Tommikka

….: and some of mine In the order of dead, nearly dead and their baby Dead had a final of 2019/09 Nearly dead has a final of 2025/01 but is out of test so I’ve sacrificed it as not worth testing for the number of games planned Their new baby awaits a new regulator (I was half considering a regulator transplantation but have opted for brand new giving me the benefit of fresh lightweight, customisable output, and peace of mind that burst disks won’t be giving up the goat)

That does look similar-ish to a 5/8” DIN fitting, but DIN fill rigs don’t have that nipple. A word with your supplier is the best option

This sort of thing is used as a fill rig for scuba to paintball / airsoft cylinders https://www.bzpaintball.co.uk/hk-army-a-clamp-yolk-fill-station-blue It does of course depend on what type of fitting you have on your nitrogen cylinders. If you come from a regulated output then your maximum fill will be the maximum you can get. That may be fine for testing provided you can draw off more than your airsoft output pressure requirement , but to get the most from your cylinder you need 3000psi / 232bar As you have a 300bar cylinder that’s 4500psi, which means you should regulate your fill rig to 3000psi, but provided you slow fill and watch the gauges it’s viable to fill into 3000psi from a 4500psi source (it is of course best practice to regulate at the appropriate level) This uses a site type fill station but the principles are the same. If filling from low or empty then fill a little, stop and pause, fill a little more and repeat. That ensures it’s nice and slow and reduces heat generation If you fast fill from empty then not only are you increasing the risk of overfilling but gas expands when hot - when it cools the pressure will drop which means a fast hot fill ends up with less of a fill

That’s good for HPA and / or nitrogen Yep. The optimum is to fill on site with a ‘proper’ high pressure, filtered & maintained compressor which runs into the thousands of £ Cheaper compressors are available now (not workshop ones) can do the job these days without killing you, there are also Your plan to use existing nitrogen facilities is a fair one Viable alternatives for those who need their own fill system are typically a scuba cylinder rig or a ‘shoebox compressor’ which takes input from a workshop type compressor then boosts up to 3000psi etc - but that is slow & noisy A compromise is a high pressure stirrup pump - relatively cheap (ensure a filter is added) but takes time and effort Your existing nitrogen is a good call, clean & convenient

Just to be sure as you mentioned CO2…… You are using an actual HPA cylinder aren’t you as opposed to a CO2 cylinder ? HPA cylinders are topped off with a regulator assembly incorporating burst discs, pressure gauge, fill nipple and output valve. Whereas CO2 cylinders have a combined input/output valve with potentially an on/off. Assuming it is HPA then nitrogen will be fine, it’s cleaner than air (of which nitrogen makes up the majority) Back in the day as paintball (mostly) migrated from CO2 to compressed air nitrogen was often used instead from bulk cylinders until sites invested in HPA compressors.

Another tip with public transport is to think twice about your choice of bags. A gun bag is designed well for the purpose, but looks like a gun bag Consider other options, eg a sports bag or hold-all rather than a dedicated gun bag, or alternatively an outer bag - I have a snowboard bag that I used to use with gun bags inside it, that was more for the convenience of storing and carrying two or three gun bags at once from the back of the car onto the site but it also anonymises the contents (It would have been useful on the day that my car was parked on one side of motorway services and we had traveled on as a group getting dropped off on the other side. My team mate passenger was not so good at luggage and had also bought another gun with no bag or case - We had to make multiple trips due to the amount of gear, wrapped his in dirty playing clothes, met coach loads of pedestrians on the bridge in the opposite direction and as I had parked in a distant quiet part of the car park the motorway police had decided to meet up for their coffee and donuts next to my car - a big anonymous bag with lots of spare space would have been useful ———— Regarding spare clothes consider them for multiple purposes: You can avoid looking like a gun nut on public transport A clean set of clothes feels so good after a days play Depending on venue, weather and your style of play - if you have extra carrying capacity some spare playing clothes can let you be dry, clean and comfortable especially if the site breaks for lunch - it’s then that you cool down and feel grotty after crawling through mud earlier on. Fresh playing clothes reinvigorates you

Yes you can The VCRA covers the sale, import and manufacture Possession is fine, but transport it appropriately

It was really a self depreciating dig at myself as resident paintballer for 10 years Never played a game of airsoft myself, ran a few, and owned the precursor soft air gun kits back in the 80s (I did recently bite the bullet and bin my original M4 kit in a sad pile of parts that I pulled out of a cupboard)

