Rogerborg

And "lethal barrelled weapon" is defined thusly. I'll highlight the critical words: (1B) In subsection (1)(a), “lethal barrelled weapon” means a barrelled weapon of any description from which a shot, bullet or other missile, with kinetic energy of more than one joule at the muzzle of the weapon, can be discharged. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968/27/section/57 Note the difference from the 57A airsoft definition which exempts us from this categorisation based on "design", rather than capability. Shooting a glass or metal BB out of an airsoft gun doesn't turn it into a firearm. And I'm baffled as to why shooting paint (or chalk) from some 13J(!) yeet cannon means that it's not a lethal barrelled air weapon, given that it's still capable of slinging steel. It seems that the Home Office has chosen to turn a blind(ed) eye, but if you were hauled before a Scotch court for having an unlicensed air rifle, what statutory definition could you point to as a exemption or defence? I wouldn't own a paintball gun - excuse me, "marker" - in Scotchland now, and I'm careful to keep my non-firearm-toys well under 1.3 / 2.5J.

You know what I'd like? Some basic honesty. I mean, if a site said "We don't care about chrono, we don't care about over-shooting, we don't care about hit-taking. Go out there and mag dump on each other. First guy to cry loses." I'd actually respect that. At least you'd know what you were getting into.

"Professionally" upgraded by swapping the barrel, bucking and nub. I guess that's what doubled the "retail" price. I'm always puzzled by who buys an auto-only pistol-barrelled gun that you can't use at semi-auto CQB sites, or point blank in some woodland. I guess that's why it's being flogged on.

And they went through his bedside drawers? Clearly more to it, if there's any truth to it at all. Well, well, Scotland, and apparently fell foul of airgun licensing. Now, that's something that I've been wondering about for some time given that I've yet to see this "frangible" exemption that's bandied around for paintball. And these "home defence" guns clearly aren't intended to be used for paintball, given that they're being flogged with rubber or plastic projectiles. If Dibble did find something in the 1J to 6 or 12 foot-pound range, loaded with plastic (or steel for all we know) and ready to go, I can't see any other reasonable classification for it other than an air weapon. It is not. The only defence that we have is in https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-violent-crime-reduction-act-2006-commencement-no-3-order-2007-firearms-measures which only lists airsoft. Looks like paintballers are trying to cosy up to our defence after acknowledging the bleedin' obvious: that something which is a realistic imitation of a firearm is indeed a realistic imitation firearm. The cheeky cads then go on to claim that while they enjoy the same defence, they have no need to demonstrate it with a UKARA-a-like scheme of playing history. They can just buy membership in the Paintball Gang and tool up. Which is really no worse than airsoft retailers pretending that cosplay is a defence, or accepting Military Vehicle Trust membership for purchase of modern RIFs. Verrrry interesting, thanks for the the reference.

Well, all covered above. 300fps with 0.25g is 1.04J, so you're not far off the typical UK site limit anyway (typically 1.13J, although my local is 1.2J). That's pretty good from what I'd assume is the Specna M90 spring, so I'd expect you've got decent air seal. The Specnas have a decent hop unit. I can't speak to the barrel, I yeeted mine into the Bits Box right away as I was DMRing it, but there was nothing obviously wrong with it. Cleaning it always a good idea. One quick trick to help with air seal is to split the receiver and squirt a little silicone lube into the nozzle. Point the gun up and let it sink into the piston o-ring, then before re-assembling, give it some auto bursts into a wank-rag until it's shooting clean. I also binned off my stock Specna hop bucking and nub, but I'm moderately convinced that they were an un-advertised flat hop combination. That's unusual, and if you're going to drop money on it, the first thing I'd suggest is getting a Maple Leaf 60 degree Macaron bucking in there, plus either a Maple Leaf omega nub, or the Gear Parts knock off omega (I'd suggest soft). See: https://www.ak2m4.co.uk/internal-parts/hop-up-buckings-nubs

Are you new to the internets? Just folk fronting and maxing, chilling with the toys we've spent all day waxing. It'll all be hugs and reacharounds in the safe zone.

Fully trained by watching every Kicking Mustang video out there, I'm sure. Nice is a bonus, but the main attribute required is the confidence to take a decision to kick a player, or a group, back to the safe zone, or clean off site, and to back it up. The majority of players don't need marshalling. If marshals can't deal with the exception, what's the point of them?

I'd be fascinated to know what the charge would be for that. And a reminder, should you ever make the mistake of inviting a vampire or copper into your home: say absolutely nothing. Let the State claim that it determined your intent by reading your mind. They can do that (see the Nazi Pug YouTube case), but whatever you do, don't ever say or imply that you own any sort of projectile flinger for use against nonconsenting humans, or even pikies.

