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tbh as far as governmental lobbying goes, I'd suggest that UKAPU has been one of the major driving forces in recent years... particularly with their hard work on preventing our auto rifs being classified as section 5 firearms (the introduction of the 370/520 fps exemption that stops Airsoft guns being classified as a firearm.) so UKAPU and the UKARA are currently the big two in my book I think 🤔

Fuck that, sounds like something just waiting to go wrong, as in develop a fault, but also sounds pointless, borderline retarded lol .

@SSPKali yes the pistol loader works fine, all I have ever used on every gas gun.

Thanks for your kind words buddy. You are right in saying we wont really reveal much until the covid situation is over and we are allowed to host games safetly. We're planning night games either Wednesday / Friday (both if the demand is there) and Saturday / Sunday games again if the demand is there every weekend. Look forward to hopefully seeing you at the site when its ready

My mk4 mondeo has just that feature - fecking turbo lag

He's obviously bricking it now, in the knowledge PayPal will rule against him, prob not got the cash to settle it & hoping to stall things by getting an agreement in place (which he won't honour immediately ?) & hoping people may agree to stop their claims, which I'm sure no one's crazy enough to do. Or maybe I'm just cynical 😏

An occasional habit of trying to wind the bottom of my pistol magazine 😂 (high cap hero 😁)

I'd say give it a go, worst case you can sell it. Stocking them seems pretty hard atm, so you'll probably shift it rather quickly.

i cannot think of a single reason why you would want this. i could understand a delay after firing to prevent trigger spamming, but i dont think i've ever fired an aeg, hpa or springer and thought "hmmm this needs to be slower to fire"

Yup, I watched that, thought that........ Load ‘o’ pish!!!!! 😂

I have one open top so far.

Got this beast and all of the good stuff to make it goodererer!

Desirable feature, no. It is not something that I would want on a gun, and I cannot think of any circumstance when I would use it.

Ebay: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Peltor-Coiled-cable-with-moulded-4-pole-TP-120-Nexus-plug-for-headsets/273651462701?hash=item3fb6e5f22d:g:yJAAAOSwNJJcOK7D

TM stocks across the board are quite thin at the moment Deliveries / shipments from the far East are taking longer than the usual turnaround times for the obvious reasons I've a couple of TM's on order with CamoRaids since early May, they've a massive TM delivery (£40K worth) within the next fortnight, saw Eagle 6 just had an overdue TM drop as well land last week, so whomever you're looking to order through I'd preorder as I'm sure the TM shipments once dropped will sell out quickly, especially what with sites now back open / reopening so demand will be high

PCC anyone?

My less proud moment would probably either be all the TKs (more than I'd like to admit) or waving at someone as their BBs fall 10m short before shooting them from the same distance with my upgraded AEG

Welcome. 😺 Feel free to ask any questions you wish about any topic related to Airsoft/legal ownership/history, etc. There aren't any 'dumb/silly/weird' questions so please just ask it. You won't get a rude reply. The obvious first thing has already been said by the previous posting members and that's that the first and top thing to look at is SAFETY KIT. If you wish, treat airsoft the same way as you would owning a motorbike. Yes, you can buy a seriously powerful bike/gun, but you need to also make sure that your safety equipment is the best that you can afford. At some point, you're going to get hit in and around the face and body. That's a fact whether you intend to go and shoot with others or if you will only ever be shooting targets at home. BB's bounce and ricochet, even off of flimsy cardboard, paper or fabric. Eye protection for you and others is an absolute. (In biking terms, your helmet is your absolute equivalent. You might be the best rider on the road but you can be damned sure that the worst driver is heading your way. Their stupidity WILL get you hurt.) If you are unsure about what you need or where to get it then you only need ask. The equipment isn't expensive and you'll always have several people willing to help you work to whatever budget you have. We're gamers like you, not sales people. Lol. Have fun and welcome once more. 😺 Tabi.

I used to go to a site in Suffolk, which me and a friend became a regulars at that place. For one game we were told to hide (given 20 minutes) in the wilderness and three teams would have to find us. We both decided to hide up some trees with our SR25's and MK23 pistols. It was great to watch the teams take each other out and we picked them off with our pistols, no one thought about looking up. - We timed each shot, when they either looked away or were distracted. After and hour the site owner ended the game and the two of us started laughing, saying look up! Damned great that was! From that day onwards, no trees were to be climbed, but it was worth it. There are many good times and hope more to come!

