Rogerborg

Specnas are getting notorious for being fussy about mags, and my SA-E02 is no different. With the stock hop unit (a decent rotary) It feeds fine off of its own mid caps, and is OK with hi-caps, but didn't want anything to do with other mid caps. Reddit sez "lol just change the magazine catch lol", but nobody seems able to explain why, or for what, or how this helps. So I decided to science it out by measuring mags, and testing the feed tube interface. Specna mid cap vs M16VN short mag, total length front to rear, and from the front of the mag to inside the feed. The overall length can be measured precisely, but it's harder to get an exact measurement on the front of mag to inside the magwell tube, so I've been a bit approximate there. It might not be a full 1mm difference, but when the fronts are aligned, it's apparent that the Specna feed is further back. With the rears of the mags aligned, they're a closer match. The Specna mags also have a conical section at the top of the feed. With the hop unit removed from the gun and tested with both mags (to isolate just that issue), this provides a noticeable smoother insert: it's a smart bit of design. I'd seen speculation that the Specna hop tube was "pencil dicking" mags and not big enough to key in solidly without free play. I didn't find this. If anything, the hop tube was slightly sticky when going into the VN mags, and there was no free movement at all once it was in. The last significant point was the the BB stopper on the VN mags has a flat section that protrudes slightly into the tube, whereas the Specna doesn't. This lip provides a significant obstacle to the hop feed tube, and it needs a harder push-and-wiggle to move the stopper back and get the feed tube right in. Either because of this, or a stronger stopper spring, or something else in the magazine geometry, it also needs more effort to keep the hop unit pressed all the way into the VN magazines. Some slight exaggeration for effect: So: what did I do? 1. Carefully filed and sanded a slight conical shape on the bottom edge of the feed tube to assist keying it into the mag. There's a fair amount of material there to play with. Just give it some help to find the magazine, and to let it get and stay all the way in. 2. Do some more aggressive filing on the back of the feed tube, to produce a flat ramp where it meets the BB stopper. This looks aggressive, but bear in mind that most of the height of the tube is left intact, so there's still no free play. The BBs are going up the middle, and as long as there's any material at the rear, the BB stopper will be pushed far enough back. With this done, the feed tube isn't fighting as hard against staying all the way in the magazine. 3. Magazine fettling. Since I want to keep the Specna mags usable, rather than modifying the magwell I've added half a mm of tape at the front of the VN mags to give them the same size as the Specna mags, and to move the feed backwards to more closely match the Specna. I've put some silicone grease on top to help it slide in without tearing, and might replace it with velcro depending how it stands up. If I wanted to only use these mags, and not have the Specna mags fit any more, I'd put a velcro strip inside the front of the magwell instead. Result: a smoother insertion and perfect feeding of the VN mags. In fact, I got reliable feeding from one even before adding the tape at the front, so it seems like just a small mod to the end of the feed tube does help. The mags need a good hard push to get the magwell catch locked in place, which is perhaps where the Reddit wisdom is coming from, but once in place they're solid. That's not the problem, at least on my example, with my magazines. Best of luck.

I quite fancy one of tho- [Looks up VED, insurance and running costs]

You don't need two kidneys. Really though, selling expensive summer toys just after Christmas is unlikely to net you the highest returns from the biggest market.

I prefer "Priti Useless", but... urgh. It's astonishing that crossbows have flown under the radar for so long. Double-urgh, a Sikh. That's really disappointing. It does seem to be a subcontinental favourite though.

From the comments on the article, it seems that he may very well be the local Ronnie Pickwering, which is why I think the sentencing is lenient, and he should have done a stretch inside rather than being given yet another last, final, ultimate, really-mean-in-this-time chance. The courts have to pretend ignorance of social media though. Random aside, Shannon Elizabeth asked to have her character, Justice, in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back wear glasses because "Justice is blind". Also, a gif.

Hmm. The only thing I can think of would be to black-ball individuals from UKARA and the equivalent schemes. Remember that it's sellers that need a defence, not purchasers. It's perfectly legal to purchase a RIF and possess it (in private) without any defence or reason beyond "want one". Public possession needs a reasonable excuse, the proof whereof lies with the possessor on a case-by-case basis. There's no defence, or licence, or anything that can be issued and revoked. Any change to the legality of sale, purchase or possession would require further legislation, and it's unlikely to be in our favour. I expect we will move to a licensing scheme eventually for purchase and private possession, for all the good that will do.

Great, stuff should just sail through if they're doing that. It's baffling that neither TaiwanGun nor GunFire seem willing to get themselves set up to do it.

Nice one. Do you know if they're charging duty at source, or if you just lucked out? As noted elsewhere, I had a stock apparently sit in Customs for nearly a month before they released it, but without any blackmail demand and as far as I can tell without opening it for inspection, so it's possible they're just too overwhelmed at the moment to do thorough Fun Policing.

