Tommikka

Are you sure that they don’t know what they’re talking about ? The successful proposal put up by the ABA, UKARA & governing body which resulted in the skirmisher defence was an airsoft licence scheme: https://www.popularairsoft.com/news/ukasgb-ukara-aba-proposal-vcr-bill The Scheme would involve the following: The ABA would undertake to issue Player Licenses. This would result in recognized players. The UKASGB would undertake to register, monitor standards and regulate itsmember sites. The sites would either register with the police or the local authority. Not all sites are members of the UKASGB for varying reasons. However, we feelthat this should not preclude them from forming their own body and then applyingfor HO recognition. UKARA would undertake to register dedicated Airsoft retailers and provideguidelines and standards for their operation. We also propose that dedicatedAirsoft retailers be registered with the local constabulary so as to provide an audittrail that is transparent and clear for examination. It would appear that following the need of the complete UK airsoft community to get together to protect the game that only the UKARA still stands in line with the 2007 propositions (not surprising as this is the element that protects retailers from potential prosecution) As was flagged up recently when coming out of covid the initial reopening of airsoft sites fell through due to the lack of a Sport England governing body - which existed in 2007 with the UKASGB

The VCRA (plus additional elements by ‘statutory instrument’) define the defences. UKARA in itself is not a legally required defence, but it is a scheme under which your status as an ‘airsoft skirmisher at insured sites’ can be documented. The 3 games rule is not specified in the legislation, but it aligns with the proposed methodology by the airsoft business community’s lobby groups while the VCRA was a bill. It is the retailer / seller who could be committing an offence under the VCRA, and therefore the UKARA retailers association put into place a scheme based on the proposals at the time of the bill, is most importantly credible if a retailer has to go to court - and has a level of value to the airsoft sites that administer it. The UKARA database is a central register compiled from local site membership schemes, which without the VCRA would be a membership marketing method of encouraging repeat business VCRA defences: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/38/section/37 VCRAsection 37.2)Those purposes are— (a)the purposes of a museum or gallery; (b)the purposes of theatrical performances and of rehearsals for such performances; (c)the production of films (within the meaning of Part 1 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (c. 48)_see section 5B of that Act); (d)the production of television programmes (within the meaning of the Communications Act 2003 (c. 21)_see section 405(1) of that Act); (e)the organisation and holding of historical re-enactments organised and held by persons specified or described for the purposes of this section by regulations made by the Secretary of State; (f)the purposes of functions that a person has in his capacity as a person in the service of Her Majesty. Note that they include caveats to justify each Defence, b, c & d don’t include ‘making prank YouTube videos, or student films, e requires organisation of historical re-enactments rather than just deciding to dress up, and f has ‘in the capacity’ of their service. (Claims of needing a RIF to practice weapons handling get brought up every now and again - weapons handling has a defined meaning in armed services and includes full safety procedures, stripping etc - which don’t work with an AEG etc, plus if you are conducting practice drills or extra practice shooting then an IF would do and no VCRA Defence would be required) The airsoft Defence covers the purpose of ‘airsoft skirmishing’ and caveats the intent to skirmish at insured sites. Your shop that decided they will be happy to sell to you either has been convinced of your true intent, or just does not care about the unlikely risk of being taken to court and is happily selling to anyone whilst giving lip service to the defence. As a buyer anything that the seller will accept is good enough - but with another potential downfall (if anything made it to court) There is a shop that introduced the ‘cosplay Defence’, complete with partnering to a Comic-Con with links to their rules which forbade RIFs and therefore documenting a conspiracy to defraud involving the retailer, the Comic-Con and the buyer. (Cosplay is not a VCRA defence, however professional cosplayers that truely perform as opposed to turning up to a Comic-Con as a paying customer could qualify under theatrical - if they have appropriate insurance) Your shops response has more substance - they tell you that you have convinced them that your intent is to skirmish

‘Correct’ it may be, and perfectly valid to adopt as a team. But to get the random Joe Bloggs who happens to be at the next tree or corner to know what you mean then ‘first floor’ would work for the man off the street, the Signals scaley and the Infantry dealer of death, whereas ‘floor one’ could be interpreted as ground or first floor depending on experience & knowledge

