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Ahh the ye olde worlde days, when UKAN and Arnies was the font of all knowledge, Wolf Armouries was about the only real shop you could go into, spent hours on Airsoft Dynamics website or Den Trinity, Guns’n’Guys, UN Company And the only bb’s you could get was Excel 0.2’s !!

Coming into airsoft late gifted me a much more realistic expectation of the hobby. I knew the popular airsoft videos weren't going to be a real depiction of airsoft but holy shit, I didn't realise how bad it was until I played at a couple different fields. I much prefer the airsoft content creators who are more bothered about showing off new/cool fields, guns/gear or just having a giggle with memes/jokes. Cannot stand the likes of KM or NamesNicco whos whole personality appears to revolve around him being an ex squaddie and thats it. The majority of airsoft youtubers rub me up the wrong way because it doesn't show the average player experience.

OMG I am an absolute idiot 🙄 I forgot to swap my chrono to 0.25 for the joule calculation so it was still displaying 0.28 values

Recently upgraded LCT TKMS by Luke at Neg Airsoft. I've then replaced the original black lower handguard with LCT wood and replaced the black pistol grip with an LCT plum one. Kept the upper handguard, which took a bit of filing down to fit on top of the wood lower.

I was always (and still am) an Arnies user. I remember when Zeroone was a warehouse only, and Airsoft World was Airsoft Scotland. I was contrary and ran 0.23g Excel’s. I’ve still got about 4000 rounds of Super Grand Master 0.29g as well which I use up the L96. I’m pleased you stuck with it!

Yeah, that was my experience too. At the milsim I attended, the OpFor guys were really chill whilst the TF guys were... um... yeah. I find it can bleed over into the filmsim stuff as I think it's a certain elite-tacticool-oper8r mindset that draws people to that side, but it's not nearly as bad. At the Vietnam games I go to, literally all of the PAVN/VC guys are super chill and up for a laugh, whilst on the US/AUS side there are definitely some great guys who are super chill and up for a laugh, but there are also some who have a stick so far up their butt I'm surprised they can crouch in game. At the end of the day it's BB wars with varying levels of LARP. Like... you can't take yourself that seriously 😂 Pretty much the same as me, but since you started only a year before I did it makes sense that our experiences would line up. Nowadays all I see is multicam/MTP (makes sense, it's dirt cheap) so when I show up in my MARPATs it makes me feel like a special little snowflake. I do need to get my hands on some desert MARPAT at some point, but finding it in my size is a real effort. You're right in terms of the knowledge aspect too. I remember having a look around as a teenager and finding the US Army sniper training field manual as a PDF, then proceeding to learn through experience what worked and what didn't apply for airsoft. It was super fun and honestly I think I'm a better player for it. People are always amazed at my local site when I am basically invisible wearing no camo during the summer months and too many snipers rely on these super gucci leaf suits now to stay hidden when other players are nearby. Helps me stay hidden during Vietnam games too, since black pyjamas aren't the best camo I think the time we start airsoft definitely influences our decisions even today. I still love my classical style rifles (m700s, m14s etc) because I started airsoft around the time of Black Hawk Down and CoD4 (All Ghillied Up!) and those two pieces of media heavily influenced me getting into sniping in airsoft; my first RIF was a Warrior L96. Yes, I did the thing we tell everyone not to do and I bought a bolt action as my first gun and I loved it. My early go-to loadout in airsoft was an m14 at DMR power and m1911 because of Black Hawk Down and... I still use that combination sometimes to this day, though I am looking at sourcing a G&P m14 DMR stock for my HPA TM m14 because I want to be a unicorn (I have literally never seen anyone using one ever).

