[Macks airsoft dreamers of the week thread]

1 hour ago, E21A said:

it’s a lot more than £20 though, I paid £35 total for 3 including delivery From coronavirusland 

 

And all you had to do to save the cash was undercut the actual inventor and stifle innovation. Bargain! Those clones are the reason that we never got factory-supported magazine adaptors and it took 5 years and counting for new models to come to market.

 

If they'll continue to prioritise the cheapest possible product at the expense of innovation and quality, airsofters really have no-one but themselves to blame when they get sold shitty, obsolete products that don't work properly out of the box or break shortly thereafter. It's not a coincidence that in 1995 a mobile phone looked like this and in 2020 looks like this, but a 2020 M4 AEG gearbox looks exactly the same as a 1995 one. It's not a coincidence that local airsoft retailers are going out of business (especially in the States) because people would rather save a paltry amount of money than support any actual customer service. It's not a coincidence that Magpul withdrew from their partnership with PTS in disgust and as a result we can't get PDR-Cs or FPGs any more. There is a direct link between people forcing manufacturers into a race to the bargain basement and manufacturers not having any incentive to make innovative products.

The "I would never pay £x for x, so they haven’t lost a sale by me purchasing a rip-off" argument sucked when it applied to pirating music, films and videogames and it sucks here. People buying it is the reason it’s produced. The entitlement of "I want it, but I don’t want to pay for it" is frustrating. It apparently cost TM $1m in 2008 dollars to develop the NGRS system; how are they supposed to recoup the first significant investment in AEG design since they invented the AEG if consumers set an arbitrary limit of "no more than twice the cost of a bargain basement clone of your old gun"?

 

It’s especially irritating with straight clones like the M12 because the clone literally doesn’t do even one single thing better than the original, except be cheap and poorly made. Even CYMA have improved over TM in important ways like having metal receivers. I fully support and will buy things that obviously borrow heavily from an existing design if it’s improved - I’ll happily buy an VFC, because even though it’s mostly a TM clone they’ve massively improved it by making it steel and wood rather than plastic and plastic.

 

This is all far from unique to the Sidewinder, it’s just especially annoying because it’s not the property of some huge faceless corporation. It’s literally one guy who designed an amazing product, put in a truly astonishing amount of his own money and time developing it, getting it manufactured, dealing it to distributors etc., and all so it could get ripped off and sold for profit by massive companies inside six months. At this stage it’s hard to tell if we deserve innovation.

 

Anyway, apologies for dragging the thread off topic.

[Macks airsoft dreamers of the week thread]

9 minutes ago, Rogerborg said:

I have a tan knock-off.

 

Shame. Odin is a one-man band developing awesome, innovative products. He quit airsoft product development for about five years after people took his brilliant design and immediately cloned it so cheapskates could save themselves £20. I have absolutely no doubt that this sort of thing contributes to the generally stagnant nature of airsoft technology.

 

5 minutes ago, SgtTalbert said:

If its tan its fake as per above.

 

Really? I wouldn't have thought iWholesales would sell fakes, but I've been wrong before. They're certainly priced like the real thing.

[Macks airsoft dreamers of the week thread]

4 hours ago, AlphaBear said:

Why are used TM recoils so expensive... more so the HK variants? For example a used Delta say 1 one year old which has had say 40 mags through it with a mozzie still commands around £500'ish. I mean the gun is new for around £565 and granted a mozzie could set you back £120 -150 if you go for a titan advanced that is.... What gives?

 

I mean £565 plus £100-160 equals £665-725, and £500 is 75% of £665 and 69% of £725. 70-75% of RRP for a gun with less than one bottle of BBs through it isn't even all that high, although I would probably expect to receive more like 65-70% simply based on how much returns diminish after £400.

 

I think you might also be forgetting to factor in the high cost of quality accessories which are usually included with NGRS packages. Taking this Delta as an example:

• Gun ~£550
• Grip ~£20
• Magazines ~£25ea.
• ODIN M12 Sidewinder ~£50 (assuming it's genuine, and I'm not sure there are tan fakes)
• IMAX B6 ~£35
• Four batteries ~£50

That's £880, of which the £500 asking price is 57%. If he split the magazines, speedloader and charger off as separate items he'd be asking the equivalent of £341 for the gun and the batteries, which I would describe as "acutely reasonable".

