Impulse

Vortex Crossfire HD 1400 Rangefinder. £200 on Uttings Yeah, it's somewhat pricey and goes to ranges far beyond what I need in airsoft, but that Vortex warranty is nice, and after using my friend's cheapo golf rangefinder I'm so glad I shelled out. The Vortex one is super clean and easily visible, but I had a lot of trouble actually seeing the readout on my friend's one.

After the debacle with my order getting nicked from my mailbox because Evri thought it would be a good idea to leave it super visible on a very busy street just down from the rough part of town, I disputed the order and the seller basically just said they'd send me the products again. It was only £10 worth of cheapo Aliexpress inserts, but they have now arrived and my lightweight setup is complete. It's super easy to swap between weapons with the inserts and if I like it I may splash out on a proper Haley Strategic D3CRM plus inserts instead of the Aliexpress clone stuff here (I also have some 9mm SMG inserts as well for my mp9, but I mostly snipe or DMR so I only included those in the picture). Full loadout allows for 4 spare pistol mags, 5 spare MWS mags / 4 spare m700 mags, and my rangefinder in the chest rig and belt (waiting on a kydex radio pouch that will go on the belt too), then spare BBs, gas, tactical snacks etc. in the backpack that can be quickly removed when needed. It's super easy to swap between my MWSs and m700s as all I need to do is swap out the chest rig insert, as the rifle mag pouches on the belt fit both, though the m700 mags are quite tight! So just waiting on the kydex radio pouch to complete this (baofeng w/ extended battery, cheapo milspec PTT and clone Invisio m3 earpiece is my comms setup), but considering the only guns I use nowadays are MWSs or m700s, I really like this setup as it's super easy to switch between them. It basically accommodates all the guns I use, even my Kar98k with its weird mags that I just put in the admin part of the chest rig. Testing it this weekend with my civvie setup (cheapo not-jeans and a flannel shirt) and the entire loadout fits in a single gun bag plus the backpack I'll be taking into the games themselves.