@Red Frog 👋 Welcome, not the best time, but good luck finding a venue, that is safe and enjoy it! 😜 Doesn’t matter if you go solo or with some friends! 👍 💷GAMBLE💷

He message me to day asking to try and sort it again . Told him he must have been busy last ten days to not reply to sort it .... Anyone know here he is from at all

yeah, i wasn't really trying to be depressing, just that i figured the thing i'm most proud of is being better at not doing things that i'm not proud of. but yes i'm down with some more positivity!

shimming is a pita that you get better at the more you do it (hopefully) there's loads of tutorials how to do it & some good/bad a bit loose is better than bit tight yes you kinda start with bevel to pinion but also attention to how the sector is shimmed (roughly half/half spaced but attention it operates but no rubbing on COL or too high sector cam rubs on box casing) plus attention to how the spur shims to both sector (swirl pattern if too close) and attention to ensure plenty of bevel's 10 teeth mesh to spur etc... (if bevel shimmed high & spur really low, little of 10 teeth mesh and stuff flies off or crunches under stress or mild lock up so shimming is all about the spacing of gears/drivechain and how all the components engage as close to perfection as possible (not always very easy to achieve) IF you was on bushings I'd say a ROUGH BALL PARK... Bevel - 0.2mm shim on top, no biggy about underneath really not a massive biggy on JUST this gear underneath coz motor pinion ensures it ain't going far (if you got a small shim left at end then take up some of slack if you wish to) Spur/Step gear 0.2mm UNDERNEATH (whatever is required on top to take up most of slack) Sector gear 0.25mm to 0.3mm roughly so it sits a whisker higher than spur (hopefully avoiding swirls from gears touching in rotation) whatever on top to take up slack, should sit about half way spaced in box for sector gear as you got bearings it is likely you might have a bit more lateral play than on bushings so add 0.05 to 0.10mm to these ref points THE ABOVE IS ONLY A VERY ROUGH STARTING POINT, you have to adjust shit accordingly as each box & gears/build vary loads check motor height with bevel in top half of box on v3's a bit of shrill can be reduced by loosening the motor cage and slightly shifting it, tilting the motor angle slightly to mesh smoother nozzle not returning - uhmm it doesn't always return 100% anyway in most instances the nozzle begins to retract before the piston starts to retract & often the gun's cycle is slowed/stopped by piston retraction or rather the tension on spring building and slowing the motor which means theif nozzle often is at least partial retracted or even starting to release if running quick (and on guns with plenty pre-cock the nozzle has returned already in preparation of firing/piston releasing) so this nozzle fretting is not a big issue in "most" new tech concerns obviously if it isn't operating or jamming then that is another issue but nozzle position is not (usually) a big concern select linkage and stuff - yeah they are a bit of wank safety is that triangle tab on gearbox that jams the 2 part trigger the linkage is a git to get correct if the rear teeth are not aligned correctly (and stay in place as you try to drop the whole thing back in receiver) also clean & lightly grease and parts of selector/linkage checking they glide as smooth as silk if any burrs, smooth them out and ensure it all glides/operates smooth as silk stiff operation on selector mechanism shit will just mean more wear in linkage/selector components sooner massive tip - take photo's on your phone - LOTS OF PHOTO's then you will see how shit goes back together in particular if a certain spring or component goes face down or face up eg: a trigger trolley spring (you don't have one on etu) on reg setup v2 especially can make a difference which way round the body of spring is placed or its orientation (in the way the spring sits to clear the groove in the underside of tappet plate etc...) on selector mechanism at rear - mark it with a pencil to ensure the marks re-align on assembly or other shit like that - just a couple of examples you takea pic or three will greatly assist in reassembly

