Chock

Personally I prefer three point slings, they allow the weapon to rest in the low ready position when hands free, which means you can get it up to your shoulder or the high ready position very quickly. Neither a one point, nor a two point sling will do that.

Nah, PMRs are perfectly okay indoors, even cheap ones send and receive just fine through quite a few walls. For example, I have a pair of BellSouth T-388 PMRs, and they're about as cheap as you can get (I paid 13 quid for the pair, brand new, off Fleabay). They too are only a measly 0.5w ERP, but they will quite happily transmit through several floors of a large building and two or three miles when outdoors in reasonably decent line of sight. I bought them so that I could hand one to a fellow player if I ended up on an impromptu scratch team at a skirmish. Feature-wise, those T-388s are surprisingly good considering they cost about the same as a round of drinks, they have loads of channels and memory, CTCSS, monitor, scan, call modes, voice activation, roger-beep, power saving modes so the batteries (four AAA) last ages, you can use a headset with them and a remote PTT, they have a built in LED torch (not great, but it works). Most importantly, the sound quality from them is actually not bad at all, very clear in fact, which is the real big deal with PMRs rather than carloads of features, as you don't want to be having to say: 'Say Again' loads of times when someone is shooting at you. For that kind of money - 7.50 each if you split the cost with a mate - you'd be daft not to get a pair of them if you don't have a radio and don't want to spend a lot. As far as CQB is concerned, PMRs are incredibly useful. Let's say you want to storm a large hangar building from two different entrances simultaneously, and those entrances are on opposite sides of a the hangar. You could agree to commence the assault at a specific time assuming you have synchronised time, but if one fire team cannot get into position, or the situation changes, then you are asking for trouble, with a radio, all you need to send is: 'go in five seconds' and get a response of 'affirm' from the other team and you know it's going to be a perfectly coordinated assault. If the situation does change, then you can report that too. It even helps with mundane stuff too; sometimes in darkened buildings, you can lose team members or get separated when a team member goes to respawn, and rather than stumbling about and shouting out the team member's name in the hopes of finding them, a simple radio call to rendezvous at a location will put your team back together with the minimum of fuss.

That's all you need. We are not calling in F105s to do napalm airstrikes in the A Shau Valley, we are talking to someone thirty yards away from us whilst running around with pretend guns, we could almost get away with two tin cans and a piece of string.

If you are anywhere near Manchester, then New Cross is s good place for boots, you can get good quality surplus boots there for 30 quid. I always get my boots from there: http://www.militarykit.com/product_categories/footwear/military/product_pages/1_boots_shoes_military.html