[Silverback SRS Thread]

13 hours ago, Steveocee said:

Super interested to know how that performs for you.

Waiting on a regulator and other CO2 components, but hopefully I’ll start to have answers early next year. I’ll update the thread when I do.

 

12 hours ago, Immortal said:

Trying to pick a new scope without selling a Kidney.

They’re not really intended to be a sniper’s scope, but I’ve found G&P’s ACOGs to have very superior glass compared to other airsoft-grade sights. I’ve had a couple of clone Leupold 3.5-10x40 Mk.IVs and compared to those my old G&P 4x32 really was extremely nice.

 

4x is really all you’ll need in airsoft (you'll miss faffing with adjustable magnification and focus a lot less than you think you will), you don't get the fish-eye that seems endemic to airsoft-grade adjustable-magnification scopes, and the sight is extremely compact and basically indestructible. They're heavy and the eye relief is unforgiving, but they’re really good optically. I replaced my G&P with a real TA01NSN, and while the Trijicon is a lot nicer and has things the G&P didn't (like tritium illumination) the G&P was excellent and entirely adequate for airsoft.

 

G&P make a few different models; I had GP-035 - pretty much the most basic one. £85 for the sight, plus £7.50 for a polycarbonate lens and £7.50 for a killflash to put the lens in gives you an extremely rugged and high-quality BB-proofed optic for £100 - not bad. If I recall correctly a VisionKing shortdot is about £60 plus the mount and a lens protector, so there's probably only £20ish in it.

 

If you want to see how the ACOG looks on the shortest possible SRS, let me know - I can get a picture of mine.

[Silverback SRS Thread]

On 16/12/2019 at 09:02, Steveocee said:

I've managed to find a company in Japan doing PDI barrels for about half the UK RRP of them so once I've done homework to make sure they are R-Hopable or at least compatible with good rubbers I'll be ordering one.

I have a PDI in my Fast Hop G-Spec with the FOW nub and drop-in R-hop patch. I’ve barely had a chance to try it but it does all fit together.

[TM Mk46 Mod.0]

Mach Sakai's video is worth a watch with the auto-translated subtitles on, (a) because of hilarious mistranslations and (b) because you get to see just how well-thought out the gun seems to be.

 

 

I still wouldn't buy one, but it looks like a very nice piece of kit.

[Gun picture thread]

On 10/12/2019 at 17:54, RossF said:

I think maybe the haphestus one had horrible seam lines on the body and was ridiculously hot out of the box or something. 

 

IIRC for some reason the Hephaestus (really expensive) was based on the S&T (cheap and really nasty) Tavor bodyshell rather than the Ares (really nice), even though the two were functionally identical since S&T are basically the bargain-basement offshoot of Ares. I always thought it was weird that it was that way around - maybe Ares refused to sell them just the furniture and they didn't feel like paying for a $400 gun just to throw three quarters of it away.

[TM Mk46 Mod.0]

5 hours ago, clumpyedge said:

Who the hell fires 10,000 daily?

 

Americans, apparently. aardrummer's "Support Gunner's Bible" (if you can find it anywhere, it's been years since I've seen it online) goes into eye-watering detail about what's required to keep up very high volumes of fire for long periods of time. A lot of the things Recoil Shocks have - zinc gears, plastic pistons, plastic bushings - are just not suitable for that kind of abuse. Your G&P likely shipped with steel gears, a part-steel piston and steel bushings or bearings (it varied between production runs), and even with those the V2 gearbox was still considered very inferior to the CA-style M249-specific 'box for heavy-duty use.

 

5 hours ago, clumpyedge said:

you don't have to upgrade/replace anything until it wears or breaks.

 

This just doesn't hold up.

