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When Owen Ronayne handed me the Angel 1 at its release at the NPPL Boston event I hefted it in my hand, then asked him with a look of surprise on my face, “are all the internals in this thing?” Owen just smiled. As if this favorable first impression of the new Angel wasn't enough, I was broadsided by a convincing second impression as long-embattled pro team Miami Rage won the Boston seven-man event, with Joy Division in third, both shooting the Angel 1 for the first time in competition. After such a successful weekend, needless to say WDP, with their new flagship paintgun, had my attention. It's times like this that I truly love my job.
The Angel 1 is packaged in what I can only describe as the most ingenious Styrofoam engineering accomplishment I've ever seen. Opening the cardboard outer shell, the internal packaging is a “Chinese puzzle box” that encases and protects the Angel 1 and its many components and accessories very well. Speaking of components and accessories, the Angel 1 is shipped with a two-piece WDP “Feather-Lite” stock barrel kit with three backs of varying bore sizes and a ported tip that creates a fourteen inch barrel once threaded together. A tube of oil, barrel plug with lanyard, owner's manual and tools are also sent with the Angel 1, which is available in an impressive array of colors and fades, including red, blue, silver, black and olive with dusted or polished finishes. As I put my test Angel 1 together the first step was assembling the aluminum Feather-Lite barrel and threading it onto the receiver. The Angel 1's barrel threads are of the new Angel type, so while the big barrel manufacturers like Dye, Smart Parts and Custom Products have barrels available, some smaller barrel companies may not yet manufacture barrels threaded to fit. Digging into the box to retrieve a barrel back and the tip, I was confounded to discover that WDP packages the Angel 1 with barrel backs of .691, .693 and .695. Last I checked, paintballs were .68 caliber and while some players out there may enjoy shooting golf balls at one-another, my ammunition of choice, Draxxus Hellfire, runs a little closer to the lower .68's. Not to be deterred, I chose the .691 back, threaded the barrel together and took a look through it before putting it on the gun. It's well-honed, and definitely not a useless pipe that requires replacement out of the box like some stock barrels. One look at the Angel 1 proves that WDP has been paying attention to the wants and needs of the serious paintball player, and took these desires into consideration when putting together their new hotness. A lever-locking clamping feed neck is standard on the 1, as are laser anti-chop eyes, dual ball detents, a blade double trigger in an extremely spacious trigger guard, .45 grip frame with integrated dovetail mount, smooth, ergonomic fore grip/inline regulator and an extremely nice on/off bottle adapter that places the air fitting in the center of the twist knob. An included nine volt battery powers the Angel 1, and the trigger fires the gun optically, rather than via a micro switch. Like other Angels, the user can pop the hood on the 1 by twisting a knob at the rear of the receiver. The rotor breech will then flip open, allowing access to and removal of the soft-nose, polymer bolt, which should be shot dry, without lubrication of any kind. The Angel 1 operates at extremely low pressure, with optimal input pressure of 400psi, operation at around 200 and cycling at approximately 55psi. While the 1's body is smaller than that of previous Angels, there are some massive air chambers in there, increasing volume and improving air flow. An inventive three-way button at the rear of the grip frame switches the Angel 1 on and off, and allows the user to push it up or down to scroll through the various menus available within the electronics, then make selections. The 1 is equipped to handle the requirements of all the major tournament circuits direct from the factory, with league-specific modes programmed into the board to allow for immediate play in the NPPL, PSP, NXL, Millennium and CFOA. Custom modes are able to be created through the “custom semi” mode, which, in a surprising plot twist, offers two programmable and easily hidden “breakout” modes. A tournament lock is built into the Angel 1's board and players and referees can clearly see whether the lock is in use via the small screen on the left side of the grip frame, which also shows battery life, the game timer and status of the anti-chop eyes. Heading down to the shooting range to put the Angel 1 through its paces, I first flipped through the parameters and dialed the gun into “CFOA” mode, a simple process that took only a few seconds. Dropping Draxxus paintballs into a Boost Shocktech 454 HALO B and threading a Crossfire low pressure 68/4,500 bottle on brought the game-ready weight The trigger pull of the Angel 1 is extremely light and crisp, with high rates of fire attainable in semiautomatic mode thanks to the optical board. However, this confused me, as I could have sworn I had placed the gun in CFOA mode, which should have kicked into ramp after the third pull. Ripping off another string it was clear that while the Angel 1, in semiauto, is extremely fast, it certainly wasn't ramping in CFOA mode. To satisfy myself that the gun did in fact ramp and that there wasn't a “me” problem, I switched modes into PSP and let a string rip. The Angel 1 immediately roared into ramp, hammering a string downrange at 15.4 balls per second as advertised. As the target at which I was aiming was about thirty feet away, practically the entire string landed “crackity-crack-crack-crack” in the same spot. Did I mention that at close to medium ranges the Angel 1 is ridiculously accurate? That's impressive considering that daylight was visible all the way around every paintball I fired as they headed down the bore, they were so mismatched to the barrel. Of course, at longer ranges the group opened up a bit, but I did notice a pronounced drop at the end of the very flat trajectory of the Angel 1. Evidently the operative word is still “Angel.” Even with a well-ported barrel, the Angel 1 reported with a distinctive “pop” when fired, but kicked very little. The low pressure operation and smooth ram make for a very stable platform, even in such a small, light receiver. Shooting at just a shade over 290 feet per second with paint much too small for the barrel, I managed to fire nine hundred paintballs on a 3,500psi air fill, placing the numbers at well over a thousand shots per fill on a topped-off bottle. During testing, I chopped one ball but broke none in the barrel, and admittedly the ball I chopped was one of those last few in the hopper. A quick opening of the rotor breech and a few moments with a swab were all that was necessary to clean the Angel and barrel out, but some paint had managed to blow back up into the HALO feed neck, requiring a cleaning off the field. Retaining all the things that make it an Angel, but with refinements that make it the pinnacle of Angel evolution, the 1 is extremely impressive. Small, light, fast, simple to use and maintain and packed with all the necessary accouterments out of the box to compete at the top level, the immediate success of the teams and players who picked up the Angel 1 speaks for itself. Give me a barrel back that fits something smaller than beach balls and a CFOA mode that ramps like the manual says and I'd be completely out of things to gripe about. The ultimate refinement of the Angel platform, the Angel 1 combines the basic design concepts of the original Angel from the late nineties with the latest in modern design and technology resulting in the culmination of everything WDP has ever attempted to create in a paintball shooting machine. |