ICU

Introduction: I’m making this guide for several reasons, not least because I’m sad and have nothing better to do, or maybe I’m procrastinating from doing real work, but I’d also like to get down on paper some thoughts on the science of our pew pew guns and clear up some misconceptions or at least get a discussion going to better our understanding. This guide is going to be a combination of actual science (well, as close as I can get to actual science ) and some personal experience, I’m by no means the most experienced airsofter out there but I’ve tried over the years to get an understanding of what’s going on and for those new to the hobby this might save some time barking up the wrong tree as I’ve done. Part 1: the goal Well this is simple, our goal is to shoot some random stranger on a farm on a Sunday and “kill” him, or at least hit him with a plastic pellet and for him to shout “hit” and plod off back to a chequered flag. This sounds pretty easy, but we need to start somewhere, so what do we need to make this happen? Well we need to hit him for a start, always helps, but not only that but we need to hit him hard. That’s not to say we need to hurt him, but whilst we can argue all day about wether or not people should wear plate carriers the short of it is you need your bb’s to hit with enough energy that he either feels it or hears the impact (which on a field of explosions and other people pew pewing can be difficult). So when our bb hits the target it needs energy. This is why I dislike to some extent the “you can get lots of range from a 328fps gun” argument, yes you can, but how far the bb travels isn’t the only part of getting a kill and just hitting isn't always enough sadly. Part 2: some misconceptions One thing that I see a lot in various threads is “upgrade your fps it’ll give you more range” or “change to x y or z hop it’ll give you more range” or “use x type of bb it’ll give you more range”, which is both right and wrong depending on how you judge range which will become more clear later. The thing to remember is once your bb leaves your barrel it doesn’t care what happened before, it could have come from a speedsofter’s £3000 hpa or some kids £90 rental ak, it only has 3 things on it’s side to fight the wind/tree branches/gravity to get to the target and these are: Backspin- this gives us our wonderful magnus force that will fight gravity and keep our bb in the air without needing to go at proper bullet speeds Mass- how much the bb weighs Energy- kinetic energy, we often like to use fps as our measurement as it’s how we can best record our performance but what really matters is energy So we should probably cover these 3 as they apply to our bb in flight. part 3- backspin backspin gives us our magnus force, the science behind it is quite interesting and worth a read if you’re interested in expanding your knowledge but in reality the only thing that we need to know is if our hop unit is set right. Now this is different for every setup, how fast the bb is actually spinning doesn’t really matter to us, it could be 1rpm or 10,000 rpm, we don’t care we just want our bb to fly straight. Now personally I set my hop units for a little bit of rise, about 20cm, so that when the bb comes out it’ll rise up by 20cm then start falling back down. The logic here is that if I’m aiming for someone’s chest it’s not going to jump up over their head, miss then drop back down behind them. We’ve all been there where our hop has made us miss someone. In terms of the physics the amount of lift we get depends on 2 things: The speed of rotation, which is pretty much constant after the bb has left the barrel (well, it slows down a bit but not much) The velocity of the bb When we “set” our hop unit what we’re doing is setting the speed of rotation to get the right lift, but if we change ammo or change springs the bb will either be going slower (needing more spin to get the same lift) or faster (needing less spin). Now the important thing to remember is that if we’re spinning x rpm, then there’s y velocity that gives us the exact amount of lift to fight gravity, but of course a bb doesn’t stay at y velocity, it slows down which is where mass comes in. Part 4- mass So we have our spin, but as I mentioned bb’s slow down, and this is the misconception I had many years ago that faster bb=more range The important thing is air resistance, which the faster you go the more of it you have so your bb slows down quicker (moving it out of that sweet spot for the hop spin to work) So say we have a 1j gun, we fire at 328fps on a .2g bb and 270fps for a .3gbb well that .2g bb is going faster, so it has more drag, and it’s lighter so the drag has more effect. The end result is the bb slows down very quickly and it doesn’t take long for it to slow down so much our backspin stops lifting it. Whereas the .3g bb is slower and harder to slow down, sure it might have started out slower but over time it keeps it’s velocity and hence stays in that nice range where the backspin can lift it. So in theory at least a heavier bb spun sufficiently will for the same energy always go further, take a look at the spreadsheet at the bottom