Just got back from a day at sunny Worthing Airsoft, and yes it really was a lovely sunny day! I was a little bit sour because my Aliexpress order hadn't arrived yet (and you know it's arriving tomorrow!) so I couldn't run my planned civvie loadout or my new D3CRM copy, and with my OD trousers with a rather embarrassingly placed tear in them, I actually had to wear camo today. The ever reliable m81 trousers came out, but I made sure that was the only camo I was wearing; I love playing with no camo patterns because it really makes you have to think when it comes to remaining undetected and helps keep the skills sharp. For guns, I decided to take my mk12 mod1 MWS, set up as a DMR, since I've only got 1 more bag of .48s, but loads of bags of .43s and it performed all day. I was tagging the 70m target with ease and even the 75m one with over half my shots, though I could definitely feel the difference in power from my usual 2.3J bolt actions to the 1.8J of DMR. I was watching my shots lose that power and consistency right at the edge of its effective range (which I class as 70m), where I know my bolt actions will keep that consistency for another 5 or so metres. However, the trade off is that I get much easier follow up shots. For sidearm I decided to use my hi-capa today, and that also didn't miss a beat. Anyway, first game was a three base domination. Once they had split us into our two teams, I told my friend we were about to get stomped because a LOT of the regulars congregated around each other and got put on the same team, while me and my friend saw this and made sure to go on the other side. To nobody's surprise, we got stomped in the first game and I spent most of the time dissuading sneaky bushes from trying to flank behind us. Having so much experience as a sentient bush myself, and armed with a DMR today, I made a surprisingly good counter sniper. Second game was the same three base domination, but with sides flipped and a few players moved across teams to help with the team balance. This one flowed much better and was a pretty great game. Me and my friend, both using MWS-based DMRs today, made a pretty decent pair and managed to cause some damage to the enemy team as they tried moving from one of the bases around the flank of another one. Third game was a larger game that ran until lunch where basically there were a bunch of flip cans to control (yellow team wants the yellow side up, blue team wants the blue side up) as well as a LOT of collectibles. There was a... technical difficulty though, as the marshall who had us at our base got no radio communication that the game was started, so when he called game on for us, we made it about 20m out of our base before getting lit up as the enemy team had already been let out a minute or two earlier. The marshall did apologise and owned it, so props for that; basically the radios decided to have a moment and so he didn't receive any comms from the other marshalls for a countdown or the call for the game to start. What this meant is that me and my friend basically spent the entire game on base defence, as our base was situated close to one of the only areas where guns with an MED can perform well. I managed to crawl into some ferns (and some stinging nettles that were hiding there!) and had a great line of sight onto two trees and a barricade that the enemy team just loved to use, and I managed to get a lot of great shots onto them without being detected. All in all, it was a really good morning, as I didn't play after lunch because my new purchase needed some range time (pre-ban Tanaka m24 😍). The weather was really good for airsoft today, hovering around 20 celcius and with a fairly low wind, relative to the very breezy game days we've been having. It was still somewhat windy, but it was nowhere near as bad. I know a lot of people complain when it's 20 celcius, but I used to live and play airsoft in Spain; we had to stop playing at around 2pm for siesta because it started to get close to 40 celcius, which was a bit too toasty... Furthermore, hit taking from the shots that I took seemed to be really solid. There was only one player who took a bit of persuasion, but the 2nd hit got him to put his hand up and walk back to respawn. That's the only instance of poor hit taking I saw, and it wasn't even that bad! However, I will harp on like a broken record, because it really got put into perspective today with me playing elsewhere just last week for once... The site is too overgrown and really needs some attention; the entire bottom of the site is lost, the hill connecting the top and the bottom is lost, and the top of the site now is even starting to get really bad. Playing at Allsorts Airsoft last weekend really put it into perspective. At Allsorts I found myself naturally playing more actively, getting stuck into the games a bit more, whilst still being able to find spots where my 30m MED guns could actually do some work, without it feeling overpowered. At Worthing, there's just... too much foliage. Not just from a "it blocks my shots and makes a 30m MED incredibly challenging" perspective, but also from a playing aggressively and more actively perspective. At Allsorts, I didn't go in with the mindset of "I'm going to play active today", I just went in with my normal mindset and ended up naturally playing more actively. I went into today with the same mindset and... I don't like playing more actively at Worthing because there are too many bushes and it's incredibly easy to hide and ambush people; trust me, I've been doing it for years so I appreciate the hypocrisy in me moaning about it now. If you push up, you'll probably get shot by someone sitting in a bush elsewhere, and it leads to just... not as much enjoyment. It's far too easy to hide and far too hard to actually push, which can slow games down. Hell, I managed it today in my OD shirt and a scrim net that I sometimes draped over my cap and scope, with people looking right at me and having no idea I was there. Next game day I'll have my full civvie setup, so flannel + jeans will be out in force. I will go into next game day with both in mind; I will see how much I can get away with when it comes to hiding, considering I'll be in black and white flannel, and some jeans, but I'll also try and spend some of the day playing more actively and see how it goes. Will be an effort, but science must be scienced!

Nah, mine's a KJW m700 in a Modelworks m40 kit, with the outer barrel swapped for the Action Army outer barrel to allow it to be threaded so I can fit a suppressor. I pretty much only use gas guns, and most of my guns are bolt actions or DMRs despite most people moaning that they're not consistent enough (unironically a skill issue...); they're great, but you really have to know what your doing, tweak them basically every game day, and you have to own a bunch of different types of gas for different weathers. At the moment I'm using green, but in 6 months time I will be using red or even black gas. And yeah, any 7mm VSR spring I believe (so... most of them. Maple Leaf and Laylax are both 7mm springs I believe). If you want to use a 9mm spring like the Rapax ones, you'll need a 9mm spring guide, but again that's just a standard VSR thing, so any 9mm VSR spring guide should fit.