For me the golden age for a lot of things was the early to mid 2000’s. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that the quality of the guns, gear, and tactics is significantly better now than it was then, but the sport’s a little bit too ‘pro’ now. I started playing in 2004, and back then it was a bit more ‘underground’ a bit more amateur (in a positive way). Information was gained through forums, and there was a real sense of community. Everyone knew everyone at the sites on first name terms, and there was a lot more trust about chronoing and general play. People who has worked on their guns since the last game were keen to show off their work (usually a “look it does 16RPS now instead of 12!) and that was when they got chrono’d. Hit taking wasn’t an issue (not that I find it is too much these days anyway, but that could be because of the sites I go to), and deliberate headshots were frowned upon. There was more variation of kit and camo in the safezone too. It was a time before Multicam was a true thing, so you’d have almost everything represented. At Dover we had DPM, Fleckmuster, Australian, Cypriot, Flecktarn, US Woodland, UCP, M84, CADPAT, and civvies. Guns were just as varied with an AR platform being at max a third of the players. When was the last time you saw a P90 with a box mag in the field? Pistols were just as varied as camo patterns with people running all sorts. Has anyone seen an FN57 recently? What about a P99? There was a time when USPC’s and P226’s were all the rage, but Glock users were the minority (though you’d always get someone dual wielding G18C’s). Fully auto in CQB was also a thing. I suspect the combination of 1J max, low rates of fire, and 0.25g being the heaviest ammo people would run being a factor. You didn’t have HPA or DSG builds lobbing 30-40RPS down range to worry about. Yeah you’d always have the couple of guys that took it a bit too seriously when room clearing, but a 12 gauge dynatech (over arm!) usually calmed them down. As YouTube wasn’t a thing the tactical knowledge and general skill base of players was a bit more polarised. There were the regular players/teams who usually had someone ex-military or armed plod who would teach them a few bits, but the rest was down to people reading and researching. The better players used to take rentals/newbies under their wing and show them a few things during the games, and that’s something I don’t see anymore at the sites. Little stuff like waiting a bit longer for the opposition to get closer before engaging, or standing back a bit off cover to give yourself room to peek out with the weapon up was shown in the first round. There seemed to be more team play too. I guess it’s easier to huddle a group of 30 players before a round then 75. All of that being said, I suspect a lot of it is rose tinted mesh masks. Scraping together the money to buy more ammunition because I was a poor student, and only getting new gear when birthday’s or Christmas came around was tough. Tappet plate failures could mean financial ruin, and getting to games was dependent on the goodwill of teammates and the promise to buy them a hotdog at lunch. It was a fun time though, and I wouldn’t trade the memories for anything. “What am bestest Famas?”

Ultimately depends whether you want picatinny, m-lok or keymod. Keymod is something I've never used (and likely never will), I like some picatinny handguards but usually default to m-lok for the weight saving and the fact the majority of the weapon lights/weapon light mounts and grips are m-lok. You've got a variety of options open to you, I've only ever put HAO MK16 rails on mine when only swapping out the handguard and/or outer barrel. Have used the 9.3" handguard with a 10.5" outer barrel, the 10.5" handguard with an 11.5" outer barrel and the 13.5" handguard with a 14.5" outer barrel, all are great but for my arms/body I found the 10.5" handguard my sweet spot. Outside of that I've installed full body kits for an SAI GRY and currently have a Noveske N4. Suggestions for handguards is kind of too broad a question because the handguard is a significant part of what your rif looks like, so aesthetics tends to drive that descision in airsoft because we don't have things like barrels heating up and needing lasers to hold zero for the most part (if you're at the point you care about that you probably own NVGs and have a prety good idea of what you're looking for).

Feels like a big case of LMGTFY but there you go. Literally just googled 'Nuprol Gas PSI' and was greeted by this article as the first result which states 2.0 is around 135 PSI at 72 degrees Fahrenheit (about 22 degrees celcius) and 3.0 is around 160. While the chart lands on around the 110 PSI mark at 20 degrees celcius for 2.0 and the 145 PSI mark for 3.0.

When I tested it in my MWS the FPS went from 260fps to 275fps on average. Good for colder weather when gas guns can get a bit sluggish. No idea on the PSI but pretty sure I have seen a chart on the Internet somewhere - have a Google!