M4 may be a bit boring compared to some of the more exotic weaponry you could pick, but lots of people do pick them for the simple reason that it is a good choice. Mags are cheap, lots of parts are available, loads of customising options open to you such as sight choices and rails etc, and you can fit a grenade launcher to it easily. It's suitable for CQB and open woodland stuff too. I'd say either the CYMA or the G&G (both are good), and if it were me, I'd go with the G&G, they look very realistic in terms of finish and work well too considering they're not that pricey. I actually use a D Boys M4 SIR, but there's nothing wrong with your choices and if I did not have that D Boys, I'd get a G&G. I'd consider picking up a three-point sling for your M4. Some rifles actually come with one in the box, but if yours does not, they can be had for not much money. They are much better for getting the weapon up into your shoulder quickly than a basic two point sling and they mean you can run without having the weapon flapping about all over the place. DPM 95 is okay for British woodland, but MTP works better. Up real close in woodland DPM works well, but past fifteen metres distance it is too dark, MTP works a lot better. MTP is also a bit more versatile for differing terrains, whereas DPM can really stick out in some terrains. Of course if you are doing indoor CQB it really makes little difference. Personally, I wear all black stuff, which is actually worse than either DPM or MTP in woodland, but I like it anyway, and so if you like DPM 95, go for it. Whichever camo you choose, keep in mind that you should always consider what is behind you, because that is really what makes it work, or not. Any decent boots or even reasonably tough high ankle trainers will do the job, just make sure you can squat down in them comfortably. Personally, I wear British Army Wet Weather Boots, which are leather with a goretex lining and a vibram sole. They are comfortable to wear for long periods and flexible enough to let you squat easily. Webbing is up to you, because it depends on whether you like to travel light or take everything including the kitchen sink. I see plenty of people wearing nothing more than an old Vietnam War era Chinese chest rig designed to hold some AK mags and they seem to do alright with that, since you can fit a lot of different mag types or other stuff into those AK pouches. Personally, I use a black 600D nylon load bearing tactical vest with shoulder padding which has a laced mesh back. It is polyurethane coated, so it's very tough and waterproof too. It has 4 mag pouches, a couple of grenade pockets, plus nylon velcro straps to attach a tactical belt. I hang a leg holster from the tactical belt on the right side and an old RAF Browning Hi Power belt holster on the left side. That works for me because I use a 300 round mag on my M4, so I can carry mags for the two pistols in the mag pockets, and if I instead use my GBB MP5K, there is enough pocket space to carry three 50 round mags for that, so even with a GBB main weapon I've got 200 rounds plus nearly 100 rounds for the two pistols. The only thing I would say about such a lightweight vest of the kind I have, as opposed to something more hefty, is that it provides no protection from hits to your sides and quite a lot of your back in the shoulder area, but I don't get hit in those places often enough for it to be a major concern. Whatever webbing you get, consider picking up a couple of caribiners, they are useful for attaching various other bits and bobs easily. Carry some adhesive tape in your webbing or a pocket too, it's really useful for running repairs on stuff and always comes in handy, especially to stop stuff flapping around. I favour a pair of mesh goggles and a mesh lower face protector, because it is a bit fresher and cooler than a full one piece face mask and there is no possibility of it fogging my view up, nor does it restrict peripheral vision much. I also wear a replica PASGT helmet, and I recommend you get some kind of helmet as well, or at the very least a baseball cap or forage cap. A high FPS BB to the head really hurts; only this weekend I went to my car and got a couple of caps out of it that I had in the boot to lend to other players who had shown up without head protection, both of them had taken hits to the forehead, one of which had cut their skin, and they realised it was a mistake not to cover up that bit of yourself. I would also get a keffiyah scarf (shemagh), they provide a lot of neck and throat protection, and again this week I had someone on my team who got hit in the adam's apple, and that really hurt them pretty badly. Chances are, you will get a lot of BBs coming up at your head and neck because that's the bit you always have exposed when you come out of cover to aim. I'd also consider knee and elbow pads. Being shot in the elbow hurts a lot and you will be doing a lot of kneeling and crawling, so protecting your knees is a good idea. The chances of being hit in your right elbow are pretty high, since this is very exposed when you poke around a corner to take a shot. Unless you are a lefty, in which case the same is true of your left arm. Make sure you get an easily portable water bottle of some kind. It gets bloody hot running around with heavy gear. It doesn't have to be fancy, even an old plastic lucozade bottle will do if you don't want to spend money on some bit of army kit. Make sure it is small enough to carry easily and not be flapping around or falling out of a pocket. Stick a bigger bottle in your bag to refill it from. If you are doing a lot of CQB, consider getting a training knife to throw or use up close, they are more use than you might think, since many sites ban you from firing at less than 1.5 metres range, so if someone is on the other side of a door, you can get them with your knife, which is a lot less painful than shooting them at 1.5 metres with something doing 300 fps.

The first one has 8 channels you can talk on, but it has the capability to put combinations on those channels so that other radios with that same combination will be the only ones you hear and communicate with, so you don't hear other radios within range. Think of it like a cross between an intelligent squelch control and a 'scrambler'. It would stop other PMR users monitoring your comms, unless they knew your combination setting. The second one would require you to reprogramme it to be in compliance with the Licence Exempt rules in the UK, but that's not hard, you'd need to download some software (free) to do that, and buy a cable in order to connect the thing to a PC so that it could be achieved. The memory channels is essentially its 'favourites' that it can store.