Pretty sure the Maple Leaf 338 is basically just a VSR built out of Maple Leaf parts. Unless I'm mistaken, I believe you should just be able to use VSR parts in that one, and the Maple Leaf internals should handle springs sufficient to get it to 2.3J. Not sure what other parts it comes with internally, but my go-to for VSRs is also the Action Army VSR hop unit and either a Flamingo + omega nub or 4uantum hop rubber plus the nub that rubber comes with. Can't tell you about the TM m40a5 as I've never used one (my m40a5 is a gas gun).

I just got back from... not Worthing for once. A couple of us decided to head to Southdown / Allsorts Airsoft today for a bit of a shoot and all in all it went pretty well. It's been literally years since I've visited, and I've only ever been once before so it was basically like playing at a new site. Thought I'd give myself a handicap and decided to use my Kar98k, which means I have 4x 10rd magazines, though I couldn't go with no camo because my OD trousers have a massive tear along the crotch and it was just way too obvious / hard to hide, so I had my m81 trousers to go with my OD top. Anyway, first game was a three base domination, marked with flags. I took it slow to try and get a feel for how the gameplay would flow and I think I got a good idea pretty quickly. There was a very shallow trench with a bunch of ferns growing along the side, so I ducked into that and posted up around a tree with a pretty good line of sight on the area we were playing. There was a lot of reloading my mags in between action, so while the 40rds maximum was very low, I didn't get into any situations where I was out of ammo and needed to shoot as I managed to keep on top of my ammo management and got some lovely shots in the meantime. We then swapped sides and I posted up on one of the flanks to make sure they couldn't sneak around us. It was uneventful, but someone had to do it! Next game we had to find some small silver goblets that were scattered around the next gameplay area. We were at the top of a hill for this and it caught the wind something fierce. What made it worse was that the wind was blowing against us, so I was finding myself getting ranged by 1.1J AEGs even though my 2.3J Kar98k shoots really well; shooting against a strong breeze vs shooting with a strong breeze makes a hell of a difference. Managed to make it work, including some strong tilting of the rifle to try and counter some of the crosswind, but when we swapped sides it was a lot easier, though I did notice that my rifle was shooting a bit funny, so I sat the final game before lunch out to work out what was causing my rifle to shoot weird every so often. I think I've solved the mystery, and basically it boils down to my PPS Kar98k not liking my Tanaka Kar98k magazine. I think it's shooting a lot lighter than the PPS mags. Anyway, after lunch we played the same game as before lunch but swapped sides. We had to get a bomb into the castle structure and then hold it (we were defending in the game I sat out before lunch, now we were attacking). I actually swapped to my SRS after lunch as I was getting tired of reloading those 10rd magazines in game so much, and being effectively down to 3x 10rd magazines was a bit more of a faff than I wanted to deal with. 5x 30rd magazines was... substantially more pew pew and I was able to try more extreme shots. This game I didn't use too many BBs anyway, though the following game where we had to arm a bomb in the middle of a different area I got a lot of 70-80m shots, curving it with the wind to hit people and it was insanely satisfying. This kind of game is why I enjoy my long range stuff. The final game of the day was a survival game. Everyone was grouped onto one team with a few people on the other team with infinite respawns. The (initially) large defending team had to join the attacking team when they were hit, and with the attacking team starting with a bunch of my friends, I knew they'd have it in for me because they know I can hide well. I hunkered down in some ferns with eyes on the flank, draping my scrim net over my head, shoulders and part of my rifle, but as I saw one of my friends coming up that side there was ONE GODDAMN FERN IN THE WAY AND IT KEPT DEFLECTING MY SHOTS! He started shooting in my general direction, as he thought he saw me (he did), but I stayed perfectly still and he soon gave up on that and started shooting other people as he just assumed I was part of the bush when I didn't react to his shots whizzing past me. I decided to just give up and went to ground, holding my pistol just in case someone got up close to me and spotted me. As the defending team started to dwindle heavily, I heard some of my friends shouting at me with the "where are you hiding?" and "come on out!" lines. However, I stayed perfectly still in my spot, only shifting to look behind me when nobody was looking in my direction as that's where a bunch of my friends were who were looking for me. Fortunately, they didn't, and the game ended. There were about 3 of us left at the end who managed to stay hidden for the whole game. All in all, it was a really fun day of airsoft. It was nice that there weren't any real problematic egos on site; everyone was pretty chill and there weren't any of the typical milsim-taking-it-too-seriously players either. It was just a really pleasant, friendly vibe. Staff were friendly and marshalls were active in game, making sure that anyone doing anything against the rules, and I heard them tell some players off for going out of bounds, and others for trying to move an objective. Hit taking was also pretty good, with only one or two players being a bit bulletproof that I could see. It was also nice to go to a site where there were areas where my 2.3J rifle could do its best work as when I play at Worthing it is waaaaaaaaaay too overgrown there and it's hard to really take shots over that 30m MED outside of a few areas. I love my long range shooting, so it was a welcome change of pace being able to actually shoot long distance, as I missed Shift Your RIFT last weekend which would've been my long distance shooting fix.

