co2 cartridges, (1) 100 round jar of paint, a pull through squeegie, a parts and tool kit which includes Allen wrenches and miscellaneous parts, an extra connecting rod, small micro-fiber cloth and barrel plug. Pretty much everything you'll need to get started but I guaranty you once you do get started you'll soon be rushing to the store to find more paint and Co2 cartridges because shooting these things are so much fun. The Co2 cartridges can be easily found but the .43 calibre paint may be a tough thing to find locally. I'd suggest ordering at least a 500 round jar of paint along with the pistol unless you think shooting this thing for about 15 minutes will satisfactorily amuse you. One of the selling points of these pistols is to give users the look and feel of actual pistol firearms. When you pull one of these out of the box, you may notice that Kingman has succeeded well on this point. The Eraser has the size and weight of an all metal pistol such as Beretta 9MM and the lighter of the two Chaser is reminiscent of a Glock 9mm polymer type pistol. The grip radius is fairly comfortable for me. Maybe not quite as small as the aforementioned firearms but still comfy per se. I can see myself adding a Hogue Handall grip sleeve that has finger grooves to make these pistols even more comfortable. You'll probably want to throw a 12 gram Co2 cartridge in the cartridge holder and fire this baby up once you pull it from the box. There's a little cartridge lever you'll want to pop out of the holder before you do. It's there to give a little leverage when twisting the holder into place. The Eraser I received had a fairly low velocity from the box so you may be surprised by the almost nil report when first shooting it. If you're anything like me, you'll probably go through that first Co2 cartridge in the matter of minutes in a flurry of dry firing grandeur. When dry firing with no back pressure, don't expect to get anywhere near the 80 shots Kingman claims these markers get per 12 gram Co2. As I mentioned earlier,  **POOF VAMUSO** there goes your first 12 gram and you haven't even run any paint through it yet. Time to run to the store to pick up a 5 pack if you didn't order any extra's with your pistol purchase. The clips for these markers are of fairly decent quality. I suppose that's the explanation for the fairly high MSRP price for additionals. The body of the clip magazines are comprised of aluminum and the bottom cap and internals are made of a composite material. There's a clip ejector button on the left side of the trigger frame similar to those on regular firearms. Just pop the clip in, shoot to your desire, push the button and the clip falls out into your hand. Very 'Cool Factor' indeed. When pulling the manual from the box, it was just so thick I thought it was more like a book than an instructional guide. After reading through the manual including the gazillion WARNINGS, I came to realize that the reason it was so thick is because it's written in English, German, French and Spanish. The English portion was obviously not written by an English major but was clear enough to understand all phases of operation and maintenance.

The Innards And All That........ I'll now attempt to acquaint you with the internal components of these new markers from Kingman. I've chosen to use just one of them as an example since beside the composite trigger frame, composite upper slide and length, they're both the same marker internally. I'll provide you with the cutaway below to give you an idea how all of these internal components link together as a whole. It's not a completely accurate account of the design but close enough to furnish you with a relative visual.   Though still a stacked tube blowback, Kingman claims they have been working on this new patented design for 3 years now. It has similarities yet a bit different as well from STBB's of the past and even the more contemporary ones of today.

Bolt, Front Striker, Rear Striker, Spring & Connecting Rod As you can see from the cutaway above, this is a whole new way of functionality for these Spyder's. First you'll notice two strikers that are connected by a rod, much in the same fashion as the hammer and bolt are connected on Tippmann 98C's. Then to top that off the striker spring and buffer have been placed in the front portion of the marker. A little bass ackwards wouldn't you say? Similar to Spyder's of the past, the rear striker and bolt are connected by a bolt pin. The bolt may be removed when the marker is gassed up. There's a little disk attached to the rear most portion of the rear striker. When dialed in the correct orientation, the disk prevents the bolt from sliding out the rear of the top tube. Kingman supplies you with a small 'U' shaped tool that fits into a slot cutout in the disk. When you insert the tool in the slot and turn the slot upwards, it leaves a void that lets the bolt pin through it for removal. Brilliant! For obvious reasons the bolt has been sized down drastically. The bolt being about 3/8" and the strikers are about 5/8" in diameter which is pretty much relative to the old strikers of the past. The velocity is adjustable through an orange cap at the front of the pistol. You simply use an allen wrench to adjust the velocity by inserting it through this cap and into the front end of the striker. Turning it left decreases the velocity or right increases the velocity by compressing or decompressing the front striker spring. I would suggest activating the trigger safety every time you do this to evade any mishap of inadvertently tripping the trigger while doing so, shooting yourself in the process. The way all of these parts work together is; you cock the marker with the top slide, this engages the front striker with the sear. When you pull the trigger the front striker is forced forward by the front spring. This pulls the rear striker forward with the connecting rod which in turn hits the valve pin and activates the shot. The released pressure sends a portion through the bolt to send the ball flying and at the same time channels a portion of the pressure through a small hole in the rear wall of the valve body. This encapsulated pressure pushes the rear striker back which pulls the front striker back as well to once again engage the sear for the next pull. The only negative I can add concerning all of these parts is, the connecting rod has some sort of low-budget zinc plating on it to prevent rust. You will notice alot of small metal particles on the strikers and in the main body channel that houses the connecting rod when taking everything apart after shooting it. I doubt it will do much harm to anything but if you're finicky like me about marker cleanliness, it may irritate you a little.