I would note that even EN166-B eye protection is only rated up to about 6.16J (with an 0.86g steel BB) and even the pistols exceed that. Glasses can only be rated to EN166-F, or 0.87J, which isn't even enough for airsoft - although we know from experience that they tend to be fine. Either way, I don't want things that spicy anywhere near my eyesight, and I include TAG rounds in that as well.

Do you know what sort of energy they're putting out? I've seen one being shot off on the range at a local airsoft site, and immediately ran to tell a grown up - who sadly didn't give a stuff, despite my concerns that it would punch through airsoft eyepro without stopping. Oh, 7.5J pistols, with 11J versions available. And 14J (on a cold day) for the shotgun, with versions up to 40J available. Hard plastic balls are available and let's be honest, that's what you're going to use in these. https://moderncombatsports.co.uk/products/umarex-hdr-50-paintball-gun-revolver https://moderncombatsports.co.uk/products/umarex-t4e-hdx-68-paintball-shotgun These can indeed get sodded off from airsoft sites.

It never does, because the people doing it don't give a stuff. Either sort it out on the field, or don't waste everyone's time by hectoring the decent players. See above about ejecting the reprobates, any my re-affirmed belief that the skillset for marshalling is pretty much a 1:1 match with bouncers.

"This is quite possibly the most German thing ever created".

Kid Glock there? No, I was barely aware of his existence, and now he's on the "shush" list. Lucky guess, I guess. Truth to tell, I actually agree. I run irons (or foam) on sniper sidearms and for LARPing, but reticules all the way if I actually want to hit something. Even in CQB I run a cheap reflex on my MP5K. Just not... this cheap. I saw those come up on "cheapest first" (it's a cultural imperative) and was wondering if they really were what they looked like: a cross painted on a bit of perspex. I do like that they've gone to the bother of faking a battery compartment and laser tail end on it. It occurs that you could make something exactly as useful from a sight protector and a felt tip pen.

Ahoy and welcome. Websites are getting fewer and further between. There are some Facebook groups, but, urgh, Facebook. "UK Airsoft Community 2.0" seems to be the least bad. A lot of YouTube airsoft is clickbait, fakery, and toxic drama, I've largely given up on it. If you want unvarnished technical commentary and some giggles, we do have quite the man-love for https://www.youtube.com/c/NegativeAirsoftTech The G&G CM16 used to be the default choice for a budget M4 AEG. I wouldn't say they've got worse, just that they've stood still and raised their prices in a market that's crammed with better featured - and cheaper - alternatives. Their microswitch based guns are also fussy about batteries. There are plenty of happy owners of each, but I personally wouldn't touch any VFC with a bargepole due to ropey internals, and Krytacs have nothing special on the inside to justify the price. Both have good externals, but that's not your priority. I'd agree with @EDcase on CYMA and JG (Jing Gong) being solid choices. CYMA used to be viewed as a no-frills budget-only brand but they're cheap because they make so many of them - my bargain basement CM.516 has nasty plastics, but is cockroach tough. Their newer Blue and Platinum ranges are now credible mid range contenders. Specna Arms, mayyyybe. They pulled a bait-and-switch with their OEM and the quality plummeted. It's since recovered a bit, and I took a gamble on an Edge last year which has worked out well. They're quite fussy about mags though, I have a thread on that here. In your budget, I'd be looking at an Edge 2.0 with the well featured Gate Aster mosfet (the Gate X-ASR offers nothing more than trigger contact protection). The "ONE" range reportedly has better internals, but fewer features. The other option getting lots of love at the moment is the Double Eagle M90X / M91X range which offer great features include a decent fire control system at bargain price. Your problem might not be choosing, but finding anything in stock. With the supply chain issues in the Orient, shipments are few and far between, and the good stuff sells out in very short order. Not to take anything you're told as a guarantee. Airsoft guns are really expensive toys, any you can get a peach or a lemon at any price point, with any label on it. Set your expectation to be delighted if they work at all, and try and have a cheap backup handy.

I would argue that, since it's Firearms Act 1968 that's being amended, and (compliant) airsoft guns aren't firearms for the purposes of that Act. This is crucial for us in the Democratic People's Republic of Caledonia, since if airsoft guns were to be considered "air weapons", then we'd need to be loicensed to possess them. Dibble can recommend anything he likes, but 24ZA doesn't prescribe any particular form of storage. The offence is "fail[s] to take reasonable precautions to prevent any person under the age of eighteen from having the weapon with him". And in context, this isn't a hypothetical "could" situation, since it goes on to list exceptions that apply to specific minors. So even if "air weapon" covered airsoft (and it doesn't), it's only an offence if a minor does get their greasy unsupervised paws on it. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968/27/section/24ZA

