Impulse

Weekend #5 in a row and while there was a scare for a bit of rain this morning, the weather held out for a lovely sunny day of airsoft. It did rain ever so slightly just before the safety brief, but it was barely noticeable and abated pretty fast. I decided to run my Cyma SR-25 today, though it was only chronoing at 1.73J; I would've liked it to be over 1.8J as the limit is 1.88J, but I wanted to see how it ran anyway. I could hit 75m fairly easily with a bit of angling, but I know when I'm over 1.8J I don't really need to angle it at all, so while it wasn't shooting exactly as I wanted, it was shooting well enough and it was accurate. First game was a long game where one of the marshalls was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and roamed the site. We had to bring stacks of cash to him to swap it for totally-not-flour that we had to carry back to our base in a specific briefcase. I managed to get into a barricade and tuck in close, with good line of sight forward and onto two flanking paths that I knew the enemy team was going to try and use. One thing I will say though is that Worthing Airsoft is worse this year than last year when it comes to being overgrown. There are very few places where using something with an MED is viable, but fortunately my barricade was one such place. Pretty much singlehandedly managed to hold that part of the site for the entire game and only got shot in the last minute when a bunch of yellows rushed up and one saw me, so I had to take him out. Earlier in the game I had yellows taking cover on the other side of the barricade and shooting over me while my friend was further back and shooting over my head to take them out. Good times. After lunch I swapped to my KJW m40a5, as we played a few simple games. 3 base domination where all the bases were around awful positions for 30m MEDs, so I ended up lying down watching a path where I didn't shoot anyone, apart from the yellows trying to come out of what is essentially a woodland killhouse at this time of year that I wasn't going into myself. Had a good line on it to my side with my pistol and took a lot of yellows out there without them working out where I am, despite the 1911 very much being a GBB and making GBB noises when I shot it; it's amazing what you can get away with if you're careful. Eventually got taken out, again near the end of the game, by someone I had previously taken out and he had respawned and come back from the other side, where I thought I would've had some teammates but apparently all the blues were... elsewhere? He was able to just waltz up pretty close without anyone shooting at him anyway. Then after that we played a king of the hill game at the Tower base; whoever had the most players inside the tower at the end of the game wins. We started on the easier side and I went to one of my usual spots watching the path, since there are very few other places I can go with an MED and this position is pretty strong anyway. Managed to take out a bunch of players down the path, but the yellows kept on coming in behind us and even when I called it out, the players near me were just like "no, those guys are blues and they're dead." I then got shot as I was telling them that no, there were yellows who shot those blues coming in from behind Anyway, had some drama when we swapped it around the other side. Trying to attack it with a bolt action from that side is hilariously difficult, but also I had a run in with the same ghillie player who is constantly causing issues. I can't remember the last time I bumped into him in game where he wasn't either breaking rules or being a general dick across the last year. Going out of bounds, shooting within his MED, spawncamping and headshots are constant with him. Basically, in this game I poked out from behind a barricade to look into the super dense area, full body on show and as I spot him lying down right in front of me and he shoots me in the neck from pretty much point blank with a mk23 that I'm pretty sure he uses heavy ammo in; the distance was maybe 1m? After the game he said it was unintentional, but I simply told him I didn't believe him, since my entire body was on show and he would've had to angle his pistol up to hit me in the neck, plus he had shot me earlier in the day as well with my whole body on show and it was another headshot. I will give people the benefit of the doubt, but when it's every time I start to wonder. The game before this one my friend said he was spawncamping us as well, which I was entirely unsurprised to hear as he does it fairly often, and apparently there were some people who had some nasty bleeders today who got shot by someone with a quiet gun, and I know it wasn't me as the only headshot I did today was a rental on the full face mask (that he didn't take) as that was all that was poking out; every other hit I dished out was a body shot today and hit calling was generally really good, I must say; outside of that one rental, everyone took their hits I found. I'm usually pretty diplomatic and chilled about most things and I've only ever complained about one player before, and surprise surprise it was another ghillie player who now doesn't play at Worthing as I think he got banned after he shot a marshall who was playing that game day in the face at about 10m with his bolt action. Anyway, I spoke to one of the site owners about it and they said they'd keep an eye on him, so that's all I can do. I'm not going to go on a rant on "why are so many ghillie players utter cockwombles?", but it's players like that that make me, someone who has played ghillie since about 2008, really start thinking that I wouldn't be that put off if they were banned across the entire country tomorrow. I love playing in my ghillie, but it seems like decent ghillie players tend to be an exception and not a rule and I start to think if the hobby would be better as a whole without them. We never had these issues back in 2008, not even when I played in Spain; I'd actually say that Spain was better despite there being no sites, no marshalls, no chrono etc, as it was self-governing; if you were a dick or a cheater, you didn't get invited to play. Simple. I finally have a weekend coming up where I won't be playing. I have a lot of guns that need a little tweaking (power on the SR-25, hop up on my mk12 MWS, setting up my G&P m14 that I collected today etc.), but I'm saving those for when I'm on blood thinners and can't play, as hopefully the procedure is coming up soon. However, with just how overgrown Worthing Airsoft is now I think I may ditch the ghillie for now and use a 1.1J gun instead. I think I'll go with my m14 scout or my short MWS for next game day.

