GunmanAirsoft

The only radio equipment which is legal to use on PMR446 frequencies must be type approved. Type approval requires that it have such features as 0.5W maximum ERP, fixed antenna, be incapable of being reprogrammed etc. As a basic rule of thumb, if you can remove your antenna or program it to different frequencies then it is not legal for use on PMR446 frequencies. The 'purpose of document' paragraph at the start of this document makes it quite clear: https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/spectrum/spectrum-policy-area/spectrum-management/licence-exempt-radio-use/licence-exempt-devices/Analogue_and_Digital_PMR4461.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwi6rrvxxL3MAhViIsAKHcZlDRsQFggbMAA&usg=AFQjCNELfpw4NlItAD2huol8mwFTh9Gh9A&sig2=HWY6EmztD2VyoHSvbvFDHA

One standard licence covers your whole team's use of the frequencies as long as you are there being responsible for the use. The simple business licence has standard frequencies which can be used anywhere in the UK and they all use the same frequencies so you have to coordinate with anyone else using them. It's like the Pmr446 but you pay for it and you can use higher powers and more frequencies.

Great guide, much needed. Might be worth mentioning that many sites use one or more of the UK Business Simple frequencies for marshal/safety comms so people should check with any site they attend whether there are any frequencies to avoid. Is there a technical guide to setting up radios on here anywhere to help people avoid mistakes like leaving Baofeng set to the default 25Khz bandwidth?

Oh my God, between now and my previous post which quoted the exact law there have been several posts with massively incorrect information in them. If you are under 18 you cannot buy an IF or a RIF. That is the only thing restricted by age. Anyone of any age can own an IF or a RIF regardless of what they intend on doing with it. To sell, import, manufacture a RIF, or to convert an IF to a RIF you need a valid defence. A valid defence is using it at an organised, insured Airsoft event. The minimum attendance is one event. If you want to spray your two tone gun in a realistic colour and you will be playing with it at an organised and insured event then you can do it. There is no age restriction on doing this apart from the fact that under 18s cannot buy cans of spray paint. Sources are: Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 (Sections 36 & 37) Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 (Realistic Imitation Firearms) Regulations 2007 Firearms Act 1968 (Section 24a)

The exemption under section 37 of the VCR Act 2006 which applies to airsoft: 3.(1) It shall be a defence in proceedings for an offence under section 36 of the 2006 Act or under paragraph 4 of Schedule 2 to that Act for the person charged with the offence to show that his conduct was for the purpose only of making the imitation firearm in question available for one or more of the purposes specified in paragraph (2). (2) Those purposes are (a)the organisation and holding of permitted activities for which public liability insurance is held in relation to liabilities to third parties arising from or in connection with the organisation and holding of those activities; (b)the purposes of display at a permitted event. Those exemptions apply to the 4 offenses under section 36: (1)A person is guilty of an offence if (a)he manufactures a realistic imitation firearm; (b)he modifies an imitation firearm so that it becomes a realistic imitation firearm; ©he sells a realistic imitation firearm; or (d)he brings a realistic imitation firearm into Great Britain or causes one to be brought into Great Britain. The sale or purchase of Imitation Firearms to/by under 18s is prohibited by the Firearms Act and no exemption exists that I am aware of.

Our Tuddenham site holds the correct public liability insurance so yes, absolutely.

Converting an IF to a RIF has no age restriction. The sole requirement is that the gun is to be used at a correctly insured airsoft site.

If you're playing at a properly insured skirmish site with it, then you are not breaking the law if you spray it.

If you were registered with one of our sites and asked us in advance we would happily provide confirmation of your current UKARA status to a third party. As far as we're concerned, it's part of the service paid for by the UKARA admin fee we charge. Don't forget, UKARA was put in place to prevent retailers from going out of business, from a business point of view I can understand if a retailer is reluctant to come forward with details that help you buy a RIF from someone else, it's not how the process was intended to be used and they're opening themselves up to being dragged through court to defend somebody else's sale... If you haven't done so already, contact the site operator who your membership is with, I'm sure they will be more than happy to help. On a related note, I do get frustrated when I get calls or emails from sellers saying "I've got Fred here, says he plays on your site and wants to buy a RIF, can you confirm him?" Can you please ring me first and ask so I've got half a chance of figuring out who you are? My memory is shocking especially with names, and I may have 3 or 4 Freds playing on different sites.

Actual wording of the airsoft defence in UK law : "3.(1) It shall be a defence in proceedings for an offence under section 36 of the 2006 Act or under paragraph 4 of Schedule 2 to that Act for the person charged with the offence to show that his conduct was for the purpose only of making the imitation firearm in question available for one or more of the purposes specified in paragraph (2). (2) Those purposes are (a)the organisation and holding of permitted activities for which public liability insurance is held in relation to liabilities to third parties arising from or in connection with the organisation and holding of those activities; (b)the purposes of display at a permitted event." If the RIF is sold to be used at one game no offense has been committed, the law says nothing about how many times or how often you have to play.

Seems like every now and then they produce a duff one. Having said that, sometimes changing gas helps as different gasses produce different back pressures on the outlet valve of the mag. Unless you tweak the mainspring, the striker always exerts the same amount of pressure on the valve but if the gas pressure is low it can push out too much gas for too long. With heavier slides I've always found the WE pistols work better with higher pressure gasses like red or black. TM pistols with lighter slides are better with green gas and also tend to work better in the cold. I've not had a play with an XDM but I can't imagine it's much different to their other newer pistols. Without looking at the gun I'd guess a gas problem, or you got unlucky and got a "Friday afternoon" gun :/

Thought I was going bonkers for a minute. If anything flash mags are noisier because of the zip-zip noise they make lol

I thought flash mags were just hi caps with a string attached to the winder? How does that stop the rattle?