Yeah, as a new player myself I can attest to this, to the extent that my first session I felt like it was potentially not something I wanted to bother with. Glad I stuck with it though and went off to figure out what I could do to feel less like a moving target...

Yeah, camouflage options... CADPAT or Danish were incredible to see. DPM, Flecktarn, US Woodland and French were the most commonly seen (or not...). MARPAT and UCP were the Gucci choices. I went DCU/Night Camo for years, then the MultiCam pull got me. I reckon 2007 was when MultiCam really took off. I had a Chinese clone set in 2006 that faded (still in my folks' loft) and I didn't wear it a lot after that. As said, these days it is mainly MTP (why not?! Surplus gear is so cheap) and MultiCam. You sometimes see a bit of Italian Vegetato, a pinch of DPM and a sprinkling of Flecktarn, and that is it. My go-to for my last few games has been Ranger Green.

Some further observations: IMHO, shouting on about "not taking hits" has been an occurance since I started in the mid-00s. I am more surprised if I don't hear it on a game day. What has changed in my mind is the level of aggression that I see at sites. I wrote about it here (shameless plug): https://thegearconfessional.wordpress.com/2018/07/11/chapter-37-why-so-serious/ I cannot stand this side of things. When I started, I would say a typical day comprised 75% geeks (myself included), 10% impressionists and 15% rentals. The geeks would tinker away at their non-functioning Tanaka gas rifle, or compare slings and swap stories about how a girl once spoke to them. The impressionists wore UCP and fired their CA M249s from the shoulder. The rentals were inquisitive and game for a laugh. The game days were usually good-tempered, respectful events. Now, not so much. The geek element has practically gone now that I've seen, maybe 5% of true geek players now are snipers tweaking their über rifles. 40% are impressionists, although most are geeks at heart. 30% of players now seem to be Monster drinking, loud mouth characters who'd look more at home watching Millwall play. The remaining 25% are rentals; either kids that look barely 13 or people on a stag (who fall into the Millwall fan catagory). I probably fall into the impressionists catagory - purely because I was fed up of cheap clone stuff breaking and had enough disposable income to buy RS kit when I found it cheap enough (sounds like a blog idea...).

For me, it was the mid to late 2000s. I was fortunate enough to experience the days of Lightfighter Airsoft in Yorkshire; primarily the fantastic Clay Wheels site in Sheffield. It was, and still is to this day, the best site I've been to. A large, built-up industrial site ran by competent staff who actually cared about Airsoft. They'd run decent, well-thought out days that could range from normal open days to dedicated theme days, and in-between. Numbers were good, but not over-the-top. You never felt like sardines. Contrast it to today, and unfortunately, very little remains in the majority of sites I go to now. Many tend to be your standard paintball style woodland sites with open, bare ground and wooden or tyre barricades, or they're wooden CQB speedsoft fests. And player numbers can often be way too high for the size of the site; higher running costs obviously mean that owners will be looking to do everything they can to pay the bills. I still enjoy it somewhat, but the shine it used to have for me is long gone unfortunately.

2 for worst: 1. Hfc Sig 226. Absolutely shocking. Plinked in the garden a few times and was OK (no more than 50 - 60 rounds). Took it to first event as my sidearm and it got through around 6 rounds mid game before it vented all gas. Took apart when home and the hammer mech had snapped (hammer still attached but the release had snapped). 2. Well MP7 Aep, so low power and low range. There some upgrades but in my opinion not worth doing as the end result is still low power and low range. That said, managed to get a few kills with it at Anzio on my first day there when my primary fired over on the chrono (was new to the hobby and put a 363mm inner barrel in the 200mm classic army ump; chrono went from 320 to 365!!) Best: Cop out answer but TM NGRS series. Scar L was the gateway into the series and I haven't looked back since. Honourable mention: Tm FN57 - ran for years without cracking, even on green gas. Awesome out of the box, made better with aftermarket body kits.

