Monday, January 15, 2007

Goggles: Faux Fog?

Many would argue that the most important piece of paintball equipment is your mask; personally I would tend to agree with them. Not only will a good mask increase your range of vision and comfort, it will also decrease your chances at an injury. Out of all the paintball injuries I have ever seen, heard, or read about eye injuries are the ones that never seem to work out. Sure I have walked off of the field bleeding numerous times (because I do not cover my forearms) but I would never risk eye injury. A mask is the ONLY piece of equipment I would recommend buying while you are still in the trial stages of paintball.

So you spend the money on a very nice mask, put it on and the mask feels like a glove. You would think that if you spend all the money on a 100$ pair of Events that your mask would not fog at all. However, on a hot summer day your mask begins to “fog” in the middle of the game. Now I’m not going to lie, it took me awhile to figure out where this mysterious fog came from, after many games of having blurred vision I realized what the two errors were.

A majority of scenario players mistake sweat and dirty lenses for “fog.” When you se a player with a decent pair of thermal lenses complaining about their mask fogging up on a hot day it is almost certain to be one of these two culprits. Have no fear as both are easily fixed!

For the sweat it is as easy just to wear a sweat band or du-rag. Personally I wear both. If you put on the sweat band and the du-rag you can get maximum protection and camo. Since du-rags are really cheap getting a few to match various patterns of camouflage should not burn a hole in your wallet.

Second, dirty and smeared lenses often cause players to feel like their mask is fogging. When the clean off the mask at first it looks relatively clean. Yet as the mask stays in the heat the remaining grime begins to disperse causing the mask to “fog” over. One way to fix this would be to remove your mask and clean it each time you get hit, but this takes a long time regardless of what goggle system you have. The easiest fix to this problem, you might already have at home. Rain-X! It comes in a yellow bottle and can be picked up at your local Wal-Mart or other auto store. What Rain-X does is create a Hydrophobic (water fearing) barrier on your mask which causes the paint splatter to literally slide off. If you get rain-x anti fog and apply it to the inside you will not have to worry about real fog either.

So in conclusion, chances are you’ve encountered these culprits at some time during your paintball career and now you have a good chance of saying goodbye to mask problems all together!

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