Check with sites to see what pyrotechnics are allowed at the specific site. Most have rules about that kind of thing, and as you say, they are pricey, so you don't want to buy something you can't use. At Trojan's indoor site, they allow timed grenades and impact grenades and that's it, and you can't lob them in stairwells. They do sometimes waive rules for specific themed days, for example, this weekend you were allowed to use smoke grenades, but normally they don't let you because it can set materials on fire, so they were very specific about where you could use it owing to the fact that some of the cover is hessian screening. Timed grenades are more use than you might think. I got nailed by one on Saturday. I was holding off an entire enemy team on my own after all my squad died, because I was positioned to be able to fire through a doorway from very good cover and was laying down fire every time people popped out to try and take a shot at me, so I kept hitting guys, but of course they could be healed. It was their only way in, so it was a bit of a stalemate, since I had a high capacity mag in my M4, was firing on semi-auto and so I wasn't about to run out of ammo any time soon (although I did check it after and I'd fired about 250 rounds, all of them aimed single shots lol). Sure enough, someone rolled a timed grenade along the floor through that doorway, and I could not break cover to avoid it, as they'd have then been able to rush through the door. That grenade rolled up right alongside me, stopping about three meters from me and boom, I was hit.

If it is, as you say, being used for a drama, that is one of the specific defences mentioned in the VCR Act, so yes, you could make it as realistic looking as you liked, since you are constructing a prop for use in a dramatic performance. The VCR Act does what it says on the tin basically, i.e. it is an Act of Parliament intended to facilitate Violent Crime Reduction. If what you are doing is nothing to do with perpetrating a Violent Crime, then you are outside the scope of what the VCR Act is intended to tackle. In other words, the legality of making a RIF is related to the intent. So, if you pop into the high street with it and start waving it around, then you would likely be in trouble, even if you had not painted it at all, because the VCR Act covers scenarios in which a person who is not an expert in firearms (i.e. Joe Public) might think something is a real gun, and as a result may feel threatened, regardless of its realism, even if it can't be cocked, fired, loaded or whatever (which is what all that two-tone nonsense is supposed to alleviate, although frankly, even waving a two tone about in the street would not be a very wise thing to do). Obviously, at a dramatic performance, people are supposed to think it is a real gun (so you can make it look as realistic as you like), because anyone who sees it is watching a drama, so they know there is no threat and will therefore not feel threatened by it appearing to be a gun. To be honest, to anyone who knows firearms, and as a result, knows they can indeed be green, that could be mistaken for a real gun as it is, but since the average drama-watching audience probably thinks all guns are black, then you have a legitimate artistic reason to paint the thing black.

You don't need a licence to operate a radio transmitter in the UK so long as it complies (or you operate it in compliance with) with the the UK's Licence Exempt rules, which for most people will generally mean they'll be using a PMR446 (Private Mobile Radio), aka a little 'walkie-talkie'. The rules in relation to those essentially boil down to: Maximum ERP (Effective Radiated Power) of the equipment is no more than 10mW (which limits its range to a few hundred meters in built up areas and a few miles out in the open) Frequency range: 446.1 to 446.2 MHz, which gives you 8 channels on analogue equipment and 16 channels on digital equipment. They are useful not only for your own comms in skirmishing, but also for monitoring 'the enemy' who are likely to be using PMR446s as well. If you want more range (and privacy from those at a skirmish), you could use a 27Mhz 'CB radio', which (since 2006) no longer requires a WT licence (the licences were actually only 25 quid from the Post Office, but hardly anyone ever bothered to get one, so they dropped the requirement for you to have one lol). CB radios will give you more range, because they are allowed up to 4 Watts of power, and they'll also give you up to 40 channels, depending on the make and model, but the increased range may mean you'll have other people busting in on your channel doing all that 'Convoy-style, Breaker One-nine for a copy, this is the Rubber Duck in an 18-wheeler pulling in at Watford Gap services for a nosebag.' nonsense. Also note that the CB radio channels are under the regulation of the MOD, who can without notice jam those frequencies, and unlike with aviation band frequencies, where they issue a NOTAM telling pilots that they'll be jamming certain frequencies in certain areas, with CBs, the MOD can jam them with no notification at all to users, although to be fair, this does not happen that often, if ever really. Nevertheless, you can find compact mobile handheld CB radios second hand on fleabay for 20 quid upwards (and it's likely to be better build quality than a PMR446 radio for the same price, although probably a bit bigger). Since less people use CBs at skirmishes, it's unlikely that the other side will be eavesdropping on you, although as noted, the MOD might be interested in you mentioning over the airwaves that you're 'commencing a pincer movement on the machine gun emplacement' or whatever, and you'll lose the ability to communicate with most players who are using PMR446 equipment.