My local runs semi-auto only days (with full auto LMGs) and they work pretty well. I actually prefer them to the usual full auto spamfests, as it's not a huge site. Sad to report that my day today didn't go, as the full-day raffle-prize game pre-booked out a month ago. I don't book woodland that far ahead, because... well, we've got torrential rain and 40mph gusts this morning. Aggravating because I'm pretty sure that half the bookings won't show up, and half of those who do will leave after getting soaked through, or plunging into the Dagobah swamp. Had it been a walk-on, I might have pulled the MVP DPM on PDQ for PDW play and gone anyway, but we'll never know now. Love 'em, because I can just drop the pistol and fumble with my balls or yank my pin on a whim.

Not for peasants. But... yes, yes it's all rather silly. I assume/hope that it was just a checkbox on an Invision update. I'd be happy for it to be unchecked, and never spoken of again. Quantity is not quality.

Oh, I'm agreeing with that, it's nonsensical and would just be making a rod for their own backs. Apologies if I'm missing context, I've long since stopped reading Mr jallen's diatribes.

We'll never know now, although given the toilet paper hoarding that occurred as well, I suspect that you may be right that we can't be trusted to do the right thing. I'm not actually disagreeing with the use of propaganda, by the way. That "viral" (i.e. nudged) video of a tearful and slightly milfy nurse begging people to stop panic buying was pretty effective. I'm not surprised by it. What I am doing is documenting a specific example, and suggesting that we shouldn't let ourselves get fooled twice, let alone over and over and over again for years. It's disheartening that so many people are still putting unquestioning faith in whatever we are being being told by strangers who view us, and - as you say - their own diktats, with such utter contempt. Even if they're collectively right that we're little more than instinctual animals who need to be herded, shouldn't we as individuals strive to be better than their bestial assumptions? Do our own research, and make up our own minds, rather than following the orders of people who don't follow them, and who we claim to not trust? That... doesn't seem particularly rational, or replete with moral integrity.

We check that everybody is prepared to drive at the speed limit when they pass their test. I don't know why we go to all the cost and bother of speed cameras, having ensured compliance.

A gentle reminder that if you actually think someone on the internets isn't worth arguing with, you can remedy that with a couple of clicks.

My primary problem with how this has been handled is the benign lie for the greater good. Do we all recall when we were advised by the State broadcaster against wearing face masks because "the virus isn't floating around in the air"[*]? This came as a surprise to anyone reading contemporaneous studies clearly warning about airborne transmission - that's when I invested in respirators. Then it became tacitly acknowledged that the initial no-mask message from the WHO, and loyally echoed by UK government and media - but not by the US CDC and NIH - was intended to preserve respirators and medical grade surgical masks for frontline health workers. Right at that point, I lost trust in the (collective) State, because it showed no trust in us. We could have been told the honest truth, but they chose a different way, of "nudging" us into the desired behaviour. When the advice changed, and later became mask mandates, it wasn't that the science changed, it was simply a case of timing the message to keep supply and demand balanced. [*] WHO, BBC: March 2020 no masks, "the virus isn't floating around in the air". NIH: April 2020 airborne transmission reported, masks recommended (and see the earlier reports cited there) CDC: April 2020 masks recommended, but not ones intended for medical use (see box 1). WHO, BBC: July 2020 maybe we should rethink masks After that, why trust anything that you're being told by any particular talking head on your Telescreen? There's a difference between being informed, and being instructed.

True. But what's the relevance to the policies? If the infection control argument holds for care home staff (reduce few-to-many transmission), why apply the opposite policy to nightclubs? There's a argument that vaccine passports were introduced more to nudge/coerce younger people into getting vaccinated, not primarily for infection control. But if that's the case, why did Queen Nicola just shut down the nightclub industry for three weeks, thereby removing that incentive, and fairly inevitably shifting socialising to house parties or ad hoc raves without any "Papers, please" gatekeeping. To be clear, I'm not expecting answers here, just scratching my head while trying to find consistency in the apparently arbitrary reasoning. It's rather hard to Trust The Experts when there appears to be scant evidence or explanation behind such contradictory actions (or knee jerk reactions).

Some to some, not all to all, pretty clearly. But that's not what you're really interested in. Good call on binning of the Specna grip, that quick-drop base-plate is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. All I'll say is that one of these fine looking fellows fits my SA-EO2 Edge, with the motor angle seeming OK. I don't remember having to file anything off to get a good engagement, although I may have done so without registering it as a significant event (airsoft, after all). AliExpress, "Tactical M4 M16 AR15 Pistol Grip", doesn't appear to be brand-named in any way.

That's the first time I've seen a rental package mean that you're actually just renting the bottle. I'm surprised they didn't make you go out and scrape up up few thousand BBs to put back in it. Future prediction: "Rental packages now include a sandwich bag half full of largely-intact BBs"

It's the exception rather than the rule, we just remember both the high- and low-lights more. I've always had better experiences in CQB, for one thing because the marshals are closer to the malefactors and can calm things down more effectively.

