Rogerborg

Aaaah! Bloomin' airsoft, it's a wonder that anything ever works.

Agreed, Nuprol is a reputable brand, but it's hardly a good reputation. They just rebrand the cheapest tat they can find. Their batteries seem to be OK-ish, but their chargers are genuine fire hazards.

Sure, if the battery fits in the buffer tube and it's only the adaptor that's causing problems, that's the way to go. Ask at your local site(s), there's often folk there who'll do it for you, it's a 5-minute fix.

Eh. BFGs come and go. If someone thinks it's worth that, then it's worth that. I'd be concerned about it light striking though, with no support.

Oh, right, it's one of those skinny bois. Hmm, then I'd treat the suggestions above as just that: suggestive. You could ask to try out some batteries on site to see if you can find something that fits. Bear in mind that you can play with the butt off (fnar) and the battery duct-taped to the stock.

That's the bit that really bothers me. We know there are plenty of nob-goblins out there, and we're relying on sites to identify and deal with them. That Phoenix seems to actually welcome this sordid sociopath - knowing full well that he's revelling in breaching the first rule of airsoft - means that they don't give a stuff about any of their other customers. They're fully complicit, and it's not a site that I'd ever visit on that basis.

Ahoy, I'm surprised that doesn't fit down one side of the stock. I guess the adaptor is the problem? This probably will, although the caveat is that there's no standard or certainties in airsoft: https://www.componentshop.co.uk/7-4v-1450mah-25c-continuous-discharge-cranestock-lipo-battery.html I'd want two of those for a day's play, switching at lunch. You might be able to use one of these for a whole day: https://www.componentshop.co.uk/7-4v-2000mah-20c-continuous-discharge-airsoft-lipo-split-pack.html In either case you'll want to order them with Deans connectors, which will add 50p to the price. Many other vendors and brands are available. HobbyKing is starting to restock in the UK but don't have anything suitable at the moment. I like their site because they provide precise battery dimensions, which takes some of the guesswork out of it.

The thing is, he may be scraping a living from it, but he doesn't seem happy about it. Having to constantly generate more and more drama by travelling further and further to fewer and fewer sites doesn't seem like a winning strategy. If he wasn't giving such a piss poor impression of the hobby, I'd almost pity him.

Huh, why did I not know that? I'll need to update the personnel records. Great choice, I honestly think my Galaxy MP5K represents the most fun-per-penny that I've spent right out of the box, and they take uPgRaDeS well too.

If you ever want to thank one of those heroes, go to any pub nestled between a William Hill and a Turkish barber, and you'll find 3 of them, any time day or night.

Modern style military helmets are designed to be used with goggles. If you're using them with slim shooting glasses then you might find there's a gap. I like to fill it with a retro 1980s style sweatband which stops the sting and helps to stop your eyepro fogging up. If you really want to protect your last brain cell and tooth, then any FAST / M88 lid plus a paintball style full fask mask like a Dye or Valken MI-7 should match up nicely and keep the bad-balls out.

Uh, are you in the UK? If so, what muppet sold him that? If you're in the UK, then what he's got there is a Section 5 firearm, not an airsoft gun. Any site that knows what it's doing will tell him to put it back in the bag and play with something else, lock it to semi (which I doubt he can do), or go home. I'd strongly suggest not thinking or talking about fps, because the question then always becomes "using what weight of BB?" You want to be thinking in Joules, using the weight of ammo that you're going to be using. I honestly couldn't tell you what fps any of my guns are shooting at, because I only ever look at the Joules number on my chrono (set to the weight of BB that I'm using), and any half decent site will be doing the same. 0.2g is fine for indoors, but outdoors you want the heaviest BB that your hop unit can lift, and your wallet can stand. For a full auto / burst mode gun, I find 0.28g is a decent compromise of price vs performance. Heavier is just fine, if your hop can lift it. You're fine to use 11.1V in your gun. If the retailer says otherwise then they're looking for an excuse to void the warranty. But if that's what they want to do, they'll do it whatever you use, or say you used. If you experience overspin and double-shooting on semi (you pull the trigger once, the gun shoots twice) then you can use the active-brake or pre-cock settings on your ASTER to fix that. You've bought a perfectly decent gun, and it'll do you proud if you feed and treat it well. As above, clean the barrel (YouTube has plenty of guides), give it 0.25g or heavier, and get the hop dialled in (again, YouTube will help, or ask here). Your ASTER is great, it's worth the time figuring out its features. But none of that matters, as long as you're having fun in game. Plenty of us have a blast using the cheapest CYMAs, shotguns, revolvers and such. Airsoft isn't about having the bestest top-tier laser-beast gun, it's about the experience of taking and making hits with whatever you have to hand. Your gun will be as good as anything else out there, once you figure it out - you haven't wasted your money.

