Airsoft-Ed

Sounds like you're having a shit time Nick. My gf of almost 6 years dumped me about 5 months ago, less than 2 weeks before my 21st and only about a week after my dog died. Bitch much? We can work through it though, shooting people in the face at the weekend is a great way to let your anger out haha.

There's no 6x ACOG replica available yet either, which is ideally what I'd want on it.

I've thought about it, but the right parts aren't available yet, plus I'd rather drink bleach than touch a V2 gearbox again for a long while.

What about this Tac? http://www.fire-support.co.uk/product/cawmosquito-spring-shotgun--m1014-benelli-m4 Under £200 and it's a Benelli M4 Super 90. Even I'm tempted at that price tbh... Even if it is plastic =[ It is out of stock though... Plus I've never even heard of CAW...

I know D= I'm not much of a shotgun guy though. I'm also put off by the fact it's a pump shotty in airsoft, but a semi auto in real life. I'm all about authenticity as you know and shotguns just aren't real enough. I imagine the airsoft one is made of some horrendous paper light plastic too.

I think the US Marines now use the Benelli M4 Super 90, otherwise known by the US Military designation - M1014, which you'll probably know from some CoD game or BF3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shotgun_in_training_US_military.jpg

The spring cutting is a good call, I remember reading about that. The cylinder head is conical on the inside though, so I'm not sure the piston head thing you were talking about would smash into it? I've had a responce from ASPUK about the compatibility - going off basic photos he said: "Righto, looking at the photos and off the top of my head measurements.... Looks like it takes: VSR Piston Sear VSR Trigger Sear (need to confirm length to see if its the same as VSR or the longer version in TM L96 AWS) Cylinder Head Piston Spring Guide Set Pin - although located in a different place. Springs 7mm (9mm outer diameter) Cylinder looks a possibility but might need to double check the end piece of the cocking lever actually fits on properly. I don't think other after market VSR triggers will fit because of the set pin (spring guide stopper) and trigger stop location. What does the hop look like? Could it take DangerWerx hop levers? The trigger casing is not unfamiliar, the HFC VSR uses similiar design." So once I've been paid I'll look at improving it. Plus, in responce to what he said, the hop lever looks exactly the same as the stock VSR ones and it's metal. And of course I'll keep this up to date as I add upgrades!

I've been having issues with my headset/PTT recently, but I can't figure out which part it is that has the issue. One of the headsets' speaker is broken, but the mic still works. So I can talk and be heard, but not get people's replies. Not sure if it's the heaset or the PTT, but I've tried both headsets on the same PTT and had the same issue twice, so I think the PTT is bummered.

Nah, there's no hole all the way through, part of the trigger mech sticks into the cylinder around the spring guide and the cocked indicator has something to do with that but they're not intrinsically linked. If you pull the trigger really slow, it's possible to drop the cocked indicator down without the gun actually firing. I can unscrew the indication piece by hand, then underneath it, there's an allen screw that tightens it all up. Took me ages to find it because the allen screw sits underneath the threads for the indication piece, so when you're looking into the hole it just looks like a nut that the indication piece screws into.

Lastly, I thought I might as well take the time out to explain how the feeding mechanism works, since from what I can tell it's a new system. Hopefully they'll bring out an upgrade feeding tube, because I've had nothing but issues with it so far. Here's the feed tube, looking at it from the end where it meets the magazine: The little catch on the top of the hole is under spring tension, which causes it to push down and obstruct the hole a bit like a guillotine. This is because the tube holds BBs inside it, to prevent you dropping 25 every time you remove the magazine. When you insert the magazine it has a sort of corresponding catch, which doubles as the BB blocker: Works exactly the same as the catch on the feeding tube. When you insert the mag into the gun, they sit together like this - just without the spaces in between obviously: The catch on the feeding tube latches into the corresponding part of the magazine which pushes the latch upwards, opening the hole from the photo above, like this: Allowing BBs to freely pass through the mag, into the tube and be held under constant spring tension from the magazine. However, this is where the problem arises. The magazine isn't held in the gun in the right place for the feeding mechanism to actually work. The magazine sits slightly too high, so the hole the BBs are coming from in the magazine, eclipses the hole in the feeding tube, making the gap too small for BBs to fit through. So the only way to get the gun to feed, is to pull the bolt to the rear, tap the magazine to briefly knock the two holes in line enough for one BB to slip through and push the rest one BB along, to get one in the chambre. Then push the bolt back forwards and fire the shot. If you don't do this then the gun never chambres a round, unless you pointing it down at an angle of 30 degrees or more, because the BBs in the feed tube just push the furthest shot forward into the hop unit because of gravity. You can actually forego using the magazine at all and use this method to load shots more generally. But it does making shooting from a prone position impossible. In short, the feeding mechanism has rendered the gun almost unusable. But I will perceiver! Just need to find a way to make the mag sit in the right place, either by modding the feeding tube, or altering the magazine seating position...