I've been having lots of issues with mine recently. Upgraded the hammer set, auto sear and fire pin lock to the cowcow stainless steel stuff and now my AAP jams every so often. It feels like the hammer doesn't cock back fully and I have to remove the magazine, push the blowback unit forward, then put the magazine back in and manually cock it. If I push it forward with the magazine still in, it fires and I have to manually cock it back again. Also upgraded the blowback unit to be the cowcow lightweight one, but I know it's not the upper because the upper works with my stock lower, and my stock upper also doesn't work on the cowcow parts upgraded lower. I hate it ?

I went out to Gunman Eversley Alpha this weekend for a weekend of shooting GIs in the 'Nam. We set off on the Friday to get there nice and early and set up our camp compound. The guy who drives us all up there and introduced us to 'Namsoft loves his glamping, so we are always very well stocked. A bit of a squeeze this time as his grandson was with us as well, so we were four people instead of three and therefore needed a 2nd tent as we couldn't all fit in the one. We managed to get everything packed in and got there 2nd out of everyone. Another pair was there when we arrived and were setting up, but were setting up away from where we usually like to camp, so we claimed our corner and set up the tents, gazebo, literal kitchen etc. I was a little worried, as my heart was playing up a lot a few weeks ago, but it had been quiet since the Tuesday before last, so I made the decision to go along. Also, the guy driving couldn't play due to tendonitis in his hips (but he still wanted to go as he loves his camping and wanted to see the familiar faces), so we were down to three during the gameplay. He did get out there though as a civilian to help Josh with some objective placements and stuff. Friday night I found it difficult getting to sleep due to anxiety around my heart, but eventually got to sleep without any issues. Anyway, first day was... slow. I headed out with my new PPS Kar98 set up for 1J on .32s and we were put with the main squads to go and put up some observation posts. It's not usually how we play, as our little group does our best work when we're a bit more independent and just focus on making the lives of the GIs hell, but we went along with it to avoid conflict and also help show our new addition around and get him used to the 'Nam. He's only 12 and only started playing airsoft recently, so it was a very different experience for him from normal skirmish and we wanted to make sure he didn't get overwhelmed. Our first little sortie went... pretty poorly. I think part of this was that Josh said it would be game on in 5 mins after the brief, but it probably took closer to 20 - 25 mins for the NVA/VC team to get out to our respawn and go through our objectives and how we wanted to do them. We didn't get too far outside of our base before we got attacked by two separate groups of Americans (well, one was the Aussies, one was the Americans). My friend tried to sneak into one of the many thick bushes just ahead of us, but as he did so a third American team popped around the corner and him also being armed with a Kar98 was not the best weapon to engage a whole squad, so he dived for cover but got hit. He managed to crawl over to me (as you can crawl to a teammate in these filmsim events), so I medic'd him back in. We took a couple of the Americans down, but there were way too many of them and the firepower was overwhelming. I managed to take a few out with the Kar98 and as it's fairly silent they couldn't pinpoint my location. One guy definitely ignored the hit I put on him, but outside of that I put non-hit taking down to them being fairly long distance shots while they were moving and I think we've all been there; a single shot at long distance so the impact isn't massive is easy to not feel when you're moving about. The rest of the group tried to move on the flank and my friend eventually got hit again by the m60 on the hill that had been medic'd back in as well. I held down in the bushes until my friend's bleedout, as the dogtags I hated from last year's game made a return and I didn't want to abandon his to be collected by the US for a free point. I think that the US thought it was just him there and were trying to mop up the other squad to our left before coming to collect the dogtag, as I managed to scoot out of there and link up with the other squad higher up in the valley without much trouble. We kept going around until we got to the first observation point and set up to defend it as we had to hold them for 15 mins to score. We held our ground, but eventually got attacked by one US unit who managed to sneak through the ferns onto a flank. We managed to repel them though and eventually got reinforcements to push them back and around to the other side of the valley. I got left behind somewhat, but linked up with a few others and we also pushed up, however only four of us (me, my friend, my other friend's grandson and another VC guy) went to the next observation post. However, it was fairly quiet around the mortar pit, so we placed it down and dug into the bushes. No US forces came across us, so it was an easy 15 minute hold to set it up. We then lost the other VC guy (no idea where he went!) so the three of us pushed to the fort as it was a central location and we thought we could do some damage from there. It was fairly quiet, but one of the special forces teams did walk right by us while we hid in the bushes; one of them even looked directly at us and my friend's grandson was standing up! Either he didn't want to get shot as we all had guns trained on them, or