At least ‘survival’ shows specially select applicants for such skills as sleeping in the sun and making some entertainment Meet David Lakota, ex US special forces* and the joy of his Doomsday preppers appearance. As he lives in Hawaii he has a plan to get to safety in the event of a tsunami, he has skills, he won’t just take the obvious route heading to the high ground ….. * Some people think that the film ‘the men who stare at goats’ was a fictional comedy film. David is from a later generation of the real unit - and due to our team name invited us to join his “New earth army” - we politely declined I did end up eventually blocking him, but I miss our conversations https://ejmas.com/jnc/jncart_channon_0200.htm

Duration of membership doesn’t mean anything …….. some may have been on this forum for about a decade without playing a single game of Airsoft

Yes I do most things on mobile, the computer in my pocket blows away most of those that I learned my old man skills on, and I’ve got finger skills for an old man What you’ve described as a building block is rolling back to a much more dated structure, if you have resources and ability then starting from scratch works and could make you the next social media giant, but using tools to build works much better (you’ve already pointed out that you’ve started off with a web builder, so you could just as well start from a social builder such as a forum environment - these are available as commercial off the shelf and open/community source environments The look and feel isn’t set in stone, and the functions can be made as visible or as deeply hidden as system owners desire - and if it doesn’t work as desired there’s a programmer out there somewhere that will code it in

A people based focus of forums…… click on a name to get the individuals forum home, track their content, privately or publicly interact with them: https://airsoft-forums.uk/profile/12141-tommikka/ Click my name and you can post on my personal page or message me privately, or jump in at the forum home and the member list https://airsoft-forums.uk/profile/12141-tommikka/ Hit @ and get a drop down to tag me in a response on thread without needing to quote @Bo B Why not a world map? Why not teams / clubs as well as sites? https://airsoft-forums.uk/clubs/ Not enabled on this forum currently (as far as I know) but calendars & events are a function of Invisioncommunity in which this forum has been built https://invisioncommunity.com/features/calendar/

In theory yes They would document a history of, and imply an intention to “skirmish at an insured site” But that’s up to Border Force, and especially the individuals of Border Force/ the carrier that handle passing through customs - whether that’s in luggage or by container. The relevant import documents would declare contents and relevant justifications eg - declaring a RIF as UK legal, with a VCRA defence (skirmishing), but due to circumstances without UKARA - which is not a legal requirement but the most recognised defence Possession is perfectly fine with an expired UKARA (or even without ever having UKARA) Your ‘problem’ is the confidence of documenting/justifying the import part of VCRA which has the same defence on intent to skirmish at an insured site (Something none of us has commented on, is if you have any accessories that may have arms export/import restrictions - these can flag on the most obscure point)

For my activities I use: forums public Facebook pages/groups restricted membership Facebook pages/groups My personal facebook My team/group public facing Facebook pages/groups Private pre set & event specific Facebook/pages/groups/chats YouTube and/or public facing Facebook galleries OneDrive and/or google hosting Accommodation apps Navigation / geo visual apps Calendar scheduling Personal / business / team banking Payment processing Event ticket host services I have gone into overkill there, especially with accommodation, travel etc and niche areas on co-ordinating a team or event ……. But the honest question(s) is/are: what are these key features? why aren’t they available from existing social media ? (by potentially turning on optional social media features that have existed for over 60 years), why do they need to be in one point of failure? (last weeks CrowdStrike update final outage)