I hear he barely ever mentions the Embassy balcony.

Have you tried them both out in-game? What is it about the ONE series that you find better then the EDGE 2.0? You have a great fire control system, and (I believe, pending correction) a better quick-change system. On the EDGE series, you can change the spring just by removing the buffer tube, but on the ONE series, the gearbox needs to come out. As above, muzzle energy doesn't mean much, as long as you're putting out 1J. Or not even that: there are people with Tokyo Marui guns that cost as much as both of yours put together that shoot at 0.7J. If you want to get closer to your site limits, you can throw in a stronger spring easily enough thanks to the quick-change system. Although all the usual caveats apply about optimising airseal first. You haven't made a bad choice, and the ASTER has some nice features. Adding some pre-cock will give you snappy semi-auto response, burst are always fun, and if you run on 11.1V lipo and/or throw in a beefier motor, you'll be glad you've got active braking available.

Easy enough to do if you slink out 5 minutes before game-on and hide in a bush out-of-bounds, 15 yards from a spawn point. He's a rather tragic case who's now trapped in a fantasy world of his own creation. Sneaking onto sites that don't know him (yet) in order to film himself missing by a country mile then adding comically fake hit-markers afterwards to whine about cheaters, then face shooting kids at the aforesaid distance, and always, always escalating the fake drama. He's not there for the same reason as anybody else, and the sooner he's banned from every site, the better. That's if his hard drive doesn't get searched first: the bloke's a proper wrong 'un.

What tier?

Despite Brexit, we still have an agreement with the EU where we don't charge each other customs duties for items produced or manufactured in the UK or EU. But by and large that doesn't apply to airsoft toys and tat. VAT is still chargeable, from anywhere in the world, and the old £16 minimum limit is long since gone. Now, anything up to £135 should have 20% UK VAT added at source. The seller has to register with HMRC and pay over the VAT to them[*], then the item ought to come through without further VAT or duties. Over £135, anything imported becomes liable for customs duties (from the list of ten kajillion types of goods), VAT, and then all the charges that get added on for working out and paying those charges. I can see that getting complicated and risky, e.g. you've got an order containing a mix of items that attract different rates of duty, or if HMRC disagrees with the categorisation or value. [*] I imagine there are ways to arrange things so that VAT and duties end up just resting in your account for longer than might be strictly necessary, or where the basket price that you're charging doesn't always match the value declared to HMRC.

Constructively, Facebook pages for specific airsoft sites tend to be a good place to cadge lifts.

The reasonableness of which is entirely up to the magistrates, judge, or in the case of this Scotch Sheriff, "playing cowboys and Indians". You're unlikely to be prosecuted or convicted, but clearly you should expect a police response when Concerned Karen calls it in as a fully-semi-automatic-assault-murderiser.

Gel blasters in a previous incident this year. Politics aside, this reinforces the point about even IFs being a no-no for public view now. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12168197/Moment-heavily-armed-cops-swoop-group-kids-playing-gel-blasters-Maidstone-town-centre.html

I see myself more as Jane Fonda. Yes, I know they're very 80s, but they do actually work well for their intended purpose, and are available in tacticool colours.

Sweatbands help to keep the juices contained in the first place. I bought a bunch of cheap ones and rotate them between games.

I've reported it twice, it seems pretty clear that the site is unmaintained and that you could list just about anything there.

tl;dr summary - Hackney, 13 year old with a blue-and-white (or pink-and-white) water pistol[*] gets rammed off his bike and arrested at gunpoint, allegedly. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67148208 While I suspect there's a bit more to it than that[*], it's a salient reminder that waving any vaguely gun-shaped-object in public is now absolutely gagging for an over-reaction by the tools of the State. [*] This is strictly the victimhood side of the narrative, being pushed by what appears to be a BLM offshoot. Similar reports from the US about "neighbourhood water fights" have turned out to actually mean non-consensual shooting of random public victims with gel blasters.