they actually didn't see us because their whole team walked past us. In hindsight, we should've shot them all as they passed, but we let them pass instead to stay undetected. We then discussed our next plan of action and when I left the bushes to go do that... they didn't follow, so I was left by myself. Apparently they had gone to the gate of the fort and held there, while I went around the back and had to Metal Gear Solid my way through another three whole US teams; one of 5, one of 10(!) and one of 4, as with the Kar98 there was no way in hell I could engage. Well, I could, but I'd probably just give the US troops a free point as they'd likely take me out with BB spam into the bushes and take my dogtag. Managed to sneak by all three teams undetected, despite wearing all black and sticking out like a sore thumb; who needs a ghillie to stay hidden, eh? I finally made it back to our base and called it a day there. It was about 2:30pm, so another 1hr 30 mins left of Saturday's game, but I was exhausted after having to sneak my way across half the site. The results of the Saturday was 58 points to the NVA/VC against the 42 points to the US/ARVN, so a win for the NVA on the first day put us in a good place. Saturday night I also managed to sleep decently well, though I did wake up in the middle of the night and was short of breath, but when I put my little heart rate monitor on it was reading very normal so it was purely anxiety around it acting up and not actually acting up. Didn't play on the Sunday. My friend had a chest infection and a really bad back so he couldn't move much and my other friend still had tendonitis in his hips as that doesn't just go away over night. His grandson was too tired to play and I really wasn't feeling it, so we instead had breakfast and then took a couple of hours to dismantle the compound. NVA/VC handled business on Sunday and won handily, culminating in a battle that pushed the Americans out of their base and had the NVA/VC closing in on them on all sides. The NVA managed to set up their anti-tank weapons, which was their main objective, and Josh said to us it was probably better that we didn't play as it could've been very oppressive for the US/ARVN players if our group of 4 was also out there causing mayhem. So, what was good? Everyone there was playing in the spirit of the game. Lots of banter and bad acting on both sides! Also, a new rule where if the US/ARVN harassed a civilian and that civilian doesn't have any contraband like intel, a radio or a hidden weapon, then the civilian got a token to give to NVA command. 5 of these tokens was a point for the NVA/VC, so it adds something to disincentivise the US forces from interrogating every civilian player as before there were no negative consequences for them stopping and searching every civilian they found at gunpoint. Also, as usual, peoples kit was great. I'm no stitch counter, so I'm generally fine with inaccurate kit, but everyone at least looked the part which made for some great cinema. It was also good to see @Tactical Pith Helmet (and Mrs. TPH!) again; what a lovely chap that guy is! However, I didn't enjoy it as much as usual. So, why didn't I? Well, the Saturday was incredibly slow for us and we were folded into squads. I felt like I was playing PAVN in black, not VC, and I didn't enjoy that; it definitely felt more on the milsim side of filmsim and I don't enjoy that; I like a bit of silly BB wars in the woods in fancy dress. Also, the dogtag mechanic singlehandedly kills my enjoyment. My usual tactics would just be free points for the US forces, as it's a high risk harassment campaign all weekend that sees me getting shot and every time I get hit there's either nobody or only 1 other person around to stop them getting my dogtag; it's very easy to get overwhelmed, especially with a 1J bolt action. I don't want to be the reason the NVA/VC side loses because my tactics don't tend to score points; it's more indirect scoring as I try to make the US troops fearful and wary of moving about as they could get jumped by a crazy villager with a rifle at any moment! The dogtags very much hamper those efforts, but at least this time it was only one dogtag. Last year it was one dogtag per life which absolutely crippled my way of playing, but one dogtag was enough to dissuade me from my usual harassment tactics. Thirdly, it was the sniper ban. Gunman do a sniper ban during the summer as the ferns grow quite high, but me being a veteran of the sniper hell that is summertime Worthing Airsoft was constantly finding locations where I had great line of sight and wished I had my 2.3J m700 with me. Yes, there are locations that are close in, but that's what my upgraded pistols are for and compared to Worthing Airsoft, Eversley Alpha is incredibly viable for sniping with a 30m MED. I probably won't make the next one in September, as I've got a hospital appointment in a few weeks with cardiology, so I'm likely getting my heart sorted soon (probably in August with the timing of this appointment). This means I'll be on blood thinners in September (as I have to be for a few months afterwards) which will mean no airsoft for me for those months, which will include September if I'm correct about the timings. Got a year to think about how I want to go ahead with Vietnam games in the future, and one potential avenue that we're exploring as a group is putting together an ARVN kit and then asking Josh where he wants us, as we'd have sets for both teams. US/ARVN have been getting hammered for the past 3 years, so it might be time to try and redress the balance by playing a bit of imperialist gameplay. Give the NVA/VC team a real sniper threat to worry about