Getting others to join in and do so is difficult, but not impossible. Calling out direction is likely to get you ignored But practice with your son, and then acting upon it can have an effect - those keen to do the same will join in, and then those who see some progress will tag along At a standard day just play as you wish and see if others tag along At a more organised event, even if not a MilSim etc check in with any assigned faction leader, tell them what / how you’re interested in playing - some people just want a shoot out, others an organised push and others a focused mission At one major event, the faction we would play for traditionally lost overall. One year the faction commander was a current US soldier posted over here. He had two core plans: Plan A - his wife co-oridinated a ‘command centre’ just inside the main entry point. She had players stood outside asking respawning players what they wanted to do, and with the aid of maps and the current state of play advised on the direction to go for a good shoot out or for a mission objective, and ‘organised’ teams would be on a cascade network of radio channels Plan B - If it started to go wrong he planned to play the Ride of the Valkyries on a bull horn and to walk around the game area. Any players within earshot would join the growing group and attempt to plough through Sadly Plan A worked and the game was won. I wanted to do plan B Keep it simple, and not necessarily to the book. On the more ‘extreme’ my buddy would try making Hollywood & documentary style calls and hand signals Those are fine if you regularly train together, are ex Army with similar experience (and doctrine generation) or are watching the same things, eg assigning colours to the front, back, left and right of a building enables consistency whichever direction you come from - but is meaningless to Fred & George who just turned up In a building for floors he would call one, two etc based on Hollywoods American first, second floor etc but in the UK it’s ground and first (sniper in window on one would have people looking up, and sniper in red one would mean nothing)

A compressed air HPA high pressure cylinder is designed to hold air up to either 3000psi or 4500psi The cylinders own regulator then ‘regulates’ the output pressing down to a manageable level in hundreds of PSI. (Take note of the two burst disks on the cylinders regulator that act like fuses with two pressure failure levels - the ‘high’ pressure end avoiding excessive overfilling from damaging the regulator and the ‘lower’ pressure end protecting your equipment from regulator failure Every time you shoot and release air the cylinders overall pressure drops, but the regulators keeps a fairly consistent output pressure until it drops down below your operating pressure CO2 acts differently and is stored in a liquid state, whilst changing to its gaseous state as it is released - depending on temperature this was equivalent to around 800 / 850 / 900 psi When paintball began to change from CO2 to HPA the regulators output at around 800 to 850 psi to match the expectations of CO2 guns As time went on the average cylinder regulator output on the market dropped to 600/650psi on the expectation that the gun had its own inline regulator to operate in the region of 200/250psi (a lower pressure let’s it operate consistently for longer as the source pressure drops)

Slightly Unless you’re managing DAS4 services in DES

They will be treating it as blind firing But I think that it’s a perfectly valid technique If you’re popping a shot ‘aimed’ at someone just around a corner, or my favorite is over an on top of a head then fair game Blindly gunning around corners would differ In paintball there’s a barrel designed precisely for this

3 days isn’t long I had an import recently which didn’t need any declarations, just charges It took 8 days for charges to be assessed. Then it waited for verification another 4 days for the charges to be confirmed and released to the regional depot I was monitoring the tracking daily and periodically calling the helpline for updates on the unlisted stages, and I went to the regional depot to pay & collect - my card telling me I needed to pay charges didn’t arrive until I was back home after the weekend It was held for 14 days to process the calculation of charges, and this had a well documented customs declaration on the package

Generally …. A declaration is required for all goods entering the UK It should be declared by the sender, but the responsibility for the declaration is the importer - and when we buy from overseas that is us At the point of arrival they must satisfy themselves that the contents are legal, that any requirements are met (permits, licences, VCRA defence etc), taxes and duties are paid etc There may or may not be a good enough declaration, they may or may not believe it, they may or may not pull aside random or targeted types of packages / places of origin, and they may or may not inspect contents If a declaration is sent out then your answers could just be ‘no’ (it’s not a gun, it’s not a RIF etc) or the odd ‘yes’ (it’s not a gun, it’s a RIF, here’s my defence) In my latest (mostly unrelated to declarations) import that I’ve just ordered for some custom items, just after I signed off the approved designs I then received an email from someone else in the UK (that I do know) The UK contact invoiced me from his UK company In a few weeks time I’ll find out if they have done that for : 1) direct delivery to me as an overseas supplier to a UK business direct delivering to a UK customer - therefore the customs declaration will detail UK VAT paid 2) they will deliver to him and he will forward to me - an overseas suppliers trade sale to a UK business for onward sale to a UK customer 3) they want to keep me sweet for future business avoiding me getting stung by customs and keeping me out of the loop of the point of import (They deliver to him, between them they deal with any issues, and he sends to me) There is a 4th He may be taking bulk deliveries or they meet up etc, and he deals with the UK distribution

It doesn’t mean something isn’t biodegradable, it just means a lack of awareness of what biodegrade is and the general use of the term to mean degradable If it requires light then it’s degradable but not biodegradable and is also unsuitable for the woods If it degrades underground, then once trodden in it will eventually degrade Depending on the fine print and to what standards it’s defined deems how suitable it is for a site If micro plastics are left then strictly speaking it should not be called biodegradable in the UK (I’m unsure if that’s in the legal parts of the standards or just a ‘should’ In that case any ‘biodegradable’ BB is better left as plastic in the ground then just plastic which could expose micro plastics into the environment Or of course play paintball and leave food grade gels in the woods instead

