Longshot

Perfectly put Finius, thanks. I assumed that was the case, but wasn't sure if effectively any goods or services provided for other goods or services is considered 'sale.'

Bit of an odd one, but since it is illegal to sell a RIF what is the legal position on 'trading?' If I were to swap a RIF with someone who had a RIF, in the full knowledge that they never played airsoft and never intended to, would this legally be considered the same as selling to them? PS. I love you for helping me. Thanks very much. Hey, let's be friends! (I've been told I need to be friendlier when talking about legal issues).

£30 just of rental is ridiculous. How much is the actual game fee?

You make some good and accurate points Bright. I would say though I never understand when people say how much renting for three games costs; it's not £30 a game ADDITIONAL to rent, it's more like £10 additional to rent since everyone has to pay the game fee whether they have their own gun or not. So waiting for UKARA (if you decide you really want it) is only really going to cost you about £30.

I'm just going to point out that the law and UKARA are not the same thing. The law doesn't say you have to play anywhere for any amount of time, UKARA does.

Your punishment is to try and fit the number googol nonchalantly into a conversation in the next 24 hours. If you choose to write it you can do so instead, but you cannot write the word, you must express it in its numerical form: 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

That's incorrect. They wanted to call it the number 'googol' but misspelled that.

For future reference for anyone reading this thread (and honestly not to piss on your chips BrightCandle) people really need to stop paying high street opticians their ridiculous prices. I got mine done by the guy at http://www.specs-by-post.com a few years back. I must have sent at least a dozen people his way since then too. He'll glaze inserts like this to your prescription for about £12.

Does anybody know of any UK shops, apart from Airlab, that sell Lonex V2 gearbox shells?

Why does it matter! There's no law against owning an IF or a RIF. There is a law against manufacturing a RIF, though I doubt anyone could accuse you of slowly rubbing paint off to do this. That said, if you've ever played airsoft then you're basically immune to prosecution even if you just painted the whole thing black on purpose anyway.

Don't listen to anyone else. The SAS will descend on your house within 24 hours if you don't paint the entire thing fluorescent pink. Also, IIRC, it has to also glow in the dark.

Why are you 're-two-toning' it?

I just find it hard to take the concept of playing airsoft 'seriously' that seriously.

Job number one would be take it to a friend (or to site) and try out whatever mags they're using to make sure whatever brand you're intending to buy will fit and feed. I'd say MAG are good, but my M4 just didn't like them; it's a G&P but it works best with CA mags. I've seen two threads recently where people have just bought 'M4 mags' only to find out that the ones they bought didn't feed (or in one case even fit) in their gun. My response to one guy (and it would be the same to you) was: In my magazine box upstairs I have 6 different brands of M4 midcaps. This is because over the years I've had about 5 different M4s and they were all just picky about what they would feed from (in some cases some mags would not even fit into the magwell). Unfortunately not all M4 mags are the same, so while one gun may take one brand of mag it won't necessarily take another brand, even if they look the same. My G&P likes CA mags for example, but won't even fit Dboys and doesn't like to feed from A&K or (strangely) G&P. It's not just M4s either. I just bought an LCT AK which came with an LCT mag that feeds fine. I was then happy to find out that my TM mags from my TM AK also fit and feed fine, but confused to then find that my SRC mags, which fit and feed fine in my TM, will fit but not feed in my LCT. So it's worth checking (if you can) before buying!

^ the last paragraph here, if not the whole thing, should become a 'sticky' on all airsoft forums.

Mr Cheesewright has a point, for the sake of ease, though bear in mind that there is no law against owning a RIF. If the police are speaking to you about your gun it shouldn't really matter whether it's an IF or a RIF - what really matters what you were doing before that in order for them to turn up!. The problem is that what the law actually says and what the police officer that is speaking to you thinks it says are not always going to be the same thing.

You're right that it is a sort of legal 'grey area,' in as much as nobody who wrote the rules really thought this bit through (sounds very familiar to most of the VCRA). Essentially it is illegal to manufacture a RIF, for example by removing the paint from an IF ('two tone'). However, you can avail yourself of a defence against prosecution if you have done this for the purposes of playing airsoft at a site with third party liability insurance. There is no specific age restriction on this, so it doesn't matter whether you're 18 or not. So, long story short, anyone who is going to use it for playing airsoft at a proper site can manufacture a RIF.

Now that is an outstanding post, thanks. Loner is my forerunner at the moment; WGC have them in and I'll be ordering some bits for my new AK from there soon anyway. The only other one that's been getting a few recommendations is the Modify Torus shell. Do you know anything about that one UTJ? Also, your the second person to tell me about 'radiusing.' What is this?

After a fair bit of hard use over the last couple of years the gearbox shell on my G&P Sentry has decided to die. I noticed a couple of small pieces of metal fall out of the magwell so I opened it up and there were cracks on the front part of the shell. I thought: "I know what will be a good idea - I'll pull the trigger and see what happens!" It was not a good idea. Pieces of gearbox shell everywhere. So, I need a new gearbox shell for a V2 gearbox with 8mm bushings. What brand do people recommend these days? Thanks in advance.

Seriously, the one time I'm not actually being sarcastic (and this time as well). Threads like this normally turn into: "you can't paint your gun until you're 18 and have a UKARA licence" and other nonsense. Then I come on and start preaching and everyone gets pissed off at me. I'm just really impressed at the level of knowledge and common sense that has been offered on this sort of thread for once (though I've still come on and got people pissed of with me...).

I am genuinely so happy with the sensible and legal advice this young man has been given. Well done this forum.

Where are you moving from?