A two parter: With Toms rough history of forums & social media, then my key questions Fairly abridged history of social media/forums: Newsgroups / bulletin boards, chat rooms, conferencing systems Accessed by exlusive dial up or network/internet These evolved into internet forums Social media is sometimes considered a 'modern' thing with Facebook, X/Twitter etc - there have been many along the way GeoCities, MySpace etc which came and went sometimes generational (of the user) and sometimes corporate/technolgy change - mostly generational and corporate But the functionality of social media was around long before BBSs and the internet, in (or before) the 60s within university & governemnt local(-ish) networks - which became connected giving birth ARPANET and subsequently to the internet In their heyday forums were the place for 'enthusiasts' of a subject. In the paintball context there were a handful of 'international' and 'national' forums (primarily US ones could have an international section), and the'enthusiasts' would tend to be a member of an 'overarching paintball' forum plus a 'specific' flavour of forum such as WalkOnZone, UKScenario, P8ntballer (mostly tournament themed) Sites/event organisers probably had a website, which may or may not get updated. Facebook pages, became more useful than push based websites, and with the ability for the site to run rather than rely on a web geek (often free 'volunteer' from the marshalling team) to update their pages. The forums would have regional/team/event sections / thrreads. Facebook 'group' and 'page' functions allowed for the more specific interested parties to focus on a topic. e.g. a sites walkon group, or an events faction groups etc. Then rather than have a forum opener & overview leading to specific conversations / date scheduling some would move fully away from the forum. Cliques occured, e.g. Fred didn't like the Bert forum discussion/classifieds rules, so Fred took all his friends to the new Bert Facebook group. Dodgy Dave got caught on all the forums for all his scam sales, so created his own Facebook sales groups, scamming the new blood & blocking those warning about Daves scams before that group died and created a new one The handful of forum flavours with sub-categories also moved into nieche Facebook groups, fragmenting away and also into cliques (I can instantly name two MagFed paintball cliques and then cliques within cliques) The 'groups' fractured, and the 'current' nature of Facebook etc loses information into history, with constant repetition and opinion easily disguised as fact. Facebook groups tried to set rules, and if enforced would result in further splintering, then Facebook set rules which resulted in secret languages which have the potential of suddenly killing off an entire Facebook group when the wrong word flags up. Somme users returned to forums - but for about a week whilst spamming threads with one line comments to gain calssifieds privileges to be followed by disappearing when they make their sale/purchase or a moderator resets their spam posts. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ This then brings us to your problem statements: (1) The community is fractured and (2) social media is applying its rules. The answer to number 2 is easy, return to the forums. What are the elements that forums don't work for? Why is there a need for a new 'social media website' , which would just fracture the community even more, and how would anyone find it? (And how will hosting be provided for all the functionally / be paid for *) (a forum is a social media website - an online discussion site with extra functionality - as above, social meadia features have been around for longer than the internet) * the last UK paintball forum closed three weeks ago, I was a moderator and am still a moderator on the related Facebook page (which was a front end in for messaging in case of failure) That forum has always been owned by a particular ‘character/face’ of paintball with a funding stream from retailer advertising - I know nothing more about the closure, it just went down and parked on a holding page. The domain is now (potentially) available to buy, with the domain registrar accepting bids

On the basis of ‘skirmishing at an insured site’ - technically yes Between the lines on the intent of ‘realistic look for immersive skirmishing’ then one booking doesn’t prove anything - you could be going on a stag do where bright orange site supplied IFs do the job (hence the VCRbill consultation proposed time window and UKARA time window) With the ‘actual’ defence being intent to skirmish it really comes down to ‘can you convince the person you’re trying to convince’? —- and that will vary On a semi related note, when crossing a border anyone may have to convince immigration on intent, eg as a tourist by having accommodation booked, a return ticket and enough funds to last that period of time - and anyone could be sent back on the next flight out if they aren’t convinced

What would make me a good bets tester? Attention to detail

Your reason for importing would be for the purpose of Airsoft skirmishing, therefore under VCRA terms you would be within the law But without UKARA - and obviously without the ability to play until you get here - you won’t have the common documentation method that they would use to validate ….. now is the time for one of the previous travellers to post up their experiences - these are fairly common questions about bringing RIFs across borders but the final experience rarely gets fed back

When was this ? An official Army campaign or something knocked together with a stock photo beside it? Just to be sure though - was it a Marine commando flash or a commando flash? There are Army qualified commandos who wear the Army commando flash (Note that Army commandos precede the Royal Marine commandos) You’re not thinking of the time that the Marines bought the adverising slot in the middle of an Army fly on the wall documentary?

