Colonel Kurtz

Indeed not, that'd be manufacturing a RIF which is illegal unless you have a valid defence. On a completely unrelated topic, intending to use a RIF for airsoft is a valid defence and UKARA is only a way for retailers to verify this intent from the general public

I wouldn't sand paper unless you like the worn look or plan on respraying it. Powerspray will do the trick

I own both and would say Contour for airsoft, GoPro for extreme sports.

Yeah it's a new laylax one, I stumbled across it when ordering a replacement hopup for it from JP. Firesupport have the tan version in stock but hasnt seemed to have made it over here yet

FireSupport & Zero One are the best/most popular UK airsoft retailers. Both sell all the kit/bb's etc, just don't buy bulldog and the rest for sale on these sites will be ok. Don't get a sniper (yet, perhaps once you've played awhile, are more familiar with woodland skirmishes and can upgrade one to make it vaguely worthwhile, and seen them being used enough to decide if a few metres extra range and sitting in a bush is worth it (I and the majority of players think not, hence why woodland skirmish isn't just a sniper battle)) As for M4, I'd recommend either an ICS (starts with 'sportline' or plastic bodied versions) or G&G (starts with Combat Machine). FireSupport stock more ICS, Zero One stock more G&G. They're generally about £150-£300 and considered the best place to start, as it's an M4 so can upgrade/swap bits out all you like and they're good base to start from. I personally prefer ICS If you got money to burn, it'd still prob be best to get one of these M4 first and get a feel for the game and exactly what gun you like best, can always sell it when you're fully familiar with the huge range of airsoft guns on the market and their comparitive pro's and cons. No-one seems to end up using the same type of weapon they first bought let alone the gun itself, so best to wait before splashing serious cash. P.S. Have a look in the guides section of the forums, there's actually some well written new-starter guides in there.

Looks like the bit o plastic that should be attached to the end of the spring has come off and now you just got a bunch o bb's stuck inside a spring. Monty's guide should help you repair it, hopefully the plastic spring end bit is stuck in there somewhere and not fallen out and lost.

To me Milsim seems just another kind of live-action-role-play, featuring soldiers not wizards and elves. Lots prefer it as to them it feels like playing airsoft on 'hard-mode' (although to me it just seems more complicated, replacing action with objectives, the act of shooting someone is no harder), or people find the fantasy of being a soldier fills the gap of enjoyment in simply shooting each other playing standard airsoft skirmishing. I'm geeky enough to have friends playing various kinds of LARP, so don't look down on anyone simply for playing it. I do however find the common sense of airsofting superiority people assume from it (back to the sense of playing airsoft on hard-mode), and embittered ex-servicemen acting/treated like celebrities very very very amusing. Not my cup of tea, but no LARP is, i'm no more able to keep a straight face when being told a milsim scenario than i can being told which castle full of demons the wizard needs to get the ancient rune to.

Tokyo Marui High-cycle series

I was like a Warhammer 40k bad-boy as a kid, most my Dark Angel and Space Ork army was shop-lifted and I got banned from the Golden Demon Awards for underage drinking. Still got a set of original grey-knight terminators somewhere (the ones that were emperor's bodyguards or something), kept them as they were supposedly super-old/rare in the 90's, rest got an overnight dip in meth, paint pealed off and flogged. I think i can count on my hands the number of battles that I actually played and finished, play-time was usually over long before a clear victor was decided.

V2 gearbox so will be similar if not the same as an M4. Trigger units usually bit different depending on make/gun but general principal of covering full-auto section of contacts or a pin to stop the selector apply. For google-fu I'd recommend looking for guides/videos based on other VFC guns with V2 gearbox if nothing for the 417 specifically out there.

There's not much aftermarket hop-up available for G36. Most seem to either buy a TM one and bodge it in (if necessary depending on make, dunno about SRC), or but the aluminium 'cnc pro win' one (which is only the hopup case, needs the arm/dial etc from an exisitng unit (which SRC bits may not fit)

Do you mean a part of a stock like the plate on the end? What brand of L96 do you have?

Airsoft being Sunday means it aint too difficult for me. My missus works a lot of Sundays so I'm usually kicked out her house with cab-fair and a lemon-scented towelette at 7am regardless. And my friends are either sensible couples who reserve the day for chores etc, or single bums who won't be conscious and out and about until late afternoon/evening anyways. Gotta be hard to get a day pass if you're married with kids though.

Much more lone gunmen in airsoft than paintball. And much less stag-do's. If you try work with your team during games, you'll have something to chat about during the break, and most people will usually jump at the chance to explain what gun they've got and what 'upgrades' they gave it.

I had these symptoms once after some tinkering, for me it turned out i'd not hooked the piston nozzle on the plate properly. This meant that the nozzle wasn't extending as much as it should and a fair bit of air escaping rather than getting into the hop

One of the risks of buying anything 2nd hand is you don't know if it's stolen, or has any outstanding finance on it. And with airsoft there's the added risk of catching Paintball Transmitted Diseases if the BB was used in a HPA system. If anyone is concerned about the validity of any 2nd hand BB's purchased from Jedi Master or other fine eco-warrior retailers, please post a picture of your BB(s) and list their serial number(s) and we'll be happy to verify it for you. Note: (Serial number is written in magic ink on all BB's under UK(ara) law, and may not be visible/display correctly if you're a twat)

G&G & ICS are generally considered the best entry level manufacturers. A retailer called Firesupport has by far the best collection of ICS available, Zero One are better for G&G. Personally I rate ICS over G&G due to slightly better internals, but there's little in it. G&G has a larger range of M4 and more 'real-steel' equivalence, so generally more popular than ICS. Spending over £200 on a gun is probably best left until you've played airsoft for awhile, then you'll have a feel for what kinda one (M4, G36 etc) and style (CQB, woodland etc) you prefer.