and see what I mean. But wait, it gets better! Remember I said we need 2 things to hit a target? Well a heavier bb gives us both! In the real world we’re shooting through wind and worse leaves, these are forces just like regular ol’ drag and a heavy bb will be blown about less by the wind and has a better chance of punching straight through those pesky leaves and hitting the target, so we get more accuracy, yay! But not only are they more accurate they also carry their energy better, so when we do hit the target at range it’s going to hit it harder, and thus make enough force and noise to let the target know they’ve been hit. So where’s the downside? Why wouldn’t you run sniper .48’s in every gun you own and on every site? Well several reasons: 1. Cost, damn that pesky real world economics, but obviously heavier bb’s cost more. If you find somewhere selling .48’s for the same price as .2’s then let me know because that’s awesome. Those of us that own support guns with high rates of fire will most likely wince at having to fill it up with costly ammo only to be sprayed into the ether, likewise snipers who don’t shoot much can afford the good stuff hence why they like to run heavy. 2. Travel time, again this is the real world being all awkward and getting in the way of our lovely discussion but remember that our target may not be nice enough to stand still and wait to get hit, especially if he sees our bb’s coming towards him. Heavy bb’s might carry their energy better but they’re slower and take longer to go the same distance, not much longer, but it's enough. edit: it must be noted that a large proportion of perceived travel time is down to the additional range, whilst a .2 will be faster over a short distance remember that a .3 or .4 will still be chugging along long after the .2 as slowed down and dropped. 3. Getting the lift, unfortunately the same properties that make a bb great in flight make them bad for spinning up in the hop unit, and this means that you may find you can’t run them without upgrading your gun and if (like me at the time) you don’t understand fully why it’s happening. This is the “more hop” argument for things like maple leaf/flathop/rhop guns, it isn’t about getting lots of hop on .2’s, it’s about being able to get enough hop on .3’s or heavier. 4. When you don’t need range, now I play mostly outdoors on sites limited to 1j, so for me getting every drop of performance I can is paramount, but say you’re playing in cqb where the maximum distance is maybe 10m, well there’s not much point spending money getting a setup that can shoot well beyond that if you’re not going to be using it, you’d be much better spending money on grenades. So what weight should you run? Well as heavy as you can afford and your gun can lift. Personally I use .3’s for all my “assault” type guns, .2’s in my mg42 (even though it shoots lovely on .3’s) and .43’s in my vsr, although should I ever sell my soul and play indoors I’ll just run .2’s. Part 5- energy So our final ingredient is energy, most folks will know this as fps because when we’re getting our guns checked at the local site that’s what we get told “oh sorry you’re 400fps and the limit is 350 so you can’t play”. Well what’s really important is energy, kinetic energy, which is a factor of our bb mass and it’s velocity, it’s why the limits are different for different weights of bb’s and why it’s a common tactic of the cheater to rock up at the chrono and say “yeah I’m running .2’s” and to chrono at 328fps while anyone with a lick of sense can hear the smack of the bb’s against the backstop and think “like hell is he running .2’s” This is where I take exception to the argument of “marui’s shoot fine at 328fps, you don’t need fps to get range”, well you do, or at least you should try to get your gun shooting as close to your site limit as you can. The short argument is energy is energy and more is always better, the long version is that energy gives us the velocity that means we need less backspin and can run heavier bb’s without them being really slow and letting our targets stroll out of the path of our righteous pewing. Remember once the bb leaves the barrel it only has 3 things, and mass is the only one it’ll not lose as it flies downrange. As your bb slows down in the wind it loses energy so the more of it you have at the start the better, it’s why all the cheaters want to run hot. A friend of mine recently lent me his m16 to do a bit of work on, he was keeping up in terms of range with most of the folk he was shooting at in part due to a good hop, but he’d rage daily at people not taking hits until we chrono’d it to find it shooting at half the site energy, turned out his floating bb’s were hitting with so little force if he was at any distance people just weren’t feeling it. Now to digress from external ballistics for a second (well, more like 10 minutes) to talk about joule creep. Think about it like this, our bb in the barrel gets pushed by gas, and how long it gets pushed for depends on the length of the barrel and how quickly it’s getting pushed. Joule creep is what happens when you have an “over gassed” gun firing .2’s, whilst you can do