They ought to send you declaration forms that need to be completed, but the original post still has the 2022 PDF declaration linked amongst the text

Just reiterating others “Crazy money” and “value for money” are entirely contextual and very personal We have hobbies that involve playing games funded from our disposable income (ideally, otherwise that does become crazy money, or in the words of the wise Mr Micawber is the difference between happiness and misery) Airsoft does not need to cost much money, you just need some fairly inexpensive basics and some consumables, but there are those that spend high amounts on cosmetic looks, tiny little tweaks or both. Last night in a team chat, I was informed that “Those are expensive, dude” 1) He’s younger than me, and should have stopped saying dude last century 2) No shit Sherlock, and he doesn’t know the full expense I went to on the whole lot - but they are functional and will both contribute to ergonomics and potentially annoy ‘purists’. Money well spent to me, properly ‘crazy money’ to others

Maybe ….. Salisbury, but Basingstoke was also useful for a Salisbury - Andover - Basingstoke - London trip

VAT will be due on anything imported. If the overseas retailer has registered with HMRC and the order total is below £135 then you pay them at the point of sale, they declare on the customs form and they pay HMRC periodically https://www.gov.uk/goods-sent-from-abroad/tax-and-duty If it is worth over £135, or they have not registered for UK VAT then you are liable at the point of entry, and an additional handling charge will be made Import duty etc is seperate and depends on the item category Expect to be charged an extra 20% plus a handling fee and to allow extra time - the time can be frustrating I imported an item recently which I needed by November, but would have been useful by the end of August Ordered on 4th August Arrived in the UK on 8th August and sat awaiting customs clearance until 22nd. (It in fact spent the last week with a provisional VAT calculation pending sign off) Released from customs on the night of the 22nd and at the Basingstoke depot on the morning of the 23rd I paid and collected in person on the 24th on the way to my weekend and it was used on field on the 25th The declared value was $294.70 and I also paid $99 international postage VAT assessed as £45.73 (20% of £228.65) Parcel force fee of £12

It’s what you do with it that counts However at the start of the day in the safe zone other players can only judge your barrel length. They don’t know what practice you have put in to hone your skills with it

It will depend on the site, and also their insurance You would need to approach some sites ask and show them For unusual items it may be a matter of providing them as site effects

I could have been at DSEI this week, but have been doing other work things and not been able to dedicate a day out. It would have been interesting, particularly that Future Soldier stand - Future Soldier covers many things, and in my current role the context is at very high level on the structuring of the Army, but a few years back I was involved in a few projects under the Future Soldier programme and I did get to go out on the Plain to get a hands on understanding of the equipment, needs and experience of those out on the ground (AKA play with the cool toys) with current equipment, future and potential future equipment. A good one I once saw was two side by side displays - integrated future soldier with all the fancy equipment like the guy photographed above, under development and trials to military specifications but next to ‘eBay soldier’ equipped with off the shelf gadgets - highlighting that the vision of the high tech soldier of tomorrow was what ‘todays soldier’ was at that time encountering with the opposition in Afghanistan etc As @The_Lord_Ponchopoints out all these come as added weight (plus other issues*) Project Payne is frustrating for those involved. Every time the load is lightened, or redistributed the result tends to be that more gets carried and if in doubt the extra thing carried is ammunition Project Payne is named after a soldier at Normandy who had been photographed to illustrate the equipment carried by infantry in June 1944, and is used to illustrate customisable load carrying that is suitable for the task and minimising carrying just in case. Another example highlighted in Payne was Long Tan where the Australians on patrol found themselves in action for hours but didn’t run out of ammunition, despite opting to go out with only the standard load * For example quick release body armour /webbing - Make a vehicle more survivable over an IED/mine and then you get live soldiers trapped in an upside down or submerged vehicle, or body armour that protects you from being shot but slows you down making it more likely that you get shot

Strictly speaking they were always illegal in Russia anyway, which is one of the reasons why they only opened an office in Russia last November But laws don’t count in Russia if your Putins mate and / or pay him off. …. and of course Wagner never were mercenaries, they have always been a deniable part of the Russian army