Got one of these on my Dragunov, but I guess it would look okay on an AK: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/270951265654?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Yeah, the next purge night is a week on Wednesday, although they do have a regular skirmish night this coming Thursday if the Resident Evil thing this coming Wednesday doesn't float your boat. Just got back from the Red Dawn event. It was a good laugh actually, lots of people hamming it up with fake Russian accents and the Brit side going all over the top cockney accents, although I ended up being on the Russkie side because some people didn't show up, bizarrely because it was raining, which is an odd excuse for not going to an indoor site, but there you go. Incidentally, we (the Russkies) were soundly thrashed by the UK partisans, but on the plus side, my team did well in the morning warm up skirmishes and I got a good many kills with my trusty M4. What was also cool, was that we had a player in a wheelchair, and he was kicking ass. We had to help him a little getting between floors, but other than that, he was a one-man-wrecking crew, so we managed it okay. It's good to know that airsoft is something that can include disabled players and pretty much on a level playing field too at that site. With regard to Tac Lights, I got one of these the other day (it came in the post really quickly too), and can thoroughly recommend it: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/181479919374?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT Don't be put off by the low price, that's a seriously good quality Tac Light. I've fixed the thumb switch to my front tactical grip and have the light mounted on the right side rail on my M4 SIR. The light is very cool, it is all metal, very bright, just the right beam width to illuminate targets at long CQB ranges, and the thumb switch has just the right amount of pressure to switch it on. I've had loads of great kills thanks to that light. It comes with a charger for the battery, the battery lasts a long time from what I can tell so far, and it also comes with a set of mounting clamps to fit it to a barrel if you don't have a tactical rail. Well worth fifteen quid. Will probably buy another two, one for for my MP5K and one for my 1911 pistol. Anyway, yes, you really do need a Tac light for Trojan at Stockport, even in the daytime there are a few floors of the building where it is in total darkness. I'd recommend a small torch as well. And if you have grenades there are lots of spots where they will prove decisive. Oh, and a training knife is not a bad idea either, as you can get knife kils there (the shop at the site sells good ones for 13 quid by the way, M4 bayonets in a scabbard).

Absolutely. I'm no fan of Israel's politics, but if someone likes their IDF uniforms or the Galil or UZI or whatever, and wants to do airsoft in that gear, then good for them. After all, just because I'm got some black tactical gear and a GBB MP5K doesn't mean I'm about to go and storm the Iranian embassy any more than it makes someone collecting Third Reich stuff a Nazi. You can be into something without advocating the politics behind it. Just don't be seen having a bacon butty in the morning at a skirmish when in that get up, or it'll completely blow your authenticity.

It has one because the real M4 has a gas tube, and it's supposed to b a model of the real thing. If it didn't have one, some front grips with vent holes would show the gas tube was missing, which would not look correct. But more importantly, your front hand guard would rotate because it's the gas tube which stops it from doing that.