this with an aeg or a spring sniper it’s much more common in gas/hpa guns. Think about it like this, your gun can only push so hard, and a light bb will get up to speed very quickly, once it leaves the barrel then it’s not going to be pushed any more. So imagine we had a longer barrel, well if we push just as hard over a longer distance then the bb will spend more time accelerating and hence be going faster. Well the other way to make a bb spend more time in the barrel is to make it accelerate slower, now we can do this by making the bb heavier, so for the same force it’ll accelerate less (remember newton’s f=ma? Who says math class in school was useless). Now it’s not going to come out any faster than the light bb, but it doesn’t need to, it’s heavier so doesn’t need to go as fast to have the same energy. A good way to test this is to take a WE or marui gbb pistol, fill it up with .2’s and chrono it, for the sake of argument lets say it fires at 328fps which is 1j Now try it with .3’s and it fires 300fps, which is 1.2j or equivalent to firing a .2 going at 370fps This is why it’s important to chrono a gun on the weight you plan on using in a game, because a player can perfectly honestly, indeed without even realising himself, chrono his gun on .2’s and pass, but then fill his mags with .3’s and spend the rest of the day shooting a hot gun. Now you can argue all day that “yeah but he passed the chrono”, well it’s the exact same thing as running hot, the effect is the same (ie it hurts more and he has a more range), if everyone on the site does it or is happy with people doing it then the site's limits should be changed to reflect this. so digression aside what energy should you run? Well my opinion is you should take your site limit in joules and get your gun to shoot that on the ammo you use, any less will be a disadvantage and any more will be cheating. Part 6- nerd time! Well, that was a long rant without nerdy equations and whatnot so time to put our science hats on. So our bb in flight has 3 forces acting on it: Lift- from our magnus force, this is a product of our backspin and our velocity. The full equation I’ve used is for a cylinder but it’s close enough for showing the effect: Fl=ρ*v*2*π*r²*l*ω Looks an awful lot like it’s not just backspin and velocity there so lets break it down: Fl is our lifting force v is our velocity ω is our angular velocity (aka how much spin we have) r is our radius l is our length (for the cylinder example I stole this equation from) ρ is the density of air so if you think about it, if we make some broad assumptions we can say that the spin doesn’t slow down (at least not enough to make a difference) and the density of air doesn’t change enough to make a difference either. Now we’re dealing with the same size of bb so really the only things that can change are F as a product of v and ω. Drag- this is just from velocity and bb diameter (so sorry marushin guys but not sorry, we’re dealing with 6mm spheres here), although once again we have a more complicated equation: F=0.5*ρ*v²*Cd*A Ok so that’s not as bad Fl once again is our force, only this time it’s for drag Ρ has snuck in again, it’s the same atmospheric density v is a bit of a cheat, technically it’s the velocity of the air against the bb but I’m not NASA so the velocity of the bb is close enough Cd is our drag coefficient, again a big simplification but for our purposes we’re saying 0.47 for a sphere that’s got turbulent air around it (little known pseudo fact marui “magic dust” actually bonds the airflow to the bb causing laminar flow dropping the Cd to 0.1! (*not entirely serious)) A is our frontal area of the bb, good ol’ πr² So making the same assumptions before, with the addition of assuming turbulent flow, we end up with Fd being variable as a result of v. Gravity- this is from our bb weight and here comes the scary equation: Fg=m*g Wait, what? That was meant to be complicated! Well once again it is, technically g can depend on where on earth you are but in reality nobody cares because it’s close enough. Remember back to school math g is 9.81m/s² So with that explained on to the bit where I skip the really dull bit and just tell you to go look at the spreadsheet, basically it takes these 3 equations and with the starting parameters you give it it’ll spit out a graph of how different weight bb’s will fly. So as a quick note on it’s use: Muzzle energy- I’ve rated this as fps on a .2gbb just because that’s a unit we’re all familiar with, if you want to use joules it’s to the right of the reset hop button MED distance- this is the distance of your MED, for snipers interested in just how much hurt your 500fps gun running .5g bb’s inflicts on someone at 20m Energy at MED- this gives you an MED if you want to know how far a bb goes before it slows down to a given energy, useful for showing how far a bb can go whilst still hitting as hard as an equivalent gun point blank. Reset hop- this was a right pain making the spreadsheet so unfortunately the best I can do is fix the hop setting for a 20cm rise before it drops again, this will change if the fps is different so remember to press that button otherwise