My experience is similar

There is a bit of real life physics to the ‘history’ of binary triggers (I’m not going to remember the proper science as I’m an old man now, so the following is vagueness, and any language may not be technically correct) There are real life guns that by design did / do have a physical binary trigger There is also trigger ‘bounce’ where some manual triggers will fail to stop the return, which could be poorly adjusted (deliberately or not) and the trigger sear hasn’t aligned in time to stop the cycle, could have a worn sear or the ‘load’ doesn’t have enough pressure to fully cycle (which can trigger multiple shots or replicate full auto If you’ve ever used/seen a Tippmann at a paintball rental site and the site staff have not fully refilled the Co2/air then you may have experienced ‘burping’ as the pressure drops and it can’t fully cycle to stop on the sear When there’s an electronic trigger then various ‘modes’ may get added, either as formal modes or by tweaking a few variables in the settings These would include semi (keep shooting whilst pulling), full auto (keep shooting whilst held), bursts and bounce (multiple shots per pull) A ramping mode may be added which would be semi auto until you sustained a number of shots and then replicate full auto as long as you pull within a time limit In paintball you would sometimes see guns released with an US/international circuit board and a UK board. The US board would have all modes, UK would exclude full auto If you / your supplier grey imported, (or you preordered and received yours from the first limited runs) you may find the board was US which may or may not have helpfully had a red / green LED fitted to highlight that difference This then brought the question of legality of more than one shot per pull Then turn up to a UK event and only be allowed to use semi, perhaps ‘accidentally’ with bounce for a binary effect ROF kept increasing until everyone set rules, then you may end up with electronics to be required to run on ‘modes’ capped to 10.5bps / semi capped (if settings allow) / semi uncapped for mechanicals or boards that don’t support caps If you had any finger skills then just use a mechanical, fit a double trigger and ‘walk’ your fingers. With practice you could shoot a greater ROF than any of the capped modes ……… My issue with full auto is the safety situation, that if you get caught in a bush then it will keep firing, but other modes capable of replicating full auto need you to keep moving the trigger so have less of a safety issue (of the trigger - not necessarily the person pulling it) …….. I would support a site using whatever modes that they choose, provided it’s legal, they think of the safety, and it’s suitable for the site / types of players If we are grown ups then we accept being shot and that there may be more BBs following once you put your hand up - that’s fine if the shooter then stops. If it’s a mixed crowd of regulars / rentals / newbies then it’s dickish to be hammering out streams …….. It is less of a matter about the type of gun/trigger but more a case of who is pulling the trigger

UK legal blank voters have the barrel blocked to ensure that they cannot be converted to fire projectiles from live rounds and also to ensure that the vented gas does not go forwards Blank firers do vent their gas

Here’s a drift, which I’ll deliberately make to target those of you who are professionals in this area —— because you might have the ability to redirect out of date elements, and could help with training materials ……. (Of course he’s also taking donations to build the main kits) A fellow by the name of witzy has been doing a number of things to support Ukraine, and is currently putting together IFAK kits for combatants etc He is both a paintballer and airsofter, as player and organiser If you do Facebook the following videos should come up, if anyone is able to help with expired surpluses he can me messaged directly on his profile https://www.facebook.com/stephen.witts.5 https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02a3r4waeUthKGP8s9QnbeK43XEEqHDECNJT2gDnamejLjns95DMUQxeUBtN78ZNX8l&id=1169423901 https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0zEekY57jEGhFaa5a83FG6q7nNzbFCNqTY17qjaHASoVX57gsFyKHtGVKCLbShS1hl&id=1169423901 Even if not, his run through of the contents give some of the uses of the elements of a ‘more serious’ first aid kit For our kinds of use leave out what you don’t know what to do with and add the ‘lesser’ basics of plasters, liquid plasters, tape, creams, pills appropriate to you such as allergy, aches & pains etc Hopefully as a player we just need something to stop a scratch, graze, cut, pyro burn from ending the day, and be able to ease something worse until others turn up

@Vryko I’ll upgrade this answer to refer to other paintball type goggles than Dye. Dye has had great marketing success, and are also compact designs - especially the i4. All goggles can differ considerably for different heads, if you have a small enough head with the right proportions then Dyes can be perfect, if you have a large head or chin then not so. (Which can also be an attraction in airsoft but not so much if it’s your teeth getting shot) The i3, i4 & i5 are all what I would describe as premium goggles with equivalent features in other ranges of premium goggles My preferred goggles are GI / VForce grills, and they have been designed around glasses with slits in the foam plus space in the eye area If possible get to one of the few retail shops attached to paintball / airsoft warehouses and try some on with your glasses An alternative idea is to then take your preferred goggles to an opticians and try them with different frames Prescription inserts for goggles could be the best compromise as they remove the frame / temples which avoids the awkward process of putting them all on and taking them off

There was an incident a few years back where an argument took place over a player who had sneakily got behind enemy lines. This ended with a player being booted in the chest, and that quickly broadcast across the community. The reason for the use of their boot followed more slowly - a knife had been drawn

I think @Cr0-Magnons post with just 2 points makes it very clear that the site has management issues