350fps on 0.2g is (about) 1.13J which is (about) 311fps with a 0.25g BB. Unless your site is still chronoing with 0.2g BBs (yuk) I'd suggest you to start thinking and home-chronoing in Joules and your usual BB weight rather than in fps. You're currently at about 0.87J which is pretty weak. Can I ask how you improved the air seal, and how you tested that? With good air seal, it should be hard or impossible to push the piston forward with your thumb pressed over the nozzle, like this. That should be achievable just with fresh and/or stretched and well silicon greased piston and cylinder head o-rings. The reason that I stress the importance of this is that it determines how much spring you need, or don't need. For example, I have a dirt cheap CYMA M4 with stock air seal components but with spot-on airseal and a ZCI 6.01mm 229mm barrel, and hopping 0.2g, I'm seeing bang on 1.13J with a fresh M90 spring. The other possibility is air loss between the nozzle and the hop. Hop buckings aren't all identical, and a fraction of a mm difference in the lips can result in a leak. Sometimes it's just a case of pushing the barrel back into the hop unit a bit more firmly. Or pushing the hop unit back against the gearbox harder - the little spring on top of stock rotary hop units isn't great, and can be replaced with a stronger spring slipped over the barrel, or by popping rubber o-rings over the barrel to press the hop unit back. So the answer is really: it depends. With good air seal, you should notionally want an M100 or M105 spring for UK limits. However, G&Gs tend to come with an M100-ish spring, so either that's got very tired and needs replaced like-for-like, or the air seal isn't good enough, or the air seal is perfect but airsoft witchcraft is working against you and you'll need to go up to (e.g.) an M110 anyway. The first thing I'd buy is a cheap airsoft chronograph to take the guesswork out of it. Better to invest on that than to lose a day's play and travel due to a hot gun. tl;dr version: Squish that barrel and hop backwards, and chrono. then Grease those seals, and chrono. then Throw in an M110, and chrono. If you come out over 1.13J at any point, it's easy enough to cut a spring down, so it's reasonable enough to buy a hotter spring than you think you'll need, and then clip it down to come out just under the site limit.

It's quite the rush, isn't it? Great to hear that you enjoyed it, and now it's time to blow the lad's inheritance on toys.

Fair question. I've always mounted as far forward as possible, ideally level with the end of the muzzle, to eliminate shadows. Then it doesn't really matter what side it's on, although I'll generally go underslung which I suspect is just mild symmetry OCD. My MP5K has it lefty-mounted rather than righty, but that's only because I'm out of functional pressure pads and so am having to work it manually like some grunting Piltdown Man. But again it's so far forward that I've got the bell-end cable tied around the front sight to stabilise it, making the side largely irrelevant from a lighting point of view.

He really is a prize pumpkin. The legislation is surprisingly clear on this. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968/27/section/57A (2)An “airsoft gun” is a barrelled weapon of any description which— (a) is designed to discharge only a small plastic missile (whether or not it is also capable of discharging any other kind of missile), and (b) is not capable of discharging a missile (of any kind) with kinetic energy at the muzzle of the weapon that exceeds the permitted level. Shooting glass, or steel, or lead, or depleted uranium from your airsoft toy doesn't automatically turn it into a firearm - what matters is that it was designed for plastic. Unless it comes out at over 1.3J / 2.5J. That's only likely to be a concern for over-volumed guns shooting heavy ammo. Given the density of glass or fused silica is in the region of 2.2 - 2.8 g/cm3 we're looking at 0.24g - 0.31g for glass, so not a concern given that we're already slinging 0.5g (or more) of "plastic" around the field. That actually concerns me more, in terms of elasticity and impulse.

I've formed the impression that there are people who only turn up in order to stand around at respawn pissing and moaning to anyone who will listen about all the CHEETARS that they dumped three mags into. So when I took a gun hit yesterday, I put my helmet on it and held it up above cover to give them something to shoot at and really complain about. Good, I'd like to see it to happen more often. If sites punted the worst player every day, what a hobby this would be.

I'd say some teenager holster-juggling his Glock in front of his mum's mirror for hours on end might give it a close run.