Not heard anything about that, but as noted, I am going to that Red Dawn one, so I'll let you know what it was like. It will make a change for me to be doing CQB there in daylight. Normally I go to Trojan at Stockport on their league-based 'Purge' nights. They have a prize for the ultimate winner over a few weeks, and it is a good laugh, although that place gets seriously warm when you are in there in full combat gear. The Purge Night is not a milsim though, so it might not appeal to you, but it is certainly a challenge, taking place using all six storeys of the mill interior, in total darkness, apart from the odd bit of light from street lamps coming through the (mainly broken) windows. All teams get 18 lives (little blue ribbons) regardless of numbers in the team, if you get shot you can be mediced, providing someone can get to you, but if an enemy gets to you, you have to surrender a ribbon, if nobody gets to you in four minutes, you are dead and have to drop down a level in the building to respawn. If all your team lives are gone, you are then sent to the safe area and given an armband marking you as part of the hunter squad (no size limit on that team). When you are a hunter, you cannot have ribbons taken off you, but can collect them, so you can 'get back in the game' in spite of having been knocked out. At the end of the night, the team with the most ribbons is the winner, the rest being ranked in descending order on the leader board. So as you can imagine, when I was there the other night with a team consisting of me and just one other person (which I named 'the bullet magnets' as i expected that's what we'd be), we had nine lives each, so thanks to being sneaky, stealth f*ck*rs (on account of me being equipped with night vision) we survived the entire evening despite losing a few ribbons each, so there are some advantages to being on a small team! Usually It's very stealthy stuff most of the time, although having said that, I did have a really seriously intense prolonged gun battle in there the other night with I think six versus six, because my team of just two people formed a truce with four other guys from another team for the last twenty minutes of the evening and then went after another six man team. It was in that last twenty minutes that I lost two of my ribbons, but it was worth it because the gun battle we had was excellent, with people zipping tac lights and lasers on and off quickly, in attempts to try to spot people but not give away their positions lest they invite a hail of fire. One guy actually had the lens shot out of his tac light on his rifle.