Easiest option I can think of is to use a torch/scope mount attached to front underside of the gun, and perhaps modifying the end of the knife handle to fit if necessary. You'd need a bit of rail or a keymod scope/torch mount if such a thing exists tho looking at your gun. Well easiest is to tape it but yeh...

I am also hobbit-footed and found decent summer hiking shoes that fittest best in Decathlon, having tried a few sports shops.

For that ICS a 120 spring will get you close to DMR FPS limits. It's what they come with as standard in Spain and do about 400FPS. Add a tighter bore or longer barrel and you'll have another 20-30 fps and reached DMR limits. It's possible your ICS might even say it has a 120 spring in it on the box if it's come from europe, they swap them for UK but don't update the box/manual or anything. Most of the googled statistics list it as having a 120, so perhaps this is where you're getting the idea of a 140-170 from? It's also possible your ICS doesn't have a 3000 motor, but a 2000 instead as ICS have also swapped them as well as the springs at the requests of various UK retailers after they found it was too powerful for the lighter spring and creating issues.. I offer the above advice assuming you've got DMR skirmishing intent, rather than just making it as powerful as possible to kill cans in your garden. I considered a CXP16 for my first proper gun so did a fair bit of research on them, but then the TransforM4 came out and i got it instead.

Pretty much what people said above, new players discouraged from sniping because it usually doesn't live up to the common expectations of being a sniper (usually inherited from computer games/films). However, this response is given mostly because people don't mention their expectations, usually just 'wahts the bestest snipa' or similar. You however have clearly readup & thought about the realities and your expectations, so there's nothing to stop you. It's a game and you can take whatever fun out of it you choose How practical a sniper is often depends on the site, there might not be many spots where you can see the enemy but remain behind the front lines. Being a sniper can often take more running around to find good spots to shoot from, so something to bear in mind. I'd advise going to your local sites and hiring a standard AEG a few times first, just to get a feel for the place and see how the game scenarios are. if you think there's opportunity to sit back and snipe in the manner you'd like, whether you'll get enough action/shot opportunity to make it worthwhile. Only thing I'd advise against entirely is the ghillie suit. Unless you buy a proper one (basically just a net) and spend an hour before each game attaching bits of the native plant life to it. The commonly found 'ready made' suits are usually shiny plastic materials, and certainly not the same look as any uk woodland, so usually have the opposite effect and make you stand out more as one big continuous object that doesn't blend in to the background As for the AEG backup, as long as it's under the site FPS limits (usually 350), there's no MED for it, can blast someone from a meter away if you have to. I have a MK23, and would say it might not be very good for a backup. Its size means it's bit cumbersome to draw, and it having no blow-back/recoil means the trigger pull is a bit long. Essentially it's not a very good quick-draw weapon, but is very accurate and very quiet...

Doors open at 08:15, they have 20 walk-on slots, and I'm told they've only had them all used up a couple of times this year so not booking isn't a big risk (although open to sods law of course) I usually book and turn up about 08:40, which gives me enough time to get chrono'd (usually a 10-15 person queue for chrono by that time so takes about 15 minutes), and then still have enough time to sort my kit out before the safety brief

Yeah like to check the AKs to see if they got wood and the shit/paint kicked out of them

With the kit linked, pretty much the only things missing from it being a full gun are the gearbox and the hop-up section that the outer barrel connects to. Ares/Star used to make a kit that was much cheaper and just the stock but long gone. So I'd say if your JG one has a V3 gearbox, and it looks the same on google as a TM V3, then you're all good. I did it the other way around, i got a CA SL8, and then looked for a aftermarket front-end (bought a laylax one and found forum examples/pics of it being used on every manufacturer of G36, leading me to believe it's a quite interchangeable gun). CA SL8 is only about £200 so after courier and customs on a $150 kit it might be simpler to just buy one of those from UK, and it comes with fair few upgraded (from average CA) gearbox bits that'll trump any JG bit o crepe gearbox (i am jaded against JG). Hopefully you could mix and match between the two and end up with either 2 hybrids or 1 with a few options if you liked.

Is it just me who find that regardless of how much you can admire from the armchair, at a skirmish it's mostly just a blur of camo and carbine and nothing really grabs your attention? Perhaps I'm a RIF racist because in person they all just look the same to me. Or perhaps I'm only real-steel curious as I can enjoy looking at pics online, but when it comes to the day, i'm not that into it. Mostly it's just yawn M4/16 (i don't care what obscure variant you've made it), yawn SCAR, yawn MP5, yawn sniper (they all look the same, unless it's some kind of 50.cal, then your just hilarious). If it's none of the above then gets a 2nd glance to work it out. Seen a Halo gun and Pulse Rifle that grabbed the attention, but I've kept an eye out for them to see how cheap plastic they look in the flesh. An MG42, but that was mostly as it was being carried by a someone smaller than the gun and seemed a perfect beautiful cliche of 'little-man syndrome' My Thundermall usually gets a glance or two, and the occasional bit of spit.