…… and an uncropped version Shame that most of you won’t be able to see the full RUSI content (which the article references), some extracts will get uploaded on YouTube, the more interesting points happen with live mics during breaks ….. https://youtube.com/@rusiorg?si=hB2hJOuxpT3SC8jl ….. If any of you do have access to yesterdays full 7 hour stream then replay between 3:59:20 and 4:00:10 stream

My world is paintball, both as player and organiser, and my airsoft experience is as an organiser but alongside those experienced in airsoft. So I have always left the airsoft rules and knowledge of airsoft tricks to others Lots of chronos is a real benefit ( but also being aware that different models and even individual chronos can give different results) Back when I began playing scenario events they would be run by a local team at a local site, you would have approx 100 players getting chrono checked at one ‘big red’ chrono. After my first scenario game I bought my own handheld (little yellow radarchron), https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sports-Sensors-Hand-Radar-Chronograph/dp/B001AI0NE4 later upgrading to the grey (x-radar) https://www.justpaintball.co.uk/products/x-radr-chronograph-and-bps-counter and subsequently moving onto a team virtue clock https://www.bzpaintball.co.uk/virtue-clock-iii-chrono-black We partner with sites for our events so would make use of site staff and site chronos, but the Clock was a real bonus for in game quick checks, and as part of event organiser collaboration many of us will lend out chronos to each other I wouldn’t add someone going down the queue with a chrono, as that person could be at the front of the queue doing official chrono checks But I would allow for any spare chronos to be on tables available for people to check and adjust Even better is to minimise the chances of having a queue by opening chrono checks as early as possible so people are checking and getting tagged instead of just socialising then suddenly generating a queue I’d want a minimum of 3 shots, but not averaging - taking the maximum If one was over then making a judgement call - eg a couple more shots to check the rest are below. But if the first shot is excessive followed by lower velocities then the gun might have a first shot peak which is hot, so we want that reduced I prefer scenario games, generally the woods but especially interesting places Back in the day the rules would vary between events even between two standard woods games. Some players would want to crank up to the maximum per event, I’d generally be happy that it’s within the limit and goes in the general direction I’m pointing, so if it was 10fps below I’d be happy rather than tweaking for the extra fps and a couple of inches of range I’ve played a couple of competitive tournaments, so then would pre check to as close as I could consistently get to maximum. At the first round on the way in I was chronoed over (If I recall correctly that was one of the shots, which could have been a rogue shot or an inconsistency between practice chrono and Marshal chrono) - and informed that my gun was banned for the day. This was resolved by reaching out of the net for the spare (ready for that exact reason) and using that for the rest of the day It all depends, there are many factors that impact on consistency. A well tuned gun rather than just buying lots of ‘upgrades’ will aid consistency Small balls bouncing around a wide bore will be less consistent than a good fit / small cushion of air Gas powered guns in changeable weather will vary, or at least change velocity from a cold morning to a sunny afternoon These are dependant on rules, and in airsoft it’s more likely that there will be rules for weapon/role classes such as sniper, general player, single shot etc

Here are a couple of videos giving examples of a sites arrival talkthrough and a chrono check example The latter is paintball but the general process is the same Every site and event will have their own processes and rules Airsoft booking in, chrono etc talk through https://youtu.be/Ab9Z8_YW3OM?feature=shared Paintball chorno check https://youtu.be/zyZabatE9ME?si=OibofheXng5P1VvA

This is a nice simple solution, it requires a staffed station at the entrance (which is fairly easy at the start of a game, but less so during a game as this removes a potential Marshall from being on the field) Its nice and simple as it means the gun going onto the field has been checked (provided they also notice holstered pistols etc) But players must be turned away for failures, then you end up with delays due to players needing to adjust …. If they attempt to adjust at the point of chrono then the queue is held up, if they go away and come back they might still need to adjust down or have gone down too far and want to adjust back up Ideally you have official observed chronos and spare chronos for adjusting and for before queuing to the official check ……….. Pre game chrono involves opening up the chrono area at a set time, perhaps just chronos on tables as early as possible followed by official checks from specified times …… Official approved checks need to be marked. One way is to hand out arm bands/arm tape during chrono - which works if it is one gun per person, but what about those with pistols or an armoury brought for the day? Or what about teams that bring out a handful of guns to chrono for the others ? (((( Or what about a faction leader who cannot get a single gun to chronograph today but needs an armband to get onto the game field ???? That happened to me, leading the first game with grenades and subsequent games with dual pistols once team mates sorted them for me)))) Tagging the gun deals with that, such as a zip tie, electrical tape etc (Or tag gun and tag the player) In an ideal world tag guns through a tournament lock to prevent adjustment, but in reality it’s probably tape around the barrel or zip tie on a trigger guard Supplement pre game chronos with in game random (and targeted) marshal chrono checks using handhelds

Every site should be chronographing Anywhere that isn’t projects a giant red flag about their ability to run a business or game