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If any organisation wants to represent the whole of the UK airsoft skirmishing hobby it will have to do a much better job at it, if it wants to become the public facing portal for the sport it has to be very clear about what it considers to be the sport, what are the rulesets, and all the safety and legal requirements that goes into a skirmishing or any re-enactment milsim games. Then it needs to offer something to the hobby as a whole benefiting the players, the retailers, the field owners, and the public. Whether it be promoting good code of conduct or lobbying to improve site standards, or publishing research or survey, or improving public image or knowledge of airsoft and so on. Its primary mission should be to actively promote and improve and regulate the sport, to make it more fun and enjoyable and more safe to play, and more recognised as a sport, and more profitable as an industry. Just passively waiting around responding to any rare cases of legal emergency is frankly not very productive. If UKAPU wants to do something useful maybe they can spend the £20k in the research and development of a white paper defining airsoft as a sport in the UK and highlight its benefits, maybe make a basic beginner portal (find a UKARA site near you or something), and take steps to build up some sort of expected standards for UKARA sites to guide their development/reinvestment. That will give you the foundations of a full blown sport that can be improved upon and grow. Maybe periodic surveys to build up some sort of knowledge base to monitor the industry, which can be useful for defending the industry should the time comes. Or maybe get registered as a real charity or something.

This is my initial impression so if I got anything wrong feel free to correct me. Being an unincorporated association means it cannot legally own anything, cannot make any formal contracts, does not even have its own legal entity, all the assets are held by some officer or trustee, and there is no limited liability and it can only be sued through the officers or members. Looking at the "benefits" it is largely useless, it has no lobbying power to "preserve UK airsoft", its does not have any lawyer who can offer any better "legal help" than internet forums or some FAQ pages on their website, "member only games" is no different than any random game anyone can organise privately on facebook, the "regional representations" are largely vacant and not more useful than anyone on facebook, and the "discounts" is perpetually "in negotiations" which is basically false advertisement. It is literally a facebook group larping as an charity and started asking for donation money, and getting away with it because it does not legally exist. Where does the money go? You get to fund their collective larping activities, and you get a patch for being associated with it. And, you get to take part in a raffle if you attend their AGM, which is going to be proportionately attended by more officers than members. Granted they have saved £20k so far but hard to imagine what they can do with £20k, maybe funding private games? But surely it is going to benefit just a few people and not every member? What is the money doing in a paypal account? If it is not spending the money to promote airsoft and actually getting discounts for members, does it count as charity fraud? What is it even doing? Does the future of airsoft need protection from a facebook group who can't afford their own PR?

There's a big difference between between holding a committee meeting and complete radio silence. The latter is a guaranteed way to get the rumour mill working overtime. I'd say it's the right word. Whether voluntary or a paid position if a person or organisation is going to claim to be official representatives of a group of people then they need to be extremely open and honest about what's going on go those they claim to represent.

It would be timely if it was, however please be assured that it was purely coincidental. Standing down has been something that has been on my mind for the past year or so, I just never decided to actually do it up until about 4 weeks ago. I wish I had done it sooner, judging by some of the interesting comments in this thread! The minutes are for me to type up they'll be ready by tomorrow I think - never fun doing a committee meeting followed up by a day's skirmishing. Anyhow an update will be provided by a member of the team in this very thread along with other media streams in due course (as in, very shortly!) - I can't say too much about that now as I'm no longer the chairman! 🙂 No, the wholly unprofessional response reference was due to me highlighting the fact that the resignation was brought on with regards to personal health reasons, partly brought on by the whole airsoft thing shutting down thing during the pandemic. If you chose to interpret that in a different manner, then that is understandable. This will be the last time I reply to this topic as personally I'm baffled as to why there's such discontent about what is strictly an internal meeting, discussing things that are internal and sensitive in nature. It is something that the committee is entitled to do, and in some instances, is required to do.

I asked my german friend 'why have you got a piece of meat in the boot of your car' he replied 'that is my spare veal'

Had a fun day today at Survival airsoft. Hard faught games with fair play all round. 50 odd players and no agro, although one lad did ask his mate if I was his grandad ! Although his mate answering 'I wish' took the sting out 🤣 GBBR L119 perfomed faultlesly as ever a mate ran my GBB MP7 but the box mag on my aeg 249 jamed . Bloody electric airsoft guns !