Welcome aboard. And welcome to the UK too. As you've realised, there are some fairly fierce rules about weaponry in Blighty, most of which were as a result of a few notorious incidents where some disturbed individuals shot and killed multiple people with either a bunch of handguns or automatic weapons (google Hungerford and Dunblane if you want to know more about those incidents). But more pertinent to airsoft, is the Violent Crimes Reduction Act of 2006 - as in Act of Parliament - or VCR as it is more commonly known to airsofters, which is a law that encompasses a lot of things. You can read the VCR Act here, and the bit you might be interested in is from Section 36 onwards: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/38 But it's a boring read and somewhat confusing too, so here's the general idea of it... The VCR Act was established to put controls on several undesirable things, most notably drunken behaviour and the increase in weaponry in general in crimes, thus it pertains to things such as knives, baseball bats, swords etc, so there are some restrictions on carrying those (i.e. if you have a bag full of carving knives and you aren't a butcher on his way to work, you might find yourself in trouble, and if you have a three foot long rapier in your holdall, then you'd better be on your way to a fencing club, that kind of thing). But the bit in the VCR Act which relates to airsoft, is pertaining to RIFs (realistic imitation firearms) i.e. not only referring to airsoft guns, but also to working-action replica weapons, static rubber movie props, etc, basically anything which a bystander with no expertise in weaponry might think is a real gun, even if the only way you could injure someone with it would be to hit them over the head with it. As a result of this, you need a specific relevant defence (i.e. a good excuse) for owning or making a RIF. Suitable defences include: using such RIFs as props for movie and theatre productions, or for display in museums, or for historical re-enactments and organised displays (these last two are basically what covers airsoft sites). Any realistically shaped replica weapon not intended for use in any of these scenarios has therefore to be easily identifiable as 'not a real weapon' by means of its colour, so this requires 50 percent of the weapon to be a silly colour (typically bright orange, bright blue, bright red, bright pink, bright green), this can either be spray painted on, or be a material which is that colour (these are commonly known in the UK as two-tones, which is sort of similar to the US rule where airsoft guns have to be sold with a red flash hider). Yeah, we know, what's to stop someone spray painting a real AK-47 bright orange in the UK, or painting their flash hider red in the US, but when were laws ever really properly thought through eh? So, as a result of the VCR Act, it was looking for a while as though it would be tricky for UK retailers to sell anything other than 'two tone' airsoft guns, and in fact quite a few airsoft online stores did close as a result of this. So, several airsoft retailers got together and founded UKARA (United Kingdom Airsoft Retailers Association) in order to ensure that they could be sure that a customer wishing to buy a RIF (i.e. fully black/metal coloured) airsoft weapon had a legitimate reason for wanting to do so. Thus the system they came up with, was to have airsoft sites become UKARA members, and have them log players making at least three visits to airsoft games over a period of two months, whereupon the player could apply for a UKARA registration number. Thus when ordering a RIF, the player is able to quote their unique UKARA number, establishing them as a bona fide airsoft player. However, it is important to note that UKARA was created as a result of the VCR Act and is not part of that law, or indeed any UK law, so there is no legal requirement to be UKARA registered to own a RIF airsoft weapon, you merely have to be able to say that you have a legitimate reason for owning one, and that could just as easily be because you have your own little 'museum' on your living room wall at home. Of course in practice, it is easier to simply have a UKARA registration, since most airsoft retailers have a bit on their order forms where you can enter your UKARA number, but theoretically at least, if you can prove to a retailer (to their satisfaction) that you have a legit reason for wanting a RIF, then they will sell you one, since their real concern is to not be open to prosecution for having provided a RIF which subsequently might get used to stick up a bank or 7-11. And you thought the Land of the Free had some crap laws eh? Re GBBS: GBBs get used quite a lot in the UK (I've got a few of them as well as some AEGs). Yes they can drop in performance in the dead of winter, but indoor CQB sites mean they can be used all year round, and of course GBB pistols are kept warmer in a holster next to your leg, which does help with outdoor performance a little, although there is no denying they work better in warmer temperatures, since it isn't just temperature which affects them, but also the atmospheric pressure at those temperatures, so you'll probably see them less in December. The more realistic nature of GBBs in terms of mag capacity, the fact of the weapon being inert without the mag and the bolt/slide actually moving, means they are popular with players who want as realistic a weapon as possible, so you do see lots of them at MILSIM events in the UK.

I would think a team of four would be the least you'd need to be able to pull off most tactics you'd really want to, although you can still do a lot with just two. Most militaries are based on multiples of four man fire teams, with two or three four man fire teams who are grouped together then being referred to as a squad (or occasionally as a section). The classic make up of a four man fire team comprises: Team Leader who obviously is in command of his team and determines how they will carry out their assigned tasks. Invariably the Team Leader is an NCO, and often equipped with an assault rifle, occasionally with something a bit fancier or lighter than a standard rifle, such as a shorter M16 variant with a grenade launcher. Grenadier who is usually equipped with an assault rifle with an underslung grenade launching capability, such as an M203 or L17A2. Rifleman who is your bog standard grunt, usually equipped with an assault rifle such as an M16 or AK-47. The rifleman is often tasked with carrying additional rounds for the grenadier or the automatic rifleman and is often placed under the command of - or tasked to assist - the grenadier, since this balances up a two-man element with the heavier rate of fire which the automatic rifleman can put out, allowing for split movements. Automatic Rifleman who is usually equipped with a heavier variant of a standard assault rifle, or possibly dedicated a belt/box mag-fed automatic support weapon with a heavier barrel to allow for more sustained fire, such as an RPK or an M249. Fireteams or four can easily be split into two pairs (elements) so that pincer movements and crossfires can be set up. Elements move by 'leapfrogging' using standard fire and manoeuvre tactics (i.e. one guy provides covering fire whilst the other moves up to some cover, then he provides covering fire whilst the other guy then advances, etc). This is your basic team set up. Of course not everyone has the luxury of such well organised weaponry choices between four players, most people tip up to airsoft sites with an M4 or an AK, and possibly a back up pistol, but there is nothing stopping four of you from operating as a balanced fire team with such a loadout and you can still effectively split into two elements for tactical manoeuvres, but you should endeavour to have someone be in charge, even if you take turns at this weekly. It is possible to do fairly well with just a team of two (element), although obviously firepower is limited, meaning ambush tactics will serve you better. I actually did that last night with one other guy when most other teams were six members, and we did okay, better than some bigger teams actually. Theoretically, most sites will let you just tip up on the night (or day), which is referred to a 'walk-on', however, it's usually not a bad idea to book or at least let the site know you are coming, since if it has lots of people show up on spec, you will at least know you're in. Larger more specialised events almost always expect you to book a slot. Expect to pay about 20 quid for an evening if you are hiring gear, 15 if you bring your own stuff. Expect to pay about 35 quid for a day-long event. Expect to get a discount if you tip up regularly and become a member.

