Rogerborg

Proper chortle. So, after posting my pic (above) to Facebook's Airsoft Heretics group (worth a join), this chap was inspired to make his own Astra Militarum gear in one 40-hour week constructing frenzy. Have I started something? After all this blows over, I'm half seriously wondering if it might be possible to put together a squad of the Emperor's faithful at some national event or milsim-lite. I mean, it is milsim, just from 38,000 years in the future.

I agree with everything else above, but if and when (and only if and when) your eye protection does start to fog up, I'd suggest Revision wipes. There are many, many other commercial and homebrew products available, and they all help to some degree, but if you're a genuinely sweaty bugger, the Revision wipes are the least useless magic that I've found. They run expensive if you buy a few, but if you keep your eye on eBay you can sometimes score orders of 10 or 20 for barely more than buying a couple. You might not need them up front, but if you do find yourself fogging up, I'd recommend the Revision wipes. I should really start charging them commission.

Yes, it really does. It's also cheap and simple to do. An A4 sheet of clear PETG, 0.7 to 1mm, sometimes sold as "dolls house window" plastic (you could also try acetate, but the PETG I've bought has been much clearer), and a roll of 2mm thick double sided self adhesive foam and you're good to go. Pop the polycarbonate lens out of your goggles. Lay it on your plastic and draw around it. Cut the plastic to match the lens, and then trim it down evenly until it fits inside the frame of the goggles. Cut the double sided foam into some long thin 2mm wide strips and then coil and stick them around the outer edge of the clear plastic, butting any joins tight together. Then stick the clear plastic inside the polycarbonate lens and you're done. It's about the easier fettling that you can do, and there's very little to go wrong once you start. You can use the same technique to fix things like Pyramex iForce goggles where the inner lens has deteriorated and crazed up as some of them seem to do. There's nothing really magical about commercial dual pane lenses, it's just a thin inner lens and an adhesive strip to fit it to the outer polycarbonate.

Welcome to... well, normally we say "maxing out your credit card", but that may not be an option at the moment. If you're playing in an open area, and aren't huddled too tight during briefings, I'd say it's a low risk hobby. For one thing, while we do have older players, you're unlikely to meet and spread the Kung Flu to anyone in the real high risk categories. Gloves, definitely. Some folk swear by Mechanix branded, some of us use cheap generic "tactical" gloves with some hard armour and padding, but pretty much anything is better than bare skin. First thing though is your own eye protection. Pyramex iForce dual pane goggles (or the many rebrandings of them) are a reasonable default, although there are plenty of other cheaper, simpler and more complex and expensive options that work well too.

In the full knowledge that this is a stupid question: does this happen with a magazine in, or out, or both?

I'm working on work, sadly, but I do intend to revive the project guns that I ... over-optimised, my CYMA M4 and MP5K. They both still shoot but I've pooched the air seals and they're way down on power. Nobody tell Luke at Negative Airsoft, but I'm looking at my PTFE tape and thinking maybe now's the time.

I figured you were feverish... Legit, there are quite a few crowd-computing projects out there. I started with [email protected] back in the day - altruism was all the rage until bitcoin came along and you could get paid to crunch numbers. Now there's an ideological concern that it's not really "spare" CPU/GPU cycles, since it's all consuming power.

Any chance of a before-and-after video?

It can be a real sod. I'm currently running FMA fan goggles that I've DIY double glazed (PETG plastic and double sided foam does a decent job), and even with Revision wipes or anti fog gloop I still have to run the fan while standing still after exertion. You'll find a solution that works for you, but it might take a few goes.

Odd, but a decent idea. And yes, that's a meaty old bell-end on it, and no mistake. I'll be impressed by anyone managing to get 7 bangs out of one during a game. Just please, I beg you: only buy from stock, not on a promise.

Hey, you get to start fresh. Since you know how this game is played, why not go balls deep veteran? Jeans, hoodie, £20 STTI NBB pistol, just get out and shoot.

Yarp, they're a decent default choice. Dual pane, not bulky. Some of us can still fog them up, but you won't know until you try.

With great power comes great consumption of time. There are many many guides available for programming on YouTube and elsewhere. The key things I'd bear in mind are: 1) You can only program in frequency mode, then assign what you've programmed to a channel. Don't try and change anything when you're in channel mode - it'll let you attempt it, but any changes you make will just be discarded. Why? Because they hate users. 2) I'd program channels 1-16 to the PMR frequencies from 446.00625 to 446.19375 MHz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PMR446#Technical_information). Why? Because then you can talk with people using PMR radios. 3) Hat tip to @Musica, if you're playing with a team then pick a CTCSS sub-frequency and program channels 111 to 116 to use: the PMR frequency, plus that CTCSS sub-frequency. Just be patient and keep trying things out. These radios are cheap with loads of features, but they do take some time to get set up.

It's a broad church, and it's nice that there's there's room for milsimmers wearing ballistic plates cuz traininz, obsessive collectors hauling around an armoury, speedsofters running one pimped out HPA hi-capa, and even (looks around shiftily) semi-LARPers. At the end of the day, it's just 6mm BBs flying through the air. They don't know or care what they came out of, or what they're going to hit. Heck, even if you're a Safe Zone lurker, If you're enjoying the hobby in any way, it's a win.