1. TM make mistakes just like everybody else, and there are guns that come out of the box either already malfunctioning or doomed to do so very shortly. Non-G-Spec VSR-10s were (are?) notorious for hooking right, Mk.23 magazines bleed gas and Five-seveN catches erode every time you put a magazine in. There absolutely are NGRS that arrived fatally flawed: AK-74MNs were so chronically unreliable Marui literally stopped making them for several years.
2. There are a number of TM guns where "just wait until it breaks" is bad advice. Preventative work will significantly extend the life of Glocks (epoxy pot the front frame post, otherwise get ready to buy a new frame), Five-seveNs (secure the hop-up unit or it will destroy the outer barrel, secure the BBU or it will destroy the slide) and other models besides. This absolutely does apply to NGRS: just by way of example, if you don't loctite (or preferably replace) the castle nut on AR-pattern Recoil Shocks they can work free and then eat the buffer tube threads.
3. Saying you don't have to upgrade or replace until something breaks is true but also totally meaningless; on that basis literally anything from anyone that fires out of the box is good to go until it isn't. Yes, a gun will continue to function until one of those things happens, but that doesn't mean it's functioning well. Take the QD battery system which afflicts almost all AR-pattern Recoil Shocks. You would have to be absolutely certifiable to pay £39.00 (or more - Wolf want a scarcely believable £52.99) per battery for obsolete and low-capacity 1,300mAh 8.4V NiMHs. You would also have to endure years of lacklustre performance and semi-auto lockups at low voltages, and wear out numerous costly batteries, while you waited for something in the harness to wear or break to justify "upgrading" to modern batteries.

To bring this back to the Mk.46, my point is that noting that zinc gears, plastic pistons and plastic bushings are not a recipe for long-lived support guns - especially not recoil support guns - isn't hating on TM, it's just simple common sense. If people actually use these as support weapons, we're going to see either TM finally adopting things everybody else adopted decades ago (e.g. steel gears, steel-tooth pistons and steel bushings) or a lot of broken guns.

[TM Mk46 Mod.0]

On 09/10/2019 at 07:21, clumpyedge said:

How do you know you'll have to "upgrade it" I'd say at most a spring change to bring it up to UK levels (not really an upgrade) and that's about it.

 

If this is like other Recoil Shocks it has plastic bushings. Those are totally unacceptable on any AEG, let alone premium ones like NGRSs, but they're even less appropriate on a support gun which will be firing 10,000rds daily rather than annually. Have a look at what support gunners have to do to keep their guns running for a thousand rounds an hour.

 

TM have never made a support gun before. Either a lot of things about this are going to be different from their regular guns, or it's going to need a lot of work to keep it working.

[TM Mk46 Mod.0]

On 03/10/2019 at 01:31, Skara said:

I am pretty sure it's because of Japan's regulation on firearms.

 

Btw with those £550 you could buy a whole NGRS gearbox and fit it in a G&P steel body best of both worlds I guess

 

From what I can recall, the ferrous metals rules only apply to handguns - Recoil Shocks have metal bodies and there's apparently a roaring trade in WE handguns in Japan. Japanese manufacturers in general have been appallingly slow to update their materials, although we're starting to see things like factory-applied CeraKote finishes on TM GBBRs.

 

I reckon a custom EBB gearbox of some sort with a heavy recoil weight (maybe based around the LCT steel piston) in a DX G&P M249 would definitely be the best of both worlds.

 

On 04/10/2019 at 00:23, jcheeseright said:

Cycle completion, instant trigger response through precocking, stop on empty, 1:1 dimensions, completely different hop design, planetary gearbox....

 

Recoil Shocks with a £100 FCU (that is light years ahead of the PTW's) have all of those features, except 1:1 construction, that are unambiguously advantageous. Plus they have recoil, and are available in a variety of shapes at half the cost or less. An ASG Scorpion EVO has cycle completion, 1:1 construction (far more realistic materials than the PTW's, too), stop-on-empty and bolt lock/release and a different hop-up and those are £300. The £1k plus you spend on a PTW also gets you a design that hasn't advanced noticeably since the early 2000s, questionable factory electronics, unexceptional materials and eye-wateringly expensive upgrades, the latter exacerbated by it being seemingly common to spend hundreds of pounds more immediately after purchase getting the gun set up by a professional.