If you just want the best feeling/quality build revolver you need to be looking at a Tanaka. Be willing to pay for their quality though.

"just out of interest, i take it you practice sword fighting? (this is no way intended to come across as i am having a go, i am just interested if you do)" Not really, not in the same sense as Ian does wherby I'm following a specific art form of it at least, though i have recently begun doing some training in Eurpoean medieval style weapons (primarily spear, kite shield and axe based stuff - though this is generally fighting in formation and shield wall rather than one on one). My structured experience is all in unarmed stuff. I've been an MMA instructor for about 11 years now, but spent time as a British Combat Association instructor back in the day when RBSD was all the big thing there for a while, so I've done some weapon based training through that. My interest in weapons is primarily collecting, reading about and playing with them, and I've amassed a ridiculous amount of them over the years! The difference, to a degree, is that I keep a pell to use in my back garden and did (before my son came along) have a pole with a big spike sticking out of it for attaching things to and practising cuts on or destruction testing weapons on. From my experiene I would say the problem with saying "anyone can use a sword" is that it is as true as saying "anyone can throw a punch;" it is true, but anyone who actually knows about throwing punches will tell you there's a lot more to doing it than simply throwing your arm out with your fist clenched, it takes timing technique and (particularly in a high adrenaline situation) the sort of muscle memory that only comes from a lot of training. Despite my limited explerience with swords, I'd have to say that they must be regarded in the same way; it's more than just swinging the lump of metal. When I've done cutting tests with swords (and I'm talking about cheap stuff as well as using my good expensive katanas and my Albion made European swords) I've found that I'm not all that bad and killing fruit, veg and lumps of meat - as long as they stay perfectly still and I can line them up nice and slow and really concentrate on a good cut. But would I feel confident in a 'sword fight' as a result? No! I'd start swinging like a mad man and probably hit with the flat of the blade more often than not (I end up doing that even on the fruit!), and I know I'd get tired fast. That said, I'd still rather have the sword than not when faced with zombies! Lastly, I have nothing against the idea of trapping things in a doorway - it's not a bad strategy at all - I just don't think that a katana is the right tool for the job since (unless you were good enough to drop it in one solid cut) you'd have to be significantly far away from the door to swing the sword at anything coming through several times (and the thing would have to be through the doorway before you could hit it with any meaningful downward strokes) so I just don't believe it would fall into the door as you would hope. Personally, if I wasn't going to have to drag it around with me afterwards, I'd take a large shield in that scenario, something like a Roman scutum, stand in the doorway with my body behind it allowing the undead to build up, and then take a short/medium length, relatively light straight-bladed weapon like a Roman gladius, and stab away at any heads you see. That would guarantee your protection behind the shield, the pile of bodies blocking the door (as you're now actually killing them in the doorway itself) and eliminiate any danger of hitting walls, ceilings and doorframes that you're inevitably going to face with any weapon that requires a swinging motion.

I wouldn't say I was being 'obtuse' - I understand perfectly well what people were describing they think they could do - but I'll certainly admit to being very picky; and I do like to win arguments! The problem with this whole scenario for me is two-fold. Firstly, zombies that can only be killed by destroying the brain are magical and have no scientific basis whastoever. As a result the whole scenario requires us to magic up our own definition of the zombies' capabailities. If we rule out 'fast moving zombies' (I'm not going to say '28 Days Later zombies' since there are no zombies in that film) then we're left with 'shamblers.' Personally I imagine these things would still have the ability to raise their arms in defence and swing at you aggresively, even though they may move slowly. I also imagine that since their limbs, muscles and bone are magically holding them together and still moving them that they would also be relatively strong if they got their hands on you. Most people on here, however, are imagining their zombies as moving as slowly as possible, with no head movement at all and having bone and muscle that is paper thin and therefore requires little to no strength to cut through or pierce. I have no idea how such a thing could still move or stand, but since it is a magic thing I'll happily concede that, in this case, any idiot could stand there with a £150 piece of moulded metal that has an edge on it (and a laser etched hamon for good effect) that they want to call a katana and could, given the fact that they have pretty much unlimited time to kill the zombie (as it now seems to pose no significant threat) simply hack or stab it up and then drag its corpse to wherever they wanted it. Secondly, and what actually annoys me more, is that people have no experience of fighting in the style they claim they would employ yet think they could do it because someone in a work of fiction did so. Why is nobody saying "I'd stand 10 foot from the doorway just throwing throwing knives into the eye sockets of any zombie that came through!"? The answer, I imagine, is because people (probably having attempted to actually throw something sharp at a board at some point and realising it's not actually as easy to do as it looks in the movies) accept that they couldn't do it with any reasonable level of power or skill unless they had practiced it for a very long time. Yet when it comes to swords in particular everyone decides that they could easily use it the way they do in the movies, with no practce whatsoever, despite the fact that they have never actually tried to cut anything with their swords. Indeed if they had ever taken a sword to anything that remotely resembles a human limb they would realise that it is not easy to cut apart in a single stroke at all (though again, I'll happily concede that when fighting a paper thin zombie this of not going to be such a big issue). Furthermore and finally (finally! ) if there was a horde of zombies to deal with you'd have to be cutting over and over again and also probably doing so in a situation of high stress. It's at this point that people with no experience of fighting whatsoever realise that continous combat is very tiring and requires trained muscles - especially if it's combat that involves wielding a big lump of steel! Moreover, adrenaline is a great thing if you are used to dealing with it, but will mess you up completely if you're not (as most people who don't train any fighting style at all or train incorrectly often find, to their detriment, when they end up in any real confrontation).