Here's how they work... The top bit of the magazine is a hopper which you fill with BBs. The bottom bit has a clockwork mechanism that feeds the BBs up a short tube to the top of the mag and into the gun. The winder just winds it up, as you fire the spring unwinds, turning a wheel which picks up the BBS. The rattle comes from the BBs in the hopper part as they are loose and free to move about inside the mag If you fill up the mag, wind it, then top it up it will rattle less, but as you fire there are less BBs in the mag and more empty space so more rattle. Mid and low caps have a really long tube that goes round and round the inside of the mag with a compression spring inside. You feed the BBs in from the same hole as they feed out of the mag and into the gun. The spring expands to fill the space in the tube behind the BBs therefore no rattle. The downsides to mid and low caps are the lower capacity and you need to use a speed loader or push the BBs in one at a time, kind of like loading a real magazine. Carrying a partially full speed loader will create the same rattle as a partially full hi cap however...

I always store mine with the mag removed, safety on and the battery disconnected, in a gun bag, at work. Magazine spring tension should be released by emptying mid or low caps or else you'll end up with mags that like to keep the last few BBs for themselves. I always released the tension on my hi caps too as if you leave them wound up in storage for a while they can get jammed (don't ask me how). I always store my pistol with the mags empty of BBs but full of gas. The pistol is stored mag out, chamber empty, trigger pulled. My shell ejecting shotgun is stored as per my real 12 bore : magazine and chamber empty, action open, safety on. Always make them as safe and inert as possible, because the first thing people seem to do when they see a gun like object is to pick it up and pull the trigger (the mind boggles). My real rifles are stored in one safe and the ammo and bolts in a different one, but I think that's probably a bit over the top for Airsoft kit ;p

If it's brand new, you'll find that the hop may take a while to stabilise

My 226 did the same thing recently. It was cold when it did it and I'd pretty much emptied a whole mag so the nozzle would have been freezing. Absolutely bang on regarding loading a full mag. If your slide is forward and you load a mag that is so full that you can't press the top BB down slightly then that part has no option but to snap off because it has nowhere else to go. Apart from loading with the slide back, try filling your mags so there is a little room for movement in the stack (avoid the temptation to squeeze that last BB in).

Close enough to me, I've heard good things about the site I didn't realise they did midweek nights. Thank you

If you're playing skirmish games on a casual basis then you'll probably want to stick to hi caps. Our Filmsim/milsim lite games have an ammo limit of 600 rounds loaded in mags so if you came to one of them you would be able to use two hi caps. I switched over to mid caps mainly because I hated the rattle of hi caps and when I do play skirmish I'm usually long dead before I run out of mags due to my habit of charging in headfirst when I have unlimited lives

He did say it was a reproduction, so not antique. For the OP's information, that gun would need to be imported by a registered Firearms dealer and could only be legally owned or purchased by an individual if they had a section 1 Firearms certificate with a .44 calibre muzzle loading pistol specified on it. They are very easy to buy in this country if you have the licence. I have a similar firearm which is a reproduction of a Rogers & Spencer .44 revolver which cost me less than £200. The only reason a UK citizen would want to buy one of these from abroad is to use it illegally. Thank you for deciding not to sell it

How can a retailer add a player to the database without a site membership number? Am I missing something? Are you saying that some retailers may make up a site membership number for my site and add a player to my database entry? Because as far as I was aware retailers can't issue a UKARA number by themselves, that has to be done by a site.

What pistol was it? And was this recent or a couple of years ago? I've had almost zero problems with their pistols over the last year, and we sell quite a lot of them. I know their older stuff had a reputation for quality issues

So I had the chance to try these mags out at the weekend. I basically asked loads of people to try them in their guns. They fitted and fed flawlessly in everything I tried them in apart from one gun. It was an HK branded 416 and the guy didn't know the make so I'm guessing Umarex. The mag didn't even go into the magwell. Worked fine on Marui, G&G, g&p, army, classic army, jing gong, Magpull masada, ICS (new and old style) and a couple of God knows whats lol. The BBs feed into the mags very well, there were no problems fitting in the guns (apart from the one mentioned above) and they fed with no issues including through guns cycling up to 23 rounds per second. They also felt very smooth when emptying them manually. I bought 4 straight away to replace my cheap plastic ones and we sold at least another 10 of them with no problems. Most of the newer WE/Nuprol stuff seems to be of a lot better quality what they were a couple of years ago, I've had more problems with ICS products than with WE/Nuprol in the last year.

As a site operator I very rarely get the chance to play a day's Airsoft any more. Being from Peterborough I used to go to Urban Assault's night games which they ran on Wednesday evenings. I always had a great time there, but sadly the lack of player numbers meant they have had to stop putting them on. So, are any sites offering open games during the week - either daytime or evening? They would really need to be within an hour or so drive from Peterborough.

We have no problem with people who can't get to site early enough. If you were coming to one of our sites all we would ask is that you let us know you will be late. When you get there we'd get you booked in, go over the safety and game brief, get you chrono'd and stick you in a team. Not a problem from a site operator's point of view to accommodate, it just means you'd miss out on part of the day. I would suggest trying an evening/night game but I guess you'd hit the same problem getting home again.