 

PTWs were leagues ahead when they were the only ones with those features, but the beginning of the end for that dominance was the release of the SOPMOD more than 10 years ago now. The intervening 10 years gave us a further 26 (soon to be 27) NGRSs, ERGs, other more realistic AEGs (e.g. the equally flawed DAS), and a wide range of far more reliable and realistic GBBRs. I'm far from an expert, but I believe in the last decade Systema's only major innovation was a PTW with much worse recoil than an NGRS and battery magazines. For this you were expected to cough up $2,400 for the gun and $145 per magazine...

 

I'm not begrudging anybody their choice of gun and nobody has to justify their choices to anybody else. That doesn't mean that in the age of the Recoil Shock and modern GBBR the PTW isn't an increasingly obsolete platform.

[TM Mk46 Mod.0]

37 minutes ago, Wo1f said:

As i said, it’s the M4/416 that has receiver issues. The scar is solid but it’s plastics aren’t the nicest. 

 

I think it would be more accurate to describe TM's plastics as "inadequate for a £500+ gun". It's crazy that they still think ABS is acceptable on guns this expensive, especially when an $80 WE is all GFP. It's particularly bad on the SCARs and G36 NGRSs because those are almost entirely plastic on the outside and it is extremely difficult or completely impossible to replace it.

 

This is kind of the issue I'll have with the Mk.46, too. I know they spent a ton of money on it and I don't think the price is unreasonable, but I'm not paying £1,100+ for an aluminium gun when it should be made of steel. Especially not when G&P can make a steel one for literally half the price, and very especially not when it should be possible to hack together some kind of recoil for the G&P with the £550 left over. It's the same issue with the NGRS AKs: I don't think the price is unreasonable, but I'm not paying £500+ for an aluminium gun when I will shortly be able to get a steel LCT with similar recoil for 75% of the price.

[New (ish) Player needs gun advice.]

1) MP5 - Main Weapon & Light pistol - Secondary

 

2) MP5 - Secondary & Well MB10a - Main Weapon

 

Sniper rifles are a bad, bad choice for beginners. Sniping can be rewarding to certain types of player, but for most (especially beginners) it's uncomfortable, boring, bloody expensive, and a lot of effort. Sniper rifles are built, not bought, and a good one is a minimum of £350 plus tens of hours of tuning. Crap clone sniper rifles (e.g. WELLs, JGs, Warriors, UTGs) in particular can be virtually unusable out of the box; even good ones (Tokyo Marui) will be about as effective as a mid-range AEG but with a ROF measured in rounds per minute, not rounds per second. Forget the sniper rifle.

 

Pistols aren't bad but they aren't necessary. A good pistol is £125-150 plus another £40-50 for two spare magazines, another £25-50 for a holster, and another £10-25 for a double magazine pouch. If you add that (£190-250) to your primary weapon you could buy a gun that's really good, as opposed to 'just good enough for a beginner'. Unless you'll be playing a lot of CQB (and even then, it's not ideal) I wouldn't get a pistol yet; you have more important things to buy.

 

What you want is versatility; a weapon that will work reliably and effectively in CQB, field play, milsims, speedball, hot, cold, rain, snow - everything. For that you want something light, compact, and with a reasonable rate of fire - an SMG or compact assault rifle are your best bets by far. Common suggestions for new players are G&G Combat Machine ARs (£125-175) and CYMA cm.04x-series AKs (similar). If you want an MP5 ICS, G&G, SRC and VFC make good ones, although personally if you want something a bit different I'd be looking for a MagPul PDR, RealSword Type 97B or an AUG or P90 of some description.

 

Well, I'm thinking either get one second hand or two tone. Two tone can always be resprayed

 

This is extremely dubious at best.

• Buying Secondhand: Just as with buying from a retailer, the seller, not the buyer, is the one who's liable to be prosecuted. Any seller with any brains will ask to see proof of your defence.
• Modifying an IF to a RIF: This is a criminal offence - s.36(1)(b ), Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 - just like importing, manufacturing or selling a RIF. The only advantage here is that it will be you committing the offence, not the seller, so at least you're not endangering anybody else.

TBH if you have records of going to a local club repeatedly you probably do meet the standards for a defence; can you not ask them to provide you with a site membership eligible for UKARA registration? It would save you a lot of trouble and possibly a considerable amount of money.