Maybe. Or maybe by being vaccinated they're raising their likelihood of becoming asymptomatic spreaders, as per the multiple fully-vaccinated cruise ship outbreaks (ibid). See whooping cough for an example of asymptomatic spread despite near universal vaccination (and for the avoidance of any doubt, this is not an anti-vaccine position, it's actually an argument for even earlier vaccination). I'm really struggling to find any data for reduction in infections or transmission. Remember, all of the current vaccines only claim to reduce death and severe illness in the recipient. None of them made any claim, or even attempted to collect evidence, regarding reduction of infection or transmission. As far as I can tell, we just assumed that, and it's become asserted as a tenet of faith. The policy for care home staff is one PCR test a week, lateral flows every two days or on a change of location. This is current advice, 23rd December 2021, with what should now be fully vaccinated staff. This is a tacit acknowledgement that vaccination is not sufficient, as supported by the cruise ship examples. So why is it necessary? I know, precautionary principle, you can't be too careful, every little helps. Absent any evidence though, it seems more like ritual than science. And there's the other curious thing: patrons are required to be vaccinated, but staff aren't. Why have opposite policies for care homes and nightclubs? The few-to-many relationship applies in either case. It gives me a pain in all the logic diodes down my left side. I'm minded of an anecdote that I saw on social media (100% guaranteed factually true, and anecdote is the singular of data, right?) about a technician working the club and theatre circuit claiming that staff physically recoil from him when he presents a recent negative test result rather than evidence of prior vaccination. I'll leave parsing the rationality of that as an exercise for the reader.

Agreed, and there does seem to be something like a consensus forming here that ammo limits are a decent way to mitigate ROF issues. I really enjoyed a light-hearted Narcos themed filmsim series run by a local site (camo vs 1980s casual, medic tokens, ammo limits), it worked very well indeed. However, by the third day of three they'd dropped some of the sim rules because it was just so much work to script, organise and especially marshal compared to a regular "shoot that way" skirmish day.

Mine are 10A... unfused. <dramatic-gopher.gif>

Agreed, that's about what I'm seeing, but that's under no-load. Under any load, back-emf kicks in and it gets... <animated-equations.gif> There's really only one way to find out, and I do have a spare multimeter. If you don't hear from me, I burned the house down.

Genuinely: what data? Real talk, my day job is data analytics. But that needs input, and I can't find any. I'm struggling to think how you'd even measure a reduction in community transmissibility given the near impossibility of finding control groups or making like-for-like comparisons across nations and populations. Does it reduce transmissible infection at a community level? I mean, "it's just common sense" that it must, but that's for any given individual. But remember that the big problem with SARS-COV-2 is asymptomatic transmission, and that super-spreaders are a thing. I could make a "common sense" argument that having a viral load just high enough to be transmissible, but not high enough to be symptomatic, might be the worse case for community transmission in a highly vaccinated population. You can look at the continuing spread in (e.g.) highly vaccinated Gibraltar, or on highly/fully vaccinated and negative-tested cruise ships, and declare that it would obviously be worse with a lower rate of vaccination. But that's just assertion. Against what would you compare them to determine whether... Triggered. "Significantly" has a specific statistical meaning, and I've yet to find anything approaching data for it. Now, there I fully agree. Since I can't find the evidence for transmissibility, and since at this point the "we're all in it together" argument has clearly failed to convince the last unvaccinated, I'd hammer on the purely selfish benefits of it. "Do it to protect me" isn't having much traction with the screw-you hold-outs, and may be entrenching their resistance. For some, that's the concern. I'm not anti vaccine, but I do have some specific concerns about why vaccine passports are being introduced, and what they might mutate into. I very much hope to be wrong about that. And there are people who are genuinely more scared of vaccine reactions than of covid. In younger, haler age groups, for non-flabbies with no-comorbidities, they may even have a point. Remember that the JCVI has not recommended general vaccination for healthy under 18s, but we've gone ahead anyway. Tin-foil hat firmly off, I make it 1164 AZ deaths, 666 Pfizer deaths (oof), 23 Moderna deaths, 36 unspecified. No, not from a conspiracy site, from gov.uk https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-reactions Strong caveat, that's with vaccines, not from vaccines, but of course that also applies to with/from covid. Care home workers have already been fired for being unvaccinated, with NHS workers to follow. Nightclubs and large venues are denying entry by law, and some smaller venues by policy. You can argue that's not "discrimination", but that's a semantic argument that will be cold comfort to those out of a job. By the plain meaning of the word, it is segregation. Now, you may view that as a good thing, and I'm not even necessarily going to disagree, but we should strive to be honest about language, goals and intentions. Not unconditionally or absolutely. I'm seeing a lot of "Debate over" / "end of argument" / "you can't question The Science" / "you don't even need to think about it, dude" and similar statements, and they make me rather uncomfortable. I prefer nuanced analysis of relative risk, constant questioning, and honest, evidenced answers to those questions. If the evidence is there, then the questions should be easy to answer, right? But if you can't show a healthy 18 year old the evidence that being vaccinated will reduce their transmissibility (I'd genuinely love to see it); nor that it will lower their own personal risk (JCVI says not), then what argument would you give in favour of them getting vaccinated, let alone forcing them to do so?