I'm the same, but I was a child back in the day when PCS bolts were commonplace and my parents weren't about to drop that on a gun for me At least the KJW m700s have adjustable bolts, though it's not as easy as the PCS bolts were, as instead of a simple grub screw in the bolt, you have to take the bolt apart and adjust a screw inside, or buy some intake rubbers that limit the gas intake with eash shot. However, even KJW m700s are fairly hard to get hold of these days, but Golden Eagle just brought an m700 out that looks like it's another Tanaka clone and some very affordable magazines to go with it. In a real wood stock to boot, so I might end up buying one purely as an experiment to see how compatible it is and if the magazines will work in my Tanaka and KJW rifles as well.

It's what it comes with. Was tempted to replace it, but it just wasn't that important to me at the time. If it was a GBBR I'd replace it in a heartbeat, but the last time I opened the pistol grip I couldn't get it closed again around the motor, so I'd rather not touch it!

Me again, but I bought something over the weekend that I wasn't expecting to because I couldn't say no to it. Guess the rest of the hi-capa build will have to be done next month instead ? PPS Kar98k. Came with 4 mags, 1 is leaking so I'll get that all fixed up. Coming with me to the upcoming Vietnam filmsim as the mags fit perfectly in my SKS chicom. Hop rubber is also knackered, so I've got a Flamingo bucking on the way and figured I'd stick a Maple Leaf Crazy Jet barrel in it as well while I'm in there, so those are on the way.

Why the hell does an AEG with a specifically designed longer gearbox made for more air volume for long barreled DMR builds come with a goddamn ported cylinder out of the box? Had a local tech fit a full cylinder, as well as a Perun mosfet in place of the cheap Cyma platinum one, programmed for semi-auto only and then had some electrical tape put over the full-auto sensor as well so it's doubly semi-locked! Also no pre-cocking because it's incredibly snappy on semi-auto anyway with an 11.1v lipo (ASG Infinity U-18000 high torque motor + Lonex helical gears) and I'd rather not risk extra wear on the parts and doubly not risk me accidentally leaving it cocked after a game day and killing the gearbox parts. Now comes my part. I've got a load of springs to go through as I want to find one that will do 1.14J on a .32 and another that does 1.88J on a .43. I think the current hop setup will handle it, but if not I'll need to experiment there as well. Thankfully, the hop and barrel assembly is a piece of cake to take out and it has a quick change spring system; I'd never do an AEG DMR build without a quick change spring. It's a bit of a heavy beast now with the massive 3.5-25x56mm scope (the eye relief on it is perfect for me on this) and the bipod and MAWL on the front, but I love how it has turned out!