you’ll get some suspiciously good range numbers and some strange graphs. Maximum range- this I’ve set to the distance I’d call the “effective” range, ie when a bb has risen 20cm from where it left the barrel, then drop to 20cm below where it left the barrel, so if you fire at a man sized target you’ll hit him without needing to fire your gun wildly into the air and assuming he’s kind enough to stand there and get shot. So a couple of interesting points to note: Say we have a site, regular rifles have no MED and can be 1.3j or 375fps, snipers have 2.3j or 500fps but they have a 20m MED: Our rifleman running .2’s can shoot 38m, but if he can get enough spin to lob a .5g bb he’ll shoot 52m Our sniper running .2’s can shoot 43m, and at 20m the hit is a measly 0.4j or the same as being shot point blank by a 205fps gun, thing is if he packs .5’s in his gun he’ll shoot 60m and more importantly at 20m he hits with 1.27 joules, or the same as being hit by the rifleman at point blank So with that I’ll leave you to have a little play. Part 7- but I’m not a nerd! What do I need to do to get my gun to shoot far? So we’ve covered pretty well the science of how to get a bb to go far, it needs to be heavy, with lots of energy, and enough spin and if it has those 3 things it’ll go as far regardless of what gun it comes from. So why spend money on a fancy polarstar kit with an rhop like my favourite youtuber uses? Well back at the start we mentioned you need 2 things to get hits, and the first is you need to hit in the first place. This is where all our upgrades come in, a fancy barrel and hop unit wont make your bb’s go any further, but what it will mean is they’ll all start the same, we’ve all seen that guy with his 50rps dsg build m4 spray a mag load of bb’s only to get salty and rage because “he’s not calling his hits” when in reality by the time it gets to the target it’s a 10 foot spread and he's not hitting a thing. So the first place I’d recommend looking is your hop unit, there’s a million different designs that promise the earth so I’m just going to cover the standard, flat and radial hop and hopefully explain what’s going on so you can understand what some of the fancier designs out there like maple leaf are doing. So the standard hop is what most guns come with these days, it’s basically a lump of rubber in your barrel: Now lets add the bb, the trick here is to realise that a barrel is not exactly 6mm and neither is the bb, nothing is perfect and there’s a tolerance. So when you’re buying expensive barrels and bb’s what you’re really paying for is for them to be exactly the size they say they are and in the case of bb’s to be all exactly the same size. Now a bb is slightly smaller than the barrel, so we can be sure it won’t get stuck, this is why it’s important to keep your barrel and ammo clean because enough dirt and it’ll be rubbing it’s way down messing up that lovely backspin we want. Now we want our backspin to be the same every time, not just in terms of how much backspin there is but also in terms of the backspin being the same every time: The perfect scenario is vertical spin like this: But of course the bb isn’t going to be nice and pop perfectly in the centre every time: So our spin is at an angle, and as a result our magnus force will also be at an angle, lifting the bb not just up but sideways, this means it’ll try and curve off to the left or right, and because not all the force it acting upwards it’ll also lift up more or less, this is our friend with his ultra fast gun shooting a 10 foot spread and not hitting anything. So our alternative is to flat hop, and try to minimise this angle: Which when we try our wonky bb does this: So we get less angle, our bb’s drift less and our spread is less, meaning our bb’s are much more likely to hit what we’re aiming at, not only that but a flat hop will have a longer contact patch, or in other words it spends longer spinning the bb, meaning we can spin heavier bb’s and get all the wonderful benefits heavier ammo allows us. Flat hopping a gun really isn’t as hard as you’d think it would be and can get some excellent results for very little money, and whilst it wont give you more total range on it’s own, it will give you accuracy and the ability to use heavier ammo increasing the range you can hit things. edit: as a minor digression i figure i might as well cover how to make a flathop seeing as it's one of the best bang for buck airsoft upgrades out there as you can really tighten up the groupings of a gun potentially for free: 1. remove the hop from your gun, this can be very simple or very difficult depending on the particular model, for example my f2000 is just 1 pin to remove the upper and the hop/barrel is right there to pull out, but a jg ak takes much more disassembly, as with all things youtube the gun you have for a guide, take your time and remember- as long as you don't lose parts you can always take it to a tech to get it sorted, so don't worry. 