A bit of the floor of the 'Sulaco' loading bay, where in the movie, they do the briefing and the prep and all that stuff before the drop ship launches. Pic of a similar tile can be seen here: http://www.thepropgallery.com/sulaco-1-1-scale-floor-tile These used to be widely available years ago, because obviously they had to make enough of them to cover the entire set of Sulaco's floor, but I should think they'd be harder to find these days, as they were rapidly snapped up by fans of the Aliens movie, since they are a nice display item.

Can't beat a Thompson in a musical instrument case, it's a classic look. Being that i play guitar and have lots of them, and obviously lots of cases for them too, I frequently use guitar cases to transport rifles, they usually fit pretty well, in an average electric guitar 'gig bag' type case, and many of those are padded too, which helps prevent your rifle from picking up dings and scratches when you heft it into the boot of your car. In fact my D-Boys M4 SIR fits so well in one of my guitar cases, it almost looks like it was made for it. I also find that when travelling on a train, a guitar case is less likely to have people start panicking than sitting on there with what is obviously a rifle bag. Which reminds me... Because of my job teaching people CGI, where I show people how to do video special effects, such as making prop guns look like they are really firing, ejecting shells and emitting a muzzle flash which lights up the surroundings etc, quite often I take an old CYMA springer AK-47 into Manchester. A rectangular hard guitar case of mine fits that AK-47 perfectly with the mag still inserted. Funny thing is, about three years ago there was some big event on in Manchester and there was some kind of a security alert at Piccadilly railway station; the police were randomly stopping people getting off the trains and searching them. Sure enough, there's me walking up to the police at the ticket barrier with that hard case with an AK-47 in it (and bear in mind that this is painted up as a movie prop, so kit looks exactly like the real thing). They let me walk straight through without asking me to open the case, can't imagine that occurring if it had been a rifle case. So here's some DIY of sorts: Me with that CYMA AK and some CGI'd muzzle flashes, ejecting shells and secondary lighting effects lighting up the surroundings...

To be fair, as nice as the Pulse Rifle is, I think most people buy them as a 'wall hanger' rather than as something they'd regularly skirmish with (for one thing it doesn't have a sight, and for another, it only has a 99 round mag capacity, also, the grenade launcher is dummy, which, cool as it is, means it is bulky and impractical for proper skirmishing). So of those people, I reckon most would probably paint it up to replicate the worn look of the ones in the movie and simply be happy to have it. That being the case, one which was blue would not be a problem if the buyer wanted to 'prop it up' with some painting. Although I do agree, in blue it would be bordering on criminally poor taste. Personally, I'm such a fan of the Aliens film, I even bought part of the set of the Sulaco from the actual movie. I find that bit of the set is a great way to gauge people when they see it at my house; if they say 'wow, that's cool' I know I'll probably get on with them, but if they say 'you paid how much for that! Why on earth would you waste money on that?' then I know they just don't get it, and I'll probably have to nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Probably true that. The WW2 repro stuff I've had from them has been spot on, and excellent quality too. Back on thread topic, Just bought three GBB mags for my MP5

Cool. All you need now is a lottery win so you can buy everything you've no doubt been looking at on various websites.