My opinion is likely to be a bit biased because I love gas bolt actions and have used a gas m700 for a year or so now. Initial impressions on it are great. It feels amazing to hold and shoot and for a gas gun it was consistent enough. When I was at chrono my lowest shot was 1J and my highest was 1.12J. The only issue was the hop rubber being ancient so I need to swap it out to get a good gauge on how it shoots, but my friend has one and his shoots great. I'll be using it next weekend at a Vietnam filmsim and will have a new hop rubber in it, so will hopefully see then.

Just got home from Worthing where I didn't play. Well, I did, but not as a player and I had a lot of fun. First game of the day was a marshall and two of us playing blind hillbillies defending barrels of moonshine. We had juggernaut rules, but we also had to pretend to be blind (drunk too much moonshine!), so we were patrolling around yelling things in overly exaggerated American accents and only shooting in peoples direction of they made noise. It was hilarious seeing the players trying to be as quiet as possible when there was a lot of crunchy dry leaves on the ground and sticks that go snap and then shooting purposefully just past them or over their heads. It was a proper laugh yelling about commies and the government and rich city folks and the damn squirrels stealin' my goddamn moonshine! As for the gameplay, I think it worked well but the teams weren't well balanced. We had a single blue player make it to where the objectives were and, to his credit, he held up the yellow team all by himself for a really long time. He eventually got shot in the back because yellows wrapped around, because what had happened is the yellows had captured the blue team's base and weren't allowing them to get to the bottom of the site where we were protecting the barrels. All I saw were yellow players and they eventually managed to get all 13 barrels thanks to a very sneaky kid who crept all the way up multiple times very slowly and very quietly; we were all quite impressed with how quiet he was, as obviously we could all see him, but he made no noise so we didn't shoot him. He managed to ferry most of the cans out to pass them to his team and combined with the yellows taking the blue team base, this meant that the yellows absolutely stomped. After this game they did some team balancing, moving some of the more experienced players over from yellow to blue, but I can't comment on how the rest of the games went as I headed back to the safe zone afterwards; I had a lot of guns to test and make sure were working for the Vietnam filmsim weekend next weekend at Gunman Eversley, so I wanted to make sure the m700 was set, the AKM was set and the MWS was set. Also, the local tech was bringing two of my guns he was working on, so I wanted to have a fiddle with those as he tends to leave fine tuning the hop to me (at my request though, as I'm more than happy to dial in my hop and scopes myself). But the main reason I stopped was because the new gun I was using stopped working very well. Predictably, to be fair, but I think the hop rubber just turned to dust as it stopped hopping. I bought a PPS kar98 as the guy who runs a kit shop and sells at Worthing bought a bunch of Dadio's guns (a fairly well known WW2 airsofter from a few years ago) as I think he's getting out of the hobby and this was one of them. Got the kar98 and 4 magazines for £250; 1 was leaking so I'll get that sealed up, but I reckon it's been sitting for 4 years and needs a clean and a new hop rubber, but it's set for 1J (with an adjustable bolt, so I can tweak it if needed) and I'll get it set up for .32s. That's coming to next weekend's Vietnam filmsim weekend! The other new gun I was using was the hicapa I bought last weekend at Shift Your RIFTs and with a few upgrades it was shooting phenomenally (parts I had lying about mostly, as I'll do a proper build next month) Then I collected my m14 DMR (ironically not set up as a DMR) and SR-25. First I tested the m14 and... it went back to the tech. As I went to set the hop, the motor completely died so it needs a new one. Not entirely surprised as it's a stock G&P motor and is probably about 12 years old or something, but that went back to him. The SR-25 however... that was brutal and I'm probably going to be using it a bunch in the future. He's left it to me to do a lot of testing (as I said there's no point me paying him to spend hours testing out springs and hop rubbers when I can do that myself), so I'll be finding a spring for 1.1J on .32s and a spring for 1.88J on .43s, as well as a hop setup that will lift them (might already be able to!). Didn't have my long screwdriver with me so couldn't experiment there, but with the spring currently in it it was 0.9J and hitting the 60m target accurately with every shot so I'm bloody happy about that. Really snappy too! It's been properly locked to semi-auto with a perun mosfet that has been programmed to be semi-only but then also had the full-auto sensor covered with electric tape so it's definitely locked to semi!