If you cant the rifle to the left do the bbs curve upwards ? that will very quickly tell you if it’s the hop unit , as will simply increasing the hop .

Yup, if it's consistent, then those are the possibilities, although it's always worth cleaning the barrel anyway. If you had a red dot or adjustable iron sights, you might not even know there was a problem. If you pull the hop unit and inner barrel out and pop off the C-clip underneath the hop, you might be able to see if the inner barrel is slightly misaligned. A tiny twist can often sort these issues - a lot of airsoft is trial and error. Failing that, pull the barrel and bucking, make sure the bucking is square on the barrel, and re-insert (squarely). This is fairly easy on a G36, 3 screws to release the outer barrel, then to get the hop unit and inner barrel out is a push-and-turn. The procedure is shown here, and elsewhere.

Good afternoon, Just to provide an update following our meeting on Thursday evening - apologies for the delay. A date for the AGM has been set, and once the press release has been finalised this will be circulated to all members and via social media. The current chairperson has stepped down, and caretaker chairperson, vice chairperson, registrar and press officer have been elected. These positions will be re-elected at the AGM. The new vice chairperson would like to apologise to members for not being able to be a part of our management meeting, but we are looking forward to them attending our AGM. At this time, I have taken over the role of press officer. I look forward to being able to share more regular updates with our members and the wider Airsoft community going forward. As always, please feel free to contact me should you have any questions.

Zoinks. I wouldn't keep £18 in PayPal, given their propensity for locking access to funds on the slightest pretence, or none. I'd hope that was "just resting" there and has been moved somewhere safer. I'd assume that's a fighting fund, although it would cover advice, legal nastygrams, or amicus curiae briefs, not taking a complex case through the courts. There are no shenanigans going on. Membership is entirely consensual, the accounts are open, and nobody has to pay - it's clearly marked as a donation. I joined at the free tier to see how active UKAPU was, concluded that it wasn't[*], and so have never bothered donating. I'd love to be given a reason to do so. [*] Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but it's all we've got to go on.

Cheers. I have ordered one and just hope customs don't decide to jump on it I had seen it but my tired brain saw yhe price jump from £7 to $149 and had a fit.

Wow, it looks blued, that’s impressive for a stock TM! Looks like I’ve found my next purchase…

So I'm going to have to watch a bit of an awful series now 🥴 I sent the mag off, will get to see how good the adapter is...

A few years ago I worked for ocado at cfc4, erith. It's all robots running around doing the shopping thing. Unfortunately, cfc3 had an issue where one bot caught light then went back to doing the shopping, Merrily setting fire to the place. By the time someone spotted it, it was too late. When the fire brigade turned up they asked what was in there... "Only 400 robots carrying 20kg lipo batteries each" "Oh, ok. We'll put out the rest of the building then...." 😱😱😱😱🤮😁🔥🚒🧨🎇

WGC Shop are the only HK store I trust completely.

Get thee from this place and take thine abominations with you 😂😂 Is that John 'Hannible' Smith in the first pic? I know who is in the second pic lol

For those of you who are normal and like Dark Mode on most of your devices and screens..... you can force it in chrome for websites that don't have one like here3 (AFAIK). In google Chrome type "chrome://flags" in the address bar. Search for "Auto Dark Mode for Web Contents" and set it to enabled. It's experimental, and may affect other sites adversely, but easily turned off. You might even find some other useful features in there. You're all welcome. 😎

I appreciate it's voluntary, but professionalism seemed the right word. There's a certain level of competence and good judgement required (or at least expected) of committee members... and perma-silence is neither good judgement, nor even remotely polite behaviour 😕

I find your lack of faith in hit-markers... disturbing.

Yeah, no, it's a very silly hobby enjoyed by overgrown kids. Even the "professionals" are generally just hobbyists trying to eke out a living at it. At this point, I honestly think the best result is if the paintball daddies take us under their wing, as they've done the heavy lifting to almost, sort-of, get recognition as a sport. To peacefully and patriotically make our voices heard!

