After searching for a long time I found a nice Rainmaker to add to my colection of markers. Rainmaker is the best marker ever made by the Brass Eagle company and is also their last electric marker (ViewLoader has released a series of Electronic trigger frame markers however they are just mechanical blowbacks with an electronic trigger frame just like Electronic Spyders, Pirahnas and other blowbacks). It is also a very good marker overall and despite that the production of it ended over 5 years ago it will still stand up to many tournament style markers like ION, Shocker and will out perform most Autocockers. In general Rainmaker is a true electro-pneumatic marker, meaning that everything is controlled by the electronics and the internals use pheumatics to move rather than springs and gas (like in blowbacks). Electro-pneumatic marker can reach much higher rates of file and are much more consistent than your standard blowbacks(spyder, tippmann ect...). They also require more manintenence, more care and the mechanism is much more complex.

The Rainmaker which I got is a year 1998 model, an early Rainmaker, you can tell it from several things, the year 1998 and early 1999 did not come with select fire option, they are simply set to 14 bps speed if your finger can move that fast, following models had select fire board so you could switch between burst and full auto modes but were limited to 9 bps (this can be upgraded). The front grip (shroud) which covers the internals is bigger (3 piece design) and exposes the barrel in the early models where as it was shortened and made into a one-piece version to simply slide over the barrel and internals in the later models. The early models operated on 4 AA batteries (thats 6V total) where in following models that was switched to a single smaller and lighter 9V battery. You can convert the older models to work on 9V battery with minor modifications.

Below is how I planned for this Raimaker to work, however is scrapped the Macro line which you see here, since I don't like them too much, it was fine as a replacement of the microline the Rainmaker came standard with however I always favoured the braided hose (just sentimental I guess). The barrel is Armson Stealth 16 inch riffled barrel, suppose to be one of the more accurate and quiet barrels out there. Hopper is Empire Reloader 2 (early model) sound activated hopper feeding 15bps, the hopper is mounted into an Evil Smoke Stack, but I also scrapped that idea since Rainmaker already has a raised feed neck and with the smoke stack it made the hopper unconfortably high.

Helpful links:

• Extreme Sports Hardwarz - Rainmaker parts
• Brass Eagle Homepage - Rainmaker section
• WARPIG - Rainmaker Description and History

By no means Rainmaker is a perfect marker, as mentioned before it is a rather complex marker in design and operation and requires much more TLC than a tippmann or spyder clone. Stock Low Pressure Regulator which supplies the ram with air can get stuck and feed full 850 psi through the small lines leading to the MAC valve and blow the hoses, the fittings and possibly damage the valve (its almost like Mazda RX7 blowing out vacum hoses and killing the engine).

Above is a picture of my Rainmaker with the shroud on but no barrel attached, I will need to get a shorter hose since this ones is obviously too long, but I really wanted a braided hose on my Rainmaker rather than the Microline (yes MICRO not Macro) it came equipped with.

Rainmaker accepts Autococker threaded barrels, so when looking just look under Autococker since you will have a hard time finding barrel made specificly for the Rainmaker.

Here is not so good quality never the less helpfull diagram of the rainmaker. <link>