2. pull the stock hop unit apart, you want the rubber and the nub (the little cylindrical rubber thing that'll drop out when you remove the barrel), the nub you can toss away as you'll want to replace it with a flat nub, various manufacturers (Prometheus being somewhat prominent) make these but if you're handy with a knife and super cheap you can make a heath robinson flat nub out of a pencil eraser. again youtube is your friend for how to disassemble and re-assemble a hop unit. 3. turn the stock hop rubber inside out, this can be tricky and i find using an alan key (or similar pokey type object) can help tremendously, don't use anything sharp though as you don't want to poke holes in your rubber (air leaks are bad m'kay) 4. cut the bump off the inside, as well as the ridge on the bottom used to line it up, or if you prefer there are pre-made flathop rubbers out there which will save you the bother. the important thing we're aiming for here is no holes, and no bumps on the inside of the rubber 5. put the hop rubber back on the barrel, but remember where the ridge was? well turn that 90 degrees from the ridge on the barrel, this way we've got the side of the original hop rubber on the barrel which will be nice and smooth (assuming like me you couldn't be bothered to fully sand down the insides and instead just spent 20s with a pair of snips during step 4) 6. this step is optional but recommended is to take some ptfe tape and wrap it around where the hop and barrel overlap, the idea here is to seal air particularly where the ridge cut in the barrel is that is no longer sealed as we've removed the ridge, you don't need too much or else you'll have a hard time re-inserting your barrel into the hop chamber 7. re-assemble the hop unit, this should mostly be the reverse of the dissassembly, with the exception that we're replacing the original round nub with our new flat nub, you may need to trim the nub a bit shorter to fit the hole in the hop unit (which will again depend on brand). now the trick here is when you've got it assembled to take a look down the barrel, turn the hop on all the way and check it's working, and also check the angle it's coming out at, if it's down too far on one side or the other this will pull your shots off to that side so we want it nice and square, the way i do this is literally to "twiddle" the barrel until everything's nice and square. 8. finally, drop your hop back in your gun and go pew. But what if we want more? More is good right? Well my friend in steps the Rhop: Man it took ages to align that and it still looks wonky. Now this might sound controversial but in my opinion the rhop isn’t really much different to a flathop, but the devil’s in the details. Firstly it’s going to actively pull the bb’s into the centre, if you look at some of the fancy hop designs (like maple leaf) you’ll see they’re trying to go for the same idea. The DIY rhop just takes a regular flat hop and pops a cut up square of rubber in the window of the barrel, commonly you'll see folk mentioning silicon hose or you can buy dedicated rhop patches. when it’s turned on it can end up looking very flat inside the barrel, but remember when it deforms it’ll wrap round the bb: So we get as close as we can get to perfect vertical spin every time, and we have the same longer contact patch the flat hop gave us so we can still lift heavy ammo. Now remember that a bb’s lift is not just a product of spin, but also its velocity and herein lies the advantage of the rhop. Hop up rubbers come in different hardness’s, and like formula 1 fans will tell you a soft rubber is going to be grippy and a hard rubber not so grippy, now these aren’t cars but there’s one solid advantage to a hard rubber and that’s stopping leaks- remember your airsoft gun is chucking a lot of air behind that bb and air likes to escape. Now one way is to go down the barrel and shove the bb out of the way, but if it can shove its way out past the hop rubber or the nozzle or better yet just not go anywhere and stay in this nice cylinder thank you very much then it will. This is why common advice is to check for air leaks. Now since we’re talking about hops we’ll simply say that if you want a soft grippy rubber to spin your heavy bb’s then it’s going to be easier for the air to squish the rubber out of the way and sneak out, so we want a hard rubber, this is why hard rubber’s tend to be recommended for snipers as it’ll help prevent air leaks, and if you’ve played with the spreadsheet you’ll see that faster bb’s need less spin to lift, so the grip is less relevant if your gun is shooting fast. Well an rhop gives you the best of both worlds, because the patch and the main body of the rubber are separate you can have a nice hard air sealing rubber on the outside and a nice soft grippy rubber on the inside, yay! Downside is these can be a bit of a pain to get right, however it’s worth experimenting because the boost in accuracy and by extension effective range is a worthy payoff. now i haven't covered bb's barrels gearboxes and springs because frankly it's pretty straightforward: good bb's are consistent in size, weight, surface polish and roundness, check out Gasman's topic if you want to look at what makes up a good bb. good barrels are straight, there's no variation along their length, tight versus widebore is it's own topic but in my opinion