worst I would say my browning hi power by we because it didnt function in the slightest but since I got rid of it Ill go with my Bo chiappa rhino. When I first got that revolver, cocked it and tried to pull the trigger It was so stiff I genuinely thought it was broken. It has worn in a little but it still has the worst trigger ive ever felt on anything barring a staple gun. However I didnt get the gun for practicality, I got it because it looks cool so im not as disappointed with it as I could be. However side by side with my tanaka revolvers its just disappointingly bad considering it wasnt cheap. worst honourable mention My lct rpk simply failed to function out of the box, it took work to get it going and even then the hop unit had to be entirely replaced. It shoots great now but I should not have had to do all that to make a £400 gun work in the first place. Best My a&k Pkm. Now I realise a lot of people have issues with these stripping pistons and such but I appear to have won the quality control lottery. Ive had this for 5 years and fired hundreds of thousands of rounds through it and the only things that broke were the box mag stripping a gear and the hop rubber wearing out. It shoots as far as it needs to with a reasonable rate of fire. Best value my Tokyo mauri m&p9l has been my go to sidearm for quite a while. Its snappy, the tm red dot works well and its very accurate.

I maintain that I hate the knee pad design granted that's not unique to the Platatac ones, I just loathe the Crye knee pad design/system and genuinely can't fathom how its last so long without revision. Aaaaaanyway, that aside the Plat ones are definitely my favourite run of Crye-alikes, glad you're liking them. Looking forward to selling my pair of regular Tigers on so I can grab a new pair in what is now the correct size.

I kinda feel bad for replacing my Perun Optical with a Hybrid. I may build a gun/gearbox just to use it again! I don't regret replacing the Titan though.

I've not been playing that long, starting in 2018. In that short time I've definitely seen changes; some good, some not so good, for me personally. There's certainly more people involved now, which has to be a good thing. There also seems to be more diversity in the players, with more females and younger players making up the numbers, which, again, is great to see. From talking to the old and bold players, and as has been mentioned in the posts above, the quality of the RIFs have improved a lot too. It's a shame that prices have increased, some quite dramatically, in the post-Covid, post-Brexit era, but that's par for the course in the current climate. My biggest bug bear with this is the lack of availability now. Restocks take ages to come through, but remaining positive, things are slowly easing on that front. I'm not a fan of the influx of speedsofters I've seen recently, bombing all over the site with binary triggers, hoses and Dye masks, blasting 50 rounds a second of drum-mag braaaaaat-ta-tat-tat everywhere, but that's just me. I'm a more traditional, like my RIFs to be based on actual firearms, woodland, semi-auto firing 40-something, so it's not for me. I don't resent them on the field though. If anything, it motivates me to try harder and shoot the bendy little bastards! The social media, YouTube thing is interesting. I follow the channels more in line with my approach to airsofting; AATV, Ollie Talks Airsoft etc. My son and his friends, who are all around 13 years old and have just started the hobby, are more inclined to watch people like KM and his limpet-like 'mate' Names Nicco. Thankfully, having experienced what gameplay is actually like, they know that that is not how it is. It is frustrating that people like KM have such a large audience that, to non-airsoft folk, they think that's what it, and by extension, us, are all like. That's the power of click-bait titles though. While I don't feel I have been in the game long enough to comment on a golden age, I play and enjoy it more now than ever before. Having the boy come along now is a undoubtedly a part of that, but I do try and chat to other players much more as, on the whole, we're all a friendly bunch who love showing off our gear. There are a lot of comments about non-hit takers, but I suspect this has been prevalent for a good while, and depends on the quality of the staff on site. It's unlikely we'll get rid of them so, much like the classic egg-on-legs shouting for you to "push up at the front!" while they're blowing out their arse yards behind you, it's a part of the game. You can either get flashed up by it and tell old war stories about how it was much better 'back in the day' or ignore it and concentrate on having fun. I tend to think if more people did that, there wouldn't be a 'Golden Age'; it would just be the standard airsoft experience. Then again, I am cracking on a bit now, so should probably go for a lie down.