Gas bolt actions and DMRs are pretty much all I use and I think they're fantastic, but I can't recommend them as a first platform as they're finicky and require a lot of tweaking. You will not get the same consistency as a well set up spring or HPA setup (which really ruffles some peoples feathers for some reason), though you can get them consistent enough and the accuracy is just as good. However, every time you use them, you have to spend a bit of time dialling the power in as they're temperature dependent. Also, you can't chase the power limit (which again, really ruffles some peoples feathers) because if you chrono at 2.3J in the morning, you'll be pushing 2.6J by lunch on a warm day. All that said, if you really want a gas bolt action, the Tanaka m700 platform is the best. Pre-ban Tanaka rifles are the best, as it's pretty easy to adjust the power on them, but the clone KJW rifles are just as good, just a bit of a pain to adjust the power by comparison. They definitely need upgrades, regardless of which model you get though. Generally need to swap out the hop unit as the Tanaka unit is an ancient design and while the KJW unit takes VSR rubbers, it's a crap hop unit. Barrel, hop rubber and nub also need swapping out, and on some models you need to think about outer barrel as well, because the standard one houses a 630mm inner which is way too much and joule creeps uncontrollably. You also need to swap out the nozzle as they're way too short on the Tanaka rifles and a good 4mm(ish) short on the KJW, but no airsoft manufacturers make them, so you need to get them custom machined. For DMRs there are a lot more options that will do the job. I built mine on a TM MWS platform as a mk12 mod1 and it slaps, but I know people who have used various VFC rifles to build DMRs to great success, like the m110 or G28, but I can't tell you about those as I have no experience. A lot of work getting the rifles shooting well, and it's still not quite as good as a well-tuned tac41 or VSR as the power fluctuations will be higher due to how gas works and there's nothing you can do about that. However, they are more than accurate enough, and the power fluctuations aren't that awful, just some people get their knickers in a twist if their bolt action rifles aren't doing 3fps consistency. I have 3 VSRs (2x spring, 1x HPA), an SRS and an MTW, all pretty obsessively tuned, yet I still use my m700s, kar98s and my MWSs over them all.

Honestly, just go with whichever you prefer the look of. TM pistols (assuming you're talking about the TM ones) are all really reliable and you don't need to do anything to them for them to shoot pretty damn well. Just leave it stock and it will last you seemingly forever.

Every time I go to a larger event with a large group and nobody is using comms for the whole weekend apart from the people who have their PTT in a bad spot and are constantly hot mic-ing 🤣