that's secondary to quality (ie if you care enough to consider proper tight/widebores you should really focus on quality too) the argument for a tightbore is that it will allow less "wobble" of the bb as it can't rattle around as much, of course the counter argument is that the tighter tolerances mean the bb could hit the barrel and as a result gain spin in a different direction pulling the shot off. the inverse is true for widebores, whilst they could let the bb bounce around more the theory is the bb will be kept centred by a cushion of air and thus not bounce on the sides and get off-axis spin. barrel length isn't all that important for accuracy, anyone who's met the wrath of my 4" pdi barreled hicapa can attest to that, although for certain setups a long barrel can be rather useful (like trying to go for a quieter build, especially with hpa) i'll let you decide for yourself which side of the barrel argument you sit on, but remember quality is absolutely king. personally i get good results from pdi tightbores, but i've not really tried proper quality widebores to compare. good gearboxes don't leak air, so they have good o rings, good tolerances and good compression, apart from that most gearbox discussions are more about supporting higher rates of fire, reliable feeding etc. and springs give you more fps, pretty self explanatory, pick the right one for your setup and site limits. edit: hop units (ie the likes of madbull or pro-win) have more sensitive adjustments, features like the addition of tracer or holding bb capability, and are generally better quality, however they are not essential when compared to the rubbers and nubs they contain most of what makes an hpa system so good is it gives the same pressure and volume of air for every single shot and consistency of fps=consistency of spin=accuracy=effective range, it's also much easier to achieve reliable high rates of fire and the ability to tune your fps can be handy if you regularly travel to sites with different limits, of course the price you pay for this is having to carry around the small bomb air tank on your back all the time. Part 8- conclusions Well the primary conclusion from this is that I should really be getting back to doing proper work, and that it’s almost certain I’ve just annoyed several strangers on the internet with my wonky diagrams and half-baked ponderings who will proceed to tell me I’m wrong about something. Now I’m not trying to lie to you, and if I am wrong I’d like to know because at least half of what I know has been learned through internet arguments. hell I used to think running .2’s was the best way to go for low fps until a bunch of strangers on the internet told me I was wrong. When I properly tried it to prove to myself I was right I realised I was wrong, and now look at me preaching the benefits of heavy ammo, with science! The best way to learn this stuff is to try it, it might be scary to crack open your first hop unit and cut it up with a pair of snips to make a flat hop but if you’re too scared to do it the first time you’ll never be able to try it a second or third time and eventually get it right. But if you think I’ve made a mistake, or I’m spreading misinformation then please explain yourself so I can understand what the problem is and either admit i'm wrong and learn something, or prove you wrong and you'll learn something, either way someone gets to learn something and: now if anyone asks, i've been researching de-lamination of fibre matrix composites all morning ;) BB range study.xlsm edit 1: cleared up an issue with travel time using heavier bb's (ie it's only slower over short distances and the difference isn't that much), added a rough guide to flathopping (more as a motivation as to it being easy and effective than an actual tutorial), fixed a few spelling mistakes and changed some wording to make it a bit clearer in parts.

So true, I'm fed up seeing "getting a new/first gun, what upgrades should I do" threads, just use it FFS, as your likely to fook it up trying to throw money at it. Some great budget guns out there, I'd rather buy two variants, instead of buying one & then spending as much again trying to make it something it's not, nor will it ever be lol.

I like it! We plan on doing some more testing games so i'll extend the invite into here for when we can ofc.

We are aiming for August opening but that will be confirmed later which depends on Covid. Unfortunately we need to open sometime in August due to rent etc. Of course we would be running more games but with less players and at a reduced price point. We have just been doing our part and keeping the doors closed until we get the go ahead. When Gyms open then we potentially could..

It's quite obvious mate. He's taking about psychotic weirdos who make up lies and bullshit on the internet. Like people who lie about having the latest Marui pistol months before launch, for example...

Convincingly put, I’m sold.

Looks good, I'd keep them off if I were you, just to let the handguard shine in all its glory.

custom built L119a1 AA R85 might dig out the rest of my armoury and get some up to date shots

Perun FCUs have that by the way..