The cynical part of me suspects that this is a "the people that have been giving us money actually want us to do something" kinda meeting. But then again 23yrs as an engineer have left me with an overwhelmingly cynical and pessimistic world view.

My TM saiga and TM akm

It’s fine bro sorry for late reply but my chrono was in m/s in fps it was shooting like 500 😂

Remember that Li-poly batteries are still Lithium Ion technology.

Our April Dartmoor wildlife sighting; definitely not a deer.

G3 SBS build im 90% there with. Just need a collapsing stock (if anyones parting with one or has one knocking about ) Talk about labour of love! Lots of blood sweat tears and swearing. Just need to refit the mock bolt. Ground up rebuild inside and out. Only thing that’s left of the original TM MC-51 is the fire selector and stock. Internally complete ULTIMATE 8mm gear box, 16:1 cnc gears, 35000 boost motor, GATE Titan 2, ultimate compression set, guarder rubber & nub on a madbull python. G&G navy lower & Magnesium upper. Very bodged JG front end that only needed 15 minutes of dremelling 😂

I'm going to do a trademark pivot and say that it's great that everyone can enjoy airsoft in different ways. If you're calling your hits, and having fun, it's a win for everyone. Although I wouldn't be astonished if it's full of folk who were who in the Cadets for a few months and now call everyone brother.

It's taken me a while to decide whether to reply to this, and if so, what I should say. As Shamal has rightly stated, I am the East of England UKAPU representative. I initially joined as a member, but decided that I would like to further support the community as a regional representative. During my interview for the position I too expressed reservations with regard to what the union provide - as others have pointed out, the social media pages are not frequently updated and there is little 'evidence'. All representatives are volunteers, and in any case, I believe that the Press Officer position is vacant. There is often assistance offered to player-members which unfortunately goes unreported due to this. This has involved helping with customs and import of RIFs, where players experienced issues - and similarly assisted players in Northern Ireland where I believe there have been further issues with customs. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the Union were approached by a number of game organisers/site owners to gauge the legality of running games during the lift of restriction levels. The Union provided this guidance, but it was highlighted that if Airsoft was registered as a sport (like paintball is), then we potentially could have returned sooner. However, in order to register as a sport we would require a national governing body. The membership was 'sold' to me as more of an insurance scheme; in case I should ever need assistance, but also to support the ongoing efforts of the Union to provide some kind of national governing body - which was well supported by representatives, members, non-members and site owners when discussed with them. Whilst it was before my time, I believe the references to 'proposed bans' etc relate to the VCRA 2007 bill. @Cannonfodder if you would like I will try to find more information relating to this. Unfortunately, our Chairman has suffered from issues with his personal circumstances lately, and this has led to our AGM not happening as early in the year as perhaps would be expected. Rest assured, I am actively pursuing this and hope it will be able to go ahead soon. With this in mind, I cannot comment on the plans going forward for the annual members skirmish or attendance at NAE. In the past I have attempted to arrange a members only game, but then struggled to find a site to host it at. It is on my list of things to arrange, and as soon as I have news I will share it. I do recognise that perhaps the communications from the Union have not been as good as would be expected, and for that please accept my apology. @Rogerborg - are you referring to the Operation Stigma II post on Facebook from May 2022 as this is all I can find? @RebelScum if you would like, please send me a message and I will do my best to chase up your patch - as it is of course not right that you have yet to receive it. Finally, I would like to address suggestions that members of the Union are in it to 'make a name' for themselves, or as an 'ego boost'. I appreciate this is personal opinion, but when engaging with other representatives I have not experienced this. I see the other representatives as individuals with only the interests of the players and the sport at heart. My inbox is always open, and I am always more than happy to engage with any player, whether they are a member or not. I've done my best to address what people have said, and am happy to discuss anything. - Jacob

I agree; however, they seem to be sitting on a relatively large amount of money, most of it possibly still in a rather vulnerable PayPal account, that does not seem to be being used in any constructive way to benefit either airsoft or UKAPU members. I cancelled my annual donation this morning, mainly because I have no idea what UKAPU does that benefits the hobby.

That film was downright scary having watched it for the first time the other week.