Ok so here's a take down guide with loadsa pictures. ...This might actually be the most photo heavy post there's ever been on the forums. Anyway, you'll want to start off by taking the scope and its mounting bracket off, just makes it that bit easier to manoeuvre: Then you flip the rifle over and undo the two screws on the bottom, allowing you to separate the barrel, bolt and trigger assembly from the stock: The two screws are here: Note that the longer one goes by the trigger: Once they're out you can lift the barrel up and separate the two parts of the rifle: So now you're sat with this in front of you: Next you want to loosen the two screws on the right hand side, you don't need to fully remove them, they just clamp the barrel inside the receiver - if you can call it that on a sniper: Then, before you pull the barrel out, to prevent any damage coming to the fragile feeding tube, you might want to unfasten it and remove it before sliding the barrel free: Undo these two screws here: Then lift the feeding tube out - be sure to empty it of BBs first, I forgot... it holds 25 and they bounced around all over my dining room... Cat went mental. Now the barrel will slide free of the receiver: Next, we remove the trigger mechanism in order to get at the bolt assembly, to take the trigger out, remove these four screws: Then just pull it free - be aware that the parts on the sides can fall off, so you might want to take note of how they're placed in case they do: Once the trigger is free, you can just slide the bolt assembly out - there is a plastic O-ring that sits around the cylinder at the front end, it holds the barrel in the right place, so don't lose it! So now you'll have an assortment of bits in front of you, which after some organisation, ought to look something like this: So that ought to help if anyone's wanting to carry out any work on it at all. In addition to the take down, I've also taken some better photos of the bolt components and measured them with a tape measure... Not spectacularly accurate, but hopefully it'll help you all direct me to which parts will and won't fit... Here's the cylinder head: I'm not sure it comes out in the photos, but it sort of has a conical shape on the inside, I assume that's a staple thing with snipers, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. Here's the piston: It feels quite flimsy, it's a very light plastic, has a degree of flex in it. The piston head doesn't seem to be removable either. Is that normal in snipers? Spring guide - same plastic as the piston: And one of the whole bolt assembly:

JD were there, yeah. Apparently LWA were too though, but I didn't see them today... I don't know if it was a lot better on the Saturday, but I thought it was a really shit 'show'. Almost £20 to get in, for what? £5 for the worlds crappest "baguette" and an eye opener into the snobbery of real steel shooting. Everyone was in tweed! I even saw some little kids, whose parents had dressed them in tweed, with flat caps and everything! Are these shotgunning farmers stuck in 1670 or something? There was a freakin' wine tasting and shoe polishing booth as well. I mean what the hell is this? A shooting show, or a who's the most weird arse hole contest? Plus these seriously fucking disturbing dead pigeons wired up to this animatronic machine things to make it look like they were flapping their wings... The airsoft section was also about a quarter the size of the rest of the show, which was largely like walking around the "old-man" section of M&S. JBBG also had the biggest stall there by a mile, they had girls handing out leaflets draped in their hats and shirts etc. They were essentially the face of airsoft at the show... I won't be bothering with it next year, let's put it that way.