Main Body Components The main body components consist of the main receiver, detents, upper slide, slide spring, magazine guide insert, striker buffer plate, buffer, connecting rod cover and front cap. There are other components included in the main body such as the valve system and cartridge adapter assembly. Since I am basing this review on a basic breakdown of these pistols, I will not be depicting them pictorially. You cock the pistol by pulling the upper slide back which engages the front striker to the sear. The upper slide is pushed back forward by a light spring embedded in a small channel milled into it. The upper slide is there for this sole purpose only. It does not reciprocate every shot as does the slide on an actual pistol firearm. The upper slide is held in place by a long allen screw. When removing the slide you simply unscrew the allen screw then push the slide forward off the main receiver. This best done by holding the pistol upside-down or else the return spring in the aforementioned milled channel will fall out. The detent system is comprised of a cut down version Timmy fang type detent, a retainer plate and brass screw to hold it all in place. The head diameter and thickness of the detents are the same size as any other fang type detent. The protruding fang on the other hand is all of about 2-3mm long. Not too much ball retention surface and I will get to that subject later in the review. I'm not too sure I like the way this is held into place though right off hand, I can't think of a clever way to enrich the design. I'm saying this because the slot headed screw is made of brass which can be easily deformed when screwing it in or out, not to mention the very few threads it has to hold all of this into place. The retaining plate is very thin and as I can see, might be easily deformed as well. On the other hand, the deformation of the screws would be much better than stripping the body threads from any possible event of overtorquing the screws. I noticed a small hole drilled into the center of the screw heads. This would make a perfect pilot hole for drilling just in case you needed to use an extractor to remove the screws. At any rate you might consider using a little blue Loctite on the screw threads then torquing them lightly into place. This would evade stripping the screw heads and prevent the screws from backing out during use. The magazine guide insert, striker buffer plate and buffer are removable. This is fairly convenient just in case you need to clean this area. You can simply remove them and wipe them clean. Also easier to clean is the larger cavity voids in the under portion of the body when these components are removed rather than trying to access intricate milled areas of the body if they were an integral part of it. The magazine guide insert serves the purpose of releasing the magazine ball stopper so the paintballs can freely be fed into the breech area and at the same time retain the 9 round magazine clip in place. I would speculate it is made of plastic for easy replacement from the wear of continually slamming the clips in and out of the pistol. The buffer plate is there to of course, hold the buffer in place. The connecting rod cover is located in the right side of the main receiver body. It is there to hold the connecting rod ends into the corresponding striker holes while in use and gain access to the striker connecting rod when cleaning or maintaining it. You will need to remove this first before taking all the internal components out of the pistol. It is suggested to first cock the marker before removing the connecting rod to relieve any tension from the front striker. When doing so the rod pretty much falls out by itself. The orange front cap is there as an access port to the front striker velocity adjuster. Don't quote me on this but I believe the cap is orange by law for manufacturer release since this little pistol could be easily mistaken as an actual firearm, especially the all black version depicted in this review. One thing that disappointed me about the receiver is that it has no detachable barrel. The barrel itself is an integral part of the receiver so if it were to be scratched or whatever, you'd need to replace the whole upper main portion of the marker. The bolt has a super thick anodizing on it so I think there's little to worry about that scratching the barrel. If it were a marker of the 80's gen, this would not be anything unusual since all markers of that era had no detachable barrels, feednecks or any type of detents for that matter. Maybe it's just that I have become spoiled with all this new technology I take for granted. At any rate, it's just a little disappointing that there will be no chance of changing out the barrel to something different on this marker of the 2nd millennium.

The Trigger Frame As mentioned earlier, since I am basing this review on a basic breakdown of these pistols, I will not be depicting the internals of the trigger frame components pictorially. Nor will I be elaborating on the full mechanics since that's almost impossible without taking everything completely apart. Far as I can see, the trigger frames of the Eraser and Chaser pistols are pretty much the same with the exception of a slight styling variation on the trigger guard and one is metal and the other a composite material. Both frames are of a mechanical configuration with the conventional spring forced ball detent push button safety. The sear mechanics are pushed forward as opposed to the rear of the frame as you'll see on Spyder mechanical frames of the past. Of course reason being that the Co2 and paintball supply are both fed specifically through the trigger frame grip. The sear and trigger relationship are a bit different as frames of the past but similar in the condition that the sear is not engaged with the trigger mechanism unless the marker is in the cocked position. As I mentioned earlier, there is a clip release button on the left side of the frame. The trigger pull is a bit lengthy but not bad at all far as pull activation force. I'm sure some paintball savvy will figure a way to shorten the pull length of this mechanical frame some time in the future. All in all, even with the lengthy swing I felt very comfortable shooting this pistol with little or no target accuracy wobble from the minimal difficulty of pulling the trigger.