Not sure I agree that the bog standard oranges greens and blues of two toning fit this scenario. I'm all with you on sic-fi rigs potentially being cool, for example, quite a few people have done the Aliens 'Colonial Marine' look, which coupled with the Snow Wolf Pulse Rifle, is indeed very cool, but nobody's gonna want that pulse rifle in bright orange or blue. In fact I can't think of any well-known sci-fi film or book or comic I'd want to emulate where the weaponry is colours even remotely resembling the typical UK two-tone. It'd have to be some sort of Barbarella-esque campy fifties/sixties sci-fi to even be near having those colours suit the intent.

True enough if you haven't sent it off and aren't mail ordering. In fact, even without mentioning UKARA at all, the site I regularly go to has a shop, but there's no way they'd be asking me for a UKARA number if I wanted to buy something from there, because they know i've been there three times in the last two months and they know I'm buying it to use for skirmishing simply by virtue of me being seen there and my name being in their booking register. This may be the case for Frosty too, let's hope so if he is counting the days. UKARA is convenient for mail ordering, but it ain't the law.

Some sites have CQB rules about 'pistols only' in certain areas (for example the stairs and landings at Trojan in Stockport, no grenades on these area either), so if you are only going to have two weapons, ensuring one of them is a pistol will not leave you at a disadvantage if you skirmish at a CQB which enforces such a rule. Note that when you fill out your UKARA form, get all stamped up at the site you did your three events at etc, you have to send it off and then await processing, so it doesn't happen instantaneously, thus it may turn out to be slightly longer than 10 days. Not what you probably want to hear, but as well to be aware of a slight delay potentially occurring.

Some of the darker sprayed blue two tone jobs you get can look alright, since that darker blue hints at 'blued' metal even if it doesn't look exactly like blued steel. But as NickM says, even something quite subdued like that dark blue is not very well camouflaged in terms of colours, and that will attract the eyes of your enemies and probably make you a bullet magnet, which in turn will probably mean nobody will want to be in the same foxhole as you. Nevertheless, technically, even bright colours still work as camouflage in making accurate range estimates less easy to achieve, the other point of camouflage being to break up shapes in order make range estimates trickier to determine, so even a bright disruptive pattern could hinder a sniper a little bit so long as your outfit was also helping to break up your outline, but at typical AEG and pistol ranges, the rangefinding confusion aspect of camo patterns probably wouldn't help much. Still, you only have to look at German WW1 daylight fighter plane lozenge camouflage - vierfarbiger buntfarbenanstrich - to know that bright colours do still work okay as camo. Of course camo serves another purpose too, which is somewhat at odds with its main purpose, and that's to help friendlies identify one another as belonging to the same side. There's little doubt that a bright two tone weapon which everyone on your side saw you with in the safe area before the skirmish is going to keep you pretty safe from friendly fire. And whilst on the subject of WW1 camo, let's not forget that the two highest-scoring flying aces of WW1 (Manfred Von Richthofen and Ernst Udet), both painted over their already fairly gaudy lozenge coloured aeroplanes, to end up with bright red fighter planes. They didn't give a crap about not being seen, they wanted people to come and fight them. Udet even had the cocky taunt, 'Du doch nicht!' painted on the tailplane of his aeroplane so that his enemies could read it during a dogfight! Then of course you have night skirmishes, where even a bright orange gun would probably be okay. In fact, I was using a two tone gun last night in a dark CQB, to no disadvantage at all.