I intend for this to be a timeline of my upgrade tree. This rifle is far too beautiful to give up on - there have been (and still are) toothing pains, which will be covered in time. From the title you know this is the Ares manufactured AW .338LM rifle, as designed by Accuracy International. The real rifle is the current LLR - Long Range Rifle - of the British Army and long range it is indeed, holding the longest recorded kill record for a number of years, 2 Taliban gunners were shot by Craig Harrison of the Household Cavalry at over 2475m, one after the other. He then disabled the PKM machine gun they'd been operating. No other rifle has performed this well in theatre and all previous and subsequent longest kill records were carried out on only 1 target. This thing is beastly as fuck in real life and the airsoft version is similarly impressive to behold. There are two versions of the airsoft one, I have the full version, but there is also a sports-line version. There is also a gas version by Ares and another by Well, but having had bad prior experiences with gas snipers, I've been waiting on getting a .338 springer for some time. The full version has a fluted barrel and the badass .338 muzzle break, as well as a monopod and integral 11mm top rail. The scope mount for this 11mm rail is supplied with the gun, so you can still stick any scopes you might already have onto it. The Sports-line version lacks the fluted barrel and muzzle break and more closely resembles an L96 with a .338 size bolt and magazine, it also comes with an integral 20mm Picatinny style top rail, as opposed to the more authentically, accurate to real life 11mm rail of the full version, nor does it come with the scope mounting rings. Supplied with the full version is one magazine, a bipod and the aforementioned scope mount. I won't talk about the Sports-line as I have no experience with it. The price I paid for the full version was £300 from JDAirsoft, paying £25 each for two spare magazines, also from JD and since JD only stock the black version, I also got an OD body kit for it for £35 - it takes the same body kit as the gas version. I also bought the scope intended for the VFC/ASG Ashbury .338 from Wolfarmouries, for about £95. So considering the amount I've spent on it before even seeing it, my experiences so far have been somewhat underwhelming... The rifle features realistic magazine placement, a folding stock allowing you to knock the length down to around 1m for easier transportation, it also has an adjustable monopod, cheek piece and buttstock (sort of)... You can remove some of the padding from the buttstock, but the screws that hold the pads in place, don't actually screw in any further than they're already screwed in It comes shooting at EXACTLY 400fps measured with .20g Blaster BBs +/- 5fps (rather amusingly the rifle has a sticker on it quoting the max power as 1.5 joules... 400fps with a .20 works out at around 1.49J lol) I had one rogue shot chrono at 358 but I think it hit the inside of the chrono, so aside from that anomalie the fps has a variation of about 10fps, which I think is pretty good. My initial thoughts on opening the box were "Wow" to put it bluntly, this thing is spectacular, with aftermarket scope and magazine inserted it weighs in around 6.5/7kg and it's around 4 feet long, most of the weight being in the barrel. It is heavy and hard to handle, smaller users be aware of this. Accuracy is about the same as a standard AEG and the range is around 45m - you're going to need upgrades. It appears to be fully VSR compatible, it definitely uses a VSR hop bucking - I'll confirm the rest of the parts once I get a chance to show it to Daz from ASPUK. My experiences with it so far: Bad, in short. In long - Sure it looks pretty, but the feeding mechanism design is atrocious. If I'd foreseen the issues I've had with it, then I'd have probably bought the Maruzen L96, done my best to make it look like a .338 and then just dealt with the fact that the ejection port would've never been the right length... Yes, I am that anal about weapon details, that's why I had to get a sniper with the mag in the right place! The feeding mechanism is very temperamental and the rear section of the bolt assembly (the classic L96 series boxy section) has a tendency to come loose. So far I have discovered that the feeding mech works in a peculiar way... Because the magazine placement is realistic, instead of feeding the BBs directly upwards into the hop unit, they feed them forwards into a tube. This tube is exactly 25 bbs long and as the mag pushes more BBs into it, the first one gets pushed into the hop unit- theoretically! What actually happens, is that the space between the mag and the feeding tube is just large enough for two bbs to get jammed, which stops the mag spring from being able to push the bb stack from the tube, meaning that the feeding mechanism simply doesn't work. The only way I've found to load bbs into the chambre so far, is by angling the barrel downwards by about 30 degrees as I charge the bolt. Which as you can probably tell, is highly irritating and inconvenient. The mags also have a tendency to spray all the bbs out everywhere because the stopper comes in the form of a gigantic button on the outside edge of the mag, so even putting the mag down wrong can result in ammo going everywhere. Heavy sniper ammo is expensive and these mags hold 70 shots, so that's like seeing a shower of 5ps flying away from you or something. The feeding tube section is also the only internal component which is plastic in construction and since the magazines have a habit of falling out unless you slap them incredibly hard, I've already managed to break crucial section of it. I've been able to fix it by cutting up an old credit card and using it in place of the section that snapped off, but it's a pisser all the same. The bolt loosening itself is an easy fix once you know how to solve it. I was trying to figure out how for over an hour last night. Turns out you can unscrew the pin in the back of it which shows whether the rifle is cocked, by hand. Revealing an allen head screw, simply tighten this and the problem is solved. So that's it for my preliminary findings. I'll work on the feeding issues and find out what the parts are compatible with, as well as getting some photos of the internals added next time I have it in pieces. So stay tuned for updates. Cheers folks. Edit: Just adding some photos of the externals, just so those who aren't so gun savvy have an idea what I've been rambling about:

I got about 10 hits with it on Saturday, only used it for about 2 games. 2 people took the hit, the rest were more or less the same guy being hit in the same place from the same location about 7 times in a row and not taking it. Ran into him later in the day with my L85 and emptied a mag on him from about 35m away to the same result. Literally never seen anyone be such a massive, cheating cock. The only time when I've ever resorted to cheat calling. I was about an inch from crossing my temper line and flooring the wanker. If he'd not been hiring so he didn't look exactly the same as the 40 other people hiring then I'd have certainly had words in the safe zone...

My new sniper. It has possibly the most shit feeding mechanism in the history of the universe. Currently it only works if I point the gun downwards as I charge the bolt. Sorting it out requires me to fine tune the magazine fitting so that the mags are actually in line with the silly feed tube thing, but it's mentally draining and depressing and I can't be arsed to keep trying any more today.