Field Testing After dry firing this at home, I could barely wait to take it to the field and give it a whirl. I ended up taking it to an old renegade field I used to frequent so there would little distractions to take my mind from the task at hand. I started out with a 5 pack of 12 gram Co2 cartridges and a 200 round container of paint. I had already shot 2 of the Co2 cartridges at home dry firing and left the paint and Co2 that came with the marker at home so I wouldn't be tempted to expire the short supply that was provided with the marker as well.  When first shooting paint through the Eraser, I immediately checked the velocity. From the box it was shooting in the low 200's. The velocity consistency isn't all that great but we have to consider we're dealing with a 12 gram fed Co2 pistol here. After a short trial and error of around 2-3 turns, it was shooting at a relative 260-270fps. By that time I had already gone through a couple clips of paint, 1 clip at a time since 1 clip is all I brought with me. I will stress this, if you're going to get one of these pistols, 1 clip probably just isn't going to get it for you. I'd want at least 5 clips before I'd be satisfied of not having to load the clip every 9 shots. They're quite easy to fill. You just pull down in the follower and lock it in place. Load the 9 balls, pull the follower from the clip groove and it's ready to go. Piece of pie! Apologetically, I was having so much fun shooting this thing that I didn't document an accurate account of exactly how many shots I got from a single Co2 cartridge. I suppose I'll just blame it on the short supply of balls and cartridges I had available at the time. I do know it wasn't 80 'full velocity' shots per 12 gram. If I were to speculate on this experience, I'd think it was more like around 7 clips of full velocity shots before things started dogging a bit. Speaking of dogging, you need to be careful of how many shots you take before changing the Co2. If you wait too long, this is a blowback so you can expect it to jackhammer and chop paint if you are too frugal to change it before it does. This advice from the fingertips of the frugal one, ha ha. Besides the slightly messy experience from being so frugal, I had another minor messy experience. As I was slamming the clips in the pistol like Chuck Norris on a special mission, I noticed sometimes it would double feed balls into the breech. One time 2 balls actually flew out of the barrel when slamming in a clip, ZING! My speculation of this experience is first of all, don't slam the clips into the pistol. Second is, the springs in the clips are brand new so after time they will lose a small bit of resilience and be less likely to have the tendency to push balls past the short nubbied detents on a full clip full of paint. That's another thing, the detents are fairly short and have to be so not to create too much friction on the bolt otherwise it can create recocking concerns. Some good advice? No Chuck Norris clip slamming and you'll most likely have much less a mess as a result. Now for the good stuff.....I'm very impressed with the accuracy of these true to life pistols. I had no moving targets but had an abundance of muppet tree's to mow so the barky muppet mowing ensued. I'm not much an advocate of taking the valuable time of first looking down the barrel or sight before I shoot. I'm to the point to where I can simply aim in that direction and hit my target. Well I must say hitting these trees at 25 yards even far as 50 yards was very simple and hitting these stationary targets 95% of the time as well. The Kingman paint breaks very easily and it has a fairly thick day-glo orangish red fill. I have heard some people complain about the small calibre 11mm paint. They have got to be kidding or have never actually shot this small paint. It really flies straight and well. I'll add this as well, if the barrel has broken paint in it, not even a $1500 marker is going to be accurate. So to sum the accuracy portion of this field testing submittal, two thumbs up for the Eraser!

Rounding Things Up Well, there you have it, another day, another review...... Kingman has succeeded in the department of making these markers with the look and feel of an actual firearm. My understanding is that's one of their foremost intentions in releasing this new line of markers. The Eraser and Chaser both have a perfect weight, balance and comfortable feel of any genuine clip fed semiauto pistol. The grip itself isn't any thicker than any staggered clip 9mm pistol. You simply cannot do that using a .68 calibre paint as a base. Everything all the way down to the full proportion imitates the look and feel of an actual firearm pistol. As an added benefit, the shot accuracy is impressive as well. Besides the couple of mishaps I experienced thus far, I think Kingman has developed a fairly substantial contribution to the paintball community. I also think that these pistols are something the community will grow fond of as they slip into circulation. I'd have to admit, the Eraser is what I've become most fond of between these two. You can most assuredly expect more goodies like these from the Kingman Training line in the near future.