Maybe I've been lucky but I've been into airsoft since around 2001 and just started doing milsims in 2021/2022 but I've found everyone to be pretty chill for the most part. I was put off milsims for quite a while as it seemed a little...try hard I guess but they're a lot of fun. Maybe it's because I always play opfor (opfor, best for), but everyone seems really nice and happy to chat shit about gear or whatever. At the end of the day, we're adults playing with toys in the woods. If you take it too seriously, you're doing it wrong. Take note TF. If we're 10 mins into a weekend and someone from opfor walks up to you with no gun or whatever, hold off on the "STAY BACK" BS. Be cool FFS.

There is a huge difference between playing airsoft and watching on YT. In other news water is wet.

as a general rule for accuracy overall barrel quality is more important than the nominal diameter. the limiting factor (at least mechanically) far more likely to have issues from other effects, like gas sealing, cooldown, loose barrel mounting (as in the whole hop unit/barrel subassembly not being held solid to the frame) etc.

I would say that the diameter will mainly affect fps. And the length of the barrel will affect your accuracy or at least your range. Although in this case the difference will probably be very small. I would save my money and stick with the Maple leaf barrel and hopup. Maybe try a ML crazy jet barrel. Might do something for you.

If anyone needs one, Bullseye have the Cyma M14 scope mount in stock at the sensible price of £12