I'm with @Tackle on this. I'd be more okay with it in milsim than walk on play. At milsim, it's supposed to be closer to real life (after all, it does stand for military simulation) and you already have people showing up with more expensive comms setups, NVGs and thermals, drones, sometimes even vehicles. If you bring someone on your team who can intercept the level of comms that most airsofters are using, then that's just part of the milsim, same as if you roll up on a squad at night who don't have any NVGs while your team is all decked out with fancy gen3 goggles and thermal imaging devices. Is it fair? No, but it's the way it is (and it's one of a number of reasons I avoid milsims) Skirmish days you're going to get a whole lot of different people. You're going to get casual comms users, people who only use them to shit talk each other, people just starting out and testing out their brand new Baofengs with each other etc. Honestly, I'd be annoyed if someone was going to intercept and break into my comms at a skirmish day because I'm just there to vibe with my friends, maybe practice some scout sniper tactics and do some basic reconnaissance stuff. I'm not trying to be super serious, and I'm more focused on the other fieldcraft stuff than having ironclad secure comms and don't want to start having to teach the small handful of other people I'm on radio with a secret code language because some tryhard showed up to a skirmish day with the means to intercept comms. I'd view it in the same way as if someone brought a thermal scope to a skirmish day. If someone just flat out gets hold of your frequency through loose lips, then you deserve it, though I still think it's a dick move at skirmish and I still think that flipping through frequencies to try and brute force guess someone else's frequency is also a dick move. My anecdote comes from a place of setting up a frequency with some of the basic security features on the Baofeng (CTCSS settings for example) and then keeping it to a tight knit group of, at best, around 6 people at max. Can it be intercepted? I'd be surprised if it couldn't be as I'm no cybersecurity specialist, but at the skirmish level it should be more than sufficient

Yep! I'm so happy I finally got one. I have now put all the parts in it (Action Army hop unit and nub, 4uantum hop rubber and a 570mm Stalker barrel), so next time I get to an airsoft site I'll be able to test it out; action army extended mags are a bit loose in it, but the King Arms extended mag appears to fit great, as do all my short KJW m700 mags (and obviously the short Tanaka m700 mags I have). In the meantime, going to see about getting a KJW suppressor adapter and seeing if it fits. If not I'll just use it without a suppressor because I don't want to swap out the outer barrel since I want it to look the part of the m24 (there's a reason I got one instead of just sticking with my m700s which look incredibly similar) Oh, it's also a pre-ban (as the box says) and whoever had it before has already saved me the issue of having to do the standard "replace that tiny Tanaka nozzle with the nozzle she tells you not to worry about" And I also ordered some m5x25 and m5x30 screws. The m5x35 screws I already have are just a tiny bit too long to fit my bipod to it, so a few slightly shorter screws went on the shopping list.

It's not every day I buy a new gun, but here we are. It's been... approximately 16 years since I first wanted one of these. Time to make it mean like the rest of my gas bolt actions 😈

Didn't play at all today at Worthing. I planned on playing, but we got there late due to an issue with the car, then by the time I had set up my Kar98k after the safety brief and passed it through chrono with one of the staff, the gameplay was a rolling assault down at the bottom of the site which is basically impossible to play with an MED because it's waaaaaaaaaay too overgrown down there; the entire bottom of the site really needs some help, as it's been neglected for years and has been retaken by Mother Nature. Heard that the game after lunch was going to be around the lower part of the site too, so I didn't go out, though I do think they instead decided to play at the top of the site after lunch. However I wasn't too bothered at this point and wanted to just make sure I set up my mk12 MWS as well as the last time I used it with a different NPAS, it simply wouldn't get up to power. At some point I will get the new maxx hop unit for it, but for now it's shooting fine with the 60d Flamingo rubber and the JP titan nub. So while I didn't play, I did make sure my DMR of choice was shooting well, as well as making sure the Kar98k was still shooting really well, so that's nice. For now I think I'm going to stick with those two because the MWS is a lot of fun and the Kar98k is a real head-turner and both are shooting really well at the moment. Will probably take these two to the next game day I go to (or swap the Kar98k for the Tanaka AICS as that's a bit of a head-turner too), which probably won't be for a month as I'll be missing the next one. Still loving the £20 AliExpress low profile belt kit as well. Such a great investment

I don't care much for these fancy new guns like the p320 or XM7. Cold War and GWOT are my jams, so while I like the design choices on the p320 from an airsoft perspective, I'm not bothered for the pistol itself. Got a friend who loves the Sig stuff though, so I sent it through to him