A mix of stuff I bought at Shift Your RIFTs and items that weren't available/in stock with retailers there. The hicapa was 2nd hand from someone selling for £80, but I needed to buy a mag for it as the one it came with wasn't TM and didn't lock back on empty. For the AAP I got the stainless steel hammer set, auto sear and fire pin lock, an ultra lightweight blowback unit, a 50 degree flamingo bucking, a crazy jet barrel and a hadron 300% return spring and short stroke buffer. Already got the h-plate for the build in the AAP and it has been performing okay so far, but it's time to make it mean and hopefully more reliable in the cold! For the hicapa, I bought the nineball magazine rubbers and a crazy jet barrel. Got a spare ML hop rubber and h-plate in my bits box so all that will be an "it'll do" build until I can get the rest of the stuff from hicapa hub. Might do it later this month, but will see. And the 60 degree flamingo is to try in my m700. If I like it, I'll also try one in my MWS.

I think this is a fairly personal thing, so not sure how much my answer would help but I'd ask for some genuine surplus kit. Desert marpat (because it's really hard to find outside the US!), genuine alice kit (because it's peanuts in the US, like PLCE webbing is peanuts over here), a nice 1911 holster, a proper stetson if coming over from Texas... I could keep going

I wasn't camping so I can't speak to how the campsite is late at night or early in the morning, but there are marshalls patrolling around it during the day time on a motorised scooter thing. I didn't hear any horror stories from the guys who were camping on site, so I reckon it's okay. Also didn't hear of any thefts, though we were all warned that it's an open event and anyone could be in attendance and so were advised to keep things locked in cars, which is a sensible thing to do at any event anyway. They had plenty of staff to make sure the weekend played well, including a paramedic in case of any accidents. It was my first time going and honestly I was pretty impressed with the whole thing. I probably won't be going to the NAF again unless there are changes. Shift Your RIFTs fills that social weekender-shaped hole with quality airsoft for £85 and I'll still head to AI500 for £75 (returning players get £10 off the £85 price there) for the interesting sites they tend to get a hold of, though the airsoft there isn't as good as Shift Your RIFTs which was just really enjoyable. Combine those with Vietnam filmsim weekenders and that's at least 4 per year for me which is a nice number

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm... I may need one of these...

Yeah. Didn't have a dremel at the time, but I just took a file to them to open the channel up a little. Would be easier with a dremel and likely take seconds, but it took me a couple of minutes with a file.

2nd vote for the ASG ultrair. It's a lot dryer than most other green gas, which means it won't spray lubricants through your hop and barrel like most gasses will. However, I empty my mags after game days and put a bit of maintenance gas in to maintain the magazine seals, as dryer gasses will dry out the o-rings over time. It's a bit more expensive as I do waste some gas doing this, but I'd rather keep my MWS mags in good condition because I don't want to have to take them apart.

I was also at Redcon-2 for Shift Your RIFTs, but was there for the whole weekend; a very warm Saturday followed by a very warm, then very wet Sunday! I packed my m700, AAP-01 and p226 as a backup pistol in case I had issues with the AAP. We booked in on the Friday and it was incredibly smooth. Plenty of staff were around to direct people who were camping and those of us who were just there to sign in. Got my wristband and goodie bag and then hung out with my friends for a while as there were quite a few of us there. Gates closed at 8pm, so we left at about 7pm to go get dinner at the pub a few of us were staying at and got a good night's sleep for the next day... or at least it would've if my heart didn't decide to act up that night. Anxiety around it made it worse too, but it wasn't so bad I had to take myself off to a hospital, so I popped one of my pills and powered through it. Anyway, next day was glorious. Weather on Saturday was incredibly warm at around 20 celcius pretty much all day! I had a similar experience to @Galvatron; chrono was really efficient with 4 marshalls on them and then another 3 or 4 marshalls after them with cable ties to tag guns that had passed. There was a long queue when I got there, but it moved very quickly and I got through very easily. I did have an issue crop up here though, as I noticed two of my AAP magazines had lost the o-rings in the fill valves, so I decided to use my p226 that I brought as a backup pistol. Everything passed chrono nice and easy and so that was that. We then hung about until the legendary brief and it wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. It was long, probably clocking in at about 1 hour in length, but it covered everything that the players needed to know. Also, I heard last year that people on the weekend had to listen to the brief on both Saturday and Sunday, but this weekend we only had to attend the Saturday and could just chill on the Sunday in the safe / camping zone during the briefing, so that was nice. I decided to try and play as much as possible while the weather was good, as the forecast was bad for Sunday. The site itself was a breath of fresh air for me; where Worthing Airsoft is fairly small and quite close-up, basically woodland CQB during the summer, Redcon-2 was huge with a lot of very open areas, though there were also plenty of close-up areas and dedicated CQB areas so when the marshalls said "any gun you have will find a use out there", they weren't lying. I went out with my new under £100 ghillie setup and my m700, p226 and my belt kit; no chest rig as I packed light. We were on blue in the morning and for the first hour I was a bit useless. I had no idea where anything was and bumbled about the site as I tried to work out how I wanted to play it. Fortunately I quickly got into my groove after we took a respawn on the far side of the map and started pushing along the boundary. I managed to tuck into a bush to cover the advance and had a great time plinking at the reds, though some of them were really well dug in! I eventually got taken out, so I went back to the respawn we captured, but as I was returning I saw the other blues who were with me also walking back, so I opted to set up in a position to intercept the reds if they pushed up after us. I took a few out that did, but then I saw some reds coming from the other direction as they must've captured the respawn from the other side, so I laid low and waited for them to pass, before shooting them both in the back. I love moments like that It was then lunch that I was about 10 mins late to, because none of the marshalls called that it was lunch over where I was and I had recently taken out a red from my position; I only went back because I heard one of the vehicles and poked out to ask if it was lunch yet. They had said that they couldn't have tap water to drink due to MoD regulations (as it's an MoD site), so I was expecting some extortionate food and drink prices, but I was pleasantly surprised. I spent £7 on a massive double jumbo chilli dog that was very welcome after the morning games, as well as two bottles of water. After lunch our entire group got balanced onto red team as apparently the morning was pretty one-sided in blue team's favour. This time, I decided to just stick to the massive runway area that the teams spawned at (one at each end, it was really quite long!). There were a number of bushes and some lovely tall grass that worked wonders for concealment, though due to how airsoft guns worked I had to poke my rifle barrel through the grass, which made it a little bit visible, but oh well. I managed to rack up an impressive number of kills from here and completely denied a fairly strong position at a corner as I had it totally dialed in with my bolt action. During quiet moments I found myself hand-loading my magazines as otherwise I would've run out of ammo pretty fast and I was very pleased to discover that my magazines will easily shoot three full magazines on a single fill of gas if it's a warm day. Photographers got some great shots of me too, so that was a nice bonus as I rarely get caught on camera! Towards the end, most people had given up it seemed as I ended up getting hit from behind and having to respawn in to hold the flank pretty much by myself, however due to the tall grass I was able to easily get into a concealed position to do so. The Sunday I wanted to play in the morning as while the forecast said it would pour with rain all day the sun was out and it was nice and warm (a bit windy though!), but most of my kit was locked in the car and the guy with the key was out in the gameplay area. Most of my kit included my hat, so I have a bit of sunburn on my head, and also my armband so I couldn't go and play. I instead opted to have a good wander around to see what people were selling and I picked up the exact TM hi-capa 5.1 that I wanted for £80 and I had a long chat with the guys at Empire Airsoft, so it was nice to put a face to a name there as I order from them quite a lot and have asked Kenny to get me some niche m700 parts from Europe a few times! I also had a long chat with Big Steve Builds about my AAP build and picked up a bunch of parts for that too; only bit I'm missing now is the hammer set as that sold out on the Saturday, but I have a really good idea what I want to do with mine now. Also going to experiment with the flamingo buckings as I hadn't used them yet and he seemed to be very impressed with them in his builds. Went out in the afternoon after lunch and the heavens opened up. It absolutely chucked it down and I got really wet. Didn't play for as long here, playing around the runway again. I managed to crawl into a very forward position and started sniping blues in the tank graveyard from the side; the m700 is so quiet I managed to basically burn through all of my ammo doing this before I was finally taken out by a stray shot just as I was going to shoot someone colour checking me. I was soaking wet and out of ammo and I didn't want to open my ammo bags in this weather as water + bio BBs is not the best combination. Emptied the rest of my pistol mags as I wasn't putting those BBs back in the bag either for the same reason and headed in. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the weekend and will be going back next year. I will, however, bring a DMR next time. I was planning on doing so this year, but my MWS was not happy at all lifting heavy BBs, so more tinkering is needed there. The site itself with all the long distance areas combined with the 2.32J DMR limit makes the site very, very good for DMRs. Usually I use my pistol a lot when using a bolt action rifle or a DMR, but I think this weekend I only got 2 - 3 pistol kills and burned though about a single magazine in total, whereas I got dozens and dozens across the weekend with my bolt action and went though many mags. Being able to engage at long distance is a definite advantage at Redcon-2 (as long as you avoid the CQB areas!). If someone is locking down an area with a DMR, it's very strong, but it's also possible to counter because the site itself is so damn big; you can simply go around them. I think the marshalling was top notch and I didn't come up against any issues all weekend with the singular exception of one guy who was blatantly not taking his hits as I took out the people around him, but then every time I hit him he'd look in my general direction and step back behind the bushes and every time he peeked out the same would happen. Everyone else without fail took their hits from what I saw and I didn't hear any complaints about it. Going to be bold and say that Shift Your RIFTs is the best weekend event in the UK at the moment. The airsoft quality is better than AI500 and definitely better than the NAF, and for £85 you get a really solid weekend of airsoft at a great site with great marshalls. Food and drink isn't extortionately priced and there were lots of different retailers about who were more than happy to chat and cut deals you wouldn't get when you buy online. The whole atmosphere was really great across the entire weekend and I'll definitely be going back next year as I loved it!

I need to re-do some pouches as the current setup I was using was interfering with my holster so I had to push it forward and it wasn't that comfortable, but after a whole day of airsofting on a very warm Saturday, I can say that I love my new ghillie setup. Yes I was very warm, but it was manageable and my glasses didn't fog up at all as I wasn't sweating absolute buckets. Will probably include a split chest rig when I'm using another gun like my m14 or SR-25, but the m700 magazines get mud in them when I crawl around with them in a chest rig as the BBs are fairly exposed (gas mag, so the BBs are exposed like a pistol mag), so I have to keep them in the belt even if they're a bit of a pain to grab to reload. Might try a split rig with the m700 magazines on the side...

I'd advise against the TM ones because they're a pain in the arse. They often leak from the baseplate and fixing that issue is hell as you have to knock the pins out the right way and then drill part of it to actually remove the baseplate to replace or re-lube the o-ring there. I advised a friend to get ASG mags and replace the feed lips (because the ASG ones suck) with either TM ones or the Hadron ones; he did that with the Hadron lips and seems to be happy with it.

Yeah, I have an STTI (same as the ASG) and I replaced all the feed lips on mine because they either didn't want to feed or they caused the trigger to be mega sticky

I'll be totally unbiased and say "go VC/NVA because it's cheaper and more flexible to get the kit and it's more fun!", totally not because I will be there as VC and I believe Mr. @Tactical Pith Helmet will be as well. At the last one I almost walked across the fields to the Bravo site because I heard airsoft noises in that direction while I was sneaking about. Fortunately I turned back because I also suspected I could've been heading off-site. At least I didn't have any guns on me because I was roleplaying a civvie with a radio so if I did wander off and bump into someone I would't have anything worrying on me But yes, I agree with everything you said about Gunman. Top site and top blokes running it. Also, don't suppose you would know if they had enacted their sniper ban at Eversley yet? I suspect they have done so or will do so soon, as during the summer they tend to have a sniper ban due to lines of sight being restricted (I find it amusing because it's nowhere near as rough as Worthing!). I'll still be bringing my bolt action, but it'd be good to know if I should be setting it for 1.1J or 2.3J.

Ok, so before I say how my game day went... what the hell? Like, that is one of the worst things I've ever heard at an airsoft event, and I used to play in Spain in the late 2000s when there were no sites, no rules, no health and safety and we never did anything as stupid as throwing a goddamn log over a wall! I will say that of all the sites down near me (Driver Wood, Worthing Airsoft, Southdown and Dogtag), Dogtag is the only one that I've been to that