One of these fellows. I have no idea about pistols, I think it's some sort of Colt Python .357" Magnum PI inspired thing. I bought it because, well, I don't have a revolver, and I might want to use it in Very Hard Mode in Very CQB. Out of the box: Quality is mixed. The outer barrel is metal, and there are metal weights under the grips, giving it some nice heft. The frame is a decent solid plastic, I don't have any robustness concerns there. However, the grips are a cheap feeling hard plastic, there are too few points of contact with the frame, and too much free play in both the grips and the weights under them. No big drama, I've packed it with tape. The mechanism feels OK. The plastic cylinder is solid enough and the shells are metal. When flipped out, the hinge feels fairly robust, but I doubt you'll be doing that much, if ever, should you be inclined to field it - read on for why. The inner barrel and nozzle that keys into the shells is sprung to press it back and engage solidly, without making closing or rotating the cylinder too onerous. Initial range shooting: A disappointing and inconsistent 0.3 - 0.5J with either 0.2g or 0.25g on ASG ULTRAIR green gas at 15C - the minimum recommended temperature. The note in the box from Bullseye claimed 242fps on 0.2g (0.54J) with Swiss Arms 130psi gas at 14C. The energy inconsistency is reflected in shooting inconsistency too. It's 90% accurate, 60% of the time, but there are a lot of wild fliers. The rear sight adjusts for uppy-downy and sidey-sidey, although that's somewhat of a gimmick given the inconsistency. Some sellers claim there's a fixed hop. Nope, nothing, you'll need to lob beyond point-blank ranges. It's gas efficient and I put about 80 shots through it without refilling (or needing to). Bad Influence Airsoft tested its HG-133 sibling and saw 150 shots out of it. After investigation: On disassembly (careful now, the 4 screws are in 3 different sizes), it turns out that the gas is routed from the reservoir and valve up a channel on the inside of the frame, sealed by o-rings at top and bottom. They were essentially unlubed, and the frame side needs to be screwed on as securely as possible without stripping out the plastic in order to get a good seal. I've silicone lubed the seals now, or you could alternatively just spooge as much silicone as you like into the nozzle that feeds into the back of the shells - there's no hop to contaminate, so go wild. The excess will get blown out. Another issue is that the cylinder is rotated by a bar attached to the trigger. Cocking the hammer pulls the trigger partially back and raises the bar, but not quite enough to completely rotate the cylinder. Only when the trigger is pulled does it complete the last of the rotation and line up the shell, and it seems that it can still be slightly misaligned when it spurts. Cocking the hammer and then giving the cylinder a tiny nudge to get it fully aligned before pulling the trigger seems to help. Since the most effective way to use is pre-cocked, this isn't as onerous as it sounds. With it lubed and the cylinder aligned, I am now actually seeing the advertised 0.6 - 0.7J out of it. It's still not super-consistent and the lack of hop means it's still a short ranged plinker at best. Loading: Yes, the shells come out, and the shell extractor works well enough. There are no spares though, so doing so is fraught with hazards. At about £10-11 for another 6 shells, reloading via shells will get expensive, and you'll doubtless lose them as fast as you buy them if you actually try reloading in-game. However, it turns out that you don't have to. Just point the gun up at your face, and drop a BB into the front of each shellazine as you rotate the cylinder. You can press them in individually with a finger, but you don't even have to do that. Fill two, rotate, fill two, rotate, fill two, then do another complete rotation and the nozzle will push each BB back to exactly where they need to be. With practice, you can reload this thing in-game that way, and quicker than fumbling around with shells. So I reckon that if you actually want to skirmish with it, you'll never bother to actually open the cylinder. [Update] Play: The real effective range against a fully exposed target is maybe 40 feet. To be fair, HFC do list the range as effective/maximum 37/48 ft which is surprisingly realistic, although it lies about the hop and magazine so I suspect it's from the wrong gun or just random text. So is it useless? Well, no, not quite, and the most memorable kills I got with it were point-blanking folk in a killhouse. With the hammer cocked, you can get an effective close range shot off. However, the double-action trigger is so heavy that you're unlikely to get a second. This wasn't a problem in practice given the intensity of the action, and surprisingly, neither was the capacity. Most hits were trade-offs, I never lived live long enough to get through 6 chambers, and it can be reloaded on the way back to respawn. It's daft to try and use it versus just about anything else, but this is a daft hobby, and I had fun with it in that specific situation. tl;dr summary: It's a working revolver, it shoots BBs about as far as a cheap springer or (unhopped) AEP, and you can just about skirmish it. For £53 plus postage, I'm happy enough with it, although (e.g.) an AA R17 can be had for much the same money and will outshoot it all day long.

<them-feels-bro.png> We know, it's ridiculous. Particularly when air guns that look identical to either the real steel and the airsoft version can be bought and sold without any sort of loicence or defence; or you can buy a two-tone airsoft IF plus a rattle-can of matt black from Poundland if you have stick-'em-up intent and don't know that air guns exist. Given the attitudes to anything remotely gun related, and the gradual legislative creep towards prohibited-by-default and prove-your-innocence, it's a wonder that we're still permitted any of the above. I'm just enjoying it while it lasts, and It's not rocket surgery to find ways around the UKARA wait.

That sounds like a smart technique, although I'm surprised that it's necessary. Given that you can pop a 10mm ring spanner over the nozzle nut, I was able to use that to push down and then screw it in without any problems with a 100N spring. That said, it's entirely possible that the Rapax is longer and fightier. I was going to buy one (they're back in stock at skirmshop), but the 100N is performing just fine and the bolt pull is already pleasant.