It's a tough one for me, honestly, and so this is going to be a long post. I think I'd say that personally I enjoyed airsoft the most around when I started in 2004 up until about 2010 when I took my first break. The VCRA was a bit of a kick in the nuts, but it wasn't the end of the world, but I remember game days fondly from back then. However, I'll be talking about the reasons why the modern day is still good. Airsoft is a constantly evolving thing and that comes with both positives and negatives. Anyway, I'll list the reasons why 2004 - 2010 was my golden age: Social media wasn't as prevalent. This is THE big one for me as social media breeds a lot of what's wrong with airsoft these days. Whether it's people like Kicking Mustang making yet another "I RUIN NOOBS DAY WITH SAVAGE HEADSHOTS FROM OVERPOWERED PISTOL" video, or the milsim-elitist-geardo crowd showing off their ridiculous loadout with real NVGs and a thermal imaging drone and real-steel everything and telling you, directly or indirectly, that your gear is shit (you know the types). I think social media is the root of a lot of negative things, not just with airsoft but that's a discussion for another time I never had anywhere near the number of issues back then than I did today, with the only glaring example being when a bunch of guys from the year below us at school decided to come to a game day and rampantly didn't take their hits, but they didn't last long and after another game day or two they were completely gone. We were slinging .2s and *maybe* .25s if you were going heavy, but people still were able to take their hits reliably. It was a bit more trustworthy. Nobody chrono'd (and I'm not saying we shouldn't, definitely think it's needed these days), but we didn't really need to as there were never really any issues with people running hot guns or people getting injured (unless they came out of the box hot, which some did, but even then I don't remember seeing any injuries). I know my Dboys m4 was about 390fps out of the box or something, and I had a Warrior L96 sniper rifle without a sidearm, but I never full-auto'd people up close and never took shots within my MED. Similarly, I never had any issues with someone running some stupidly hot gun and injuring people. When I played in Spain between 2008 - 2010 (probably my absolute favourite time playing and my true "golden age") we didn't even have marshalls as "official" airsoft sites didn't exist at that point; we just showed up to abandoned urbanisations, of which there are a LOT on the south coast of Spain, and played BB wars and it was a LOT of fun. We also hired the land next to a hotel (and booked a lot of rooms at the hotel) for a weekend event and it still remains my favourite event I've ever been to; again, we had no marshalls, we had some players who organised what the games would be and the objectives and we just had fun. As you said, it was a mostly even playing field. There were some guns that were just... really good, but even fine tuning guns didn't create such a divide. The best guns I remember from back then were... A sniper on the team I was a part of had a Tanaka m700 or m40a1 or a TM VSR-10 (can't remember exactly, but it was one of those) which he had tweaked a whole lot, two German guys in Spain had KJW m700s that they had tweaked and my Cyma m14 SOCOM were the ones that immediately come to my mind. Less ghillies. I know, me, a bush wookiee, complaining about ghillies, but they're bloody everywhere now. Back then we didn't have anywhere near the number of them and if you wanted one you had to make it. I still remember as a 17 year old going to a fabric shop and buying a bunch of burlap, dyeing it three different colours in a bucket on the outside terrace in the Spanish townhouse we lived in at the time, and then tying it onto a Webtex concealment vest, supplementing it with natural foliage on the day. Nowadays, anyone can just buy a Novritsch rifle and a KMCS and be done with it. I don't think that's a bad thing (development and offering more products is generally good) but I think combined with the social media point it's making a lot of players play timid. Guess I should touch on that as well. People weren't anywhere near as... fragile(?) as they are now. People flung themselves into games and had a laugh when they got lit up, but nowadays it feels like everyone sits out of range of each other just spraying BBs at barricades. Also, if you hit someone with more than a single BB, there's every chance they're going to throw a hissy-fit over "overshooting" because 5 BBs hit them. It's part of the reason I'm ditching my ghillie for the next few game days at least, to see if I can galvanise some activity. However, I would also argue that today is the golden age: There are a LOT more players nowadays. A "very busy" day in my golden age was like... 30 players. Now, you're looking at over 100 at my local site and I know some get even more. New blood in the hobby keeps the hobby alive The sheer range of internal upgrades and how effective they are. Getting a 1.1J build to shoot accurately to 60m is pretty simple these days, where getting a bolt action to shoot 60m back in my golden age would've been considered witchcraft. I think my Cyma m14 SOCOM was a DMR at 420fps (1.6J) and it probably fired to 50m(ish) Accessibility for newer players. As I said when I was moaning about there being too many ghillies, it's incredibly easy for people to get into the hobby and do what they want. This is definitely a good thing and contributes to the hobby having a healthy player count. The guns are way higher quality than they were. Back then, you either paid a LOT for a TM, Tanaka, Systema etc, or you bought a Cyma that would probably break because the externals were made of pot metal, or you bought something where the internals would crap themselves after a small amount of use. Gear is way higher quality than it was. I remember Viper gear was utter shite back when I first played, so like with guns you either paid for some expensive Warrior Assault Systems kit, or you bought a Viper rig that fell apart. Nowadays, I have nothing against the repro brands like Viper or 8fields and have a lot of their kit; it's sturdy and does the job at a fraction of the cost, though I will always love my WAS stuff, since I still have the chest rig I used in Spain and it still works just fine and shows no sign of breaking any time soon. I'll stop waffling any more than I already have. TL:DR, 2008 - 2010 was my golden era when I was living in Spain, though that's also partially down to the sites we played at!

I’ve only ever used stock TM or HAO (specifically the 11.5” for the HAO) outers so they’re the only ones I could personally vouch for. A google of ‘MWS 10.5 barrel’ will present you with plenty of options, most if not all will be outside of the UK (something to get used to with the MWS as you change out more parts, not a problem at all, just a note). If I’ve ever been after an outer barrel for an MWS I tend to put up a wanted post in the classifieds and haven’t generally had to wait long for someone to get in touch that has one available, YMMV. As for the front sight post (FSP) they’re very easy to remove, two pins on the sides need knocking through and a small grub screw on the underside, but you’ll need to be changing out your rail/handguard if that’s the route you want to take because as it stands the FSP is keeping your handguard together. Last but not least, my grip vote goes to the BCM Gunfighter, though they seem to be a pain to find at the moment. Or at least were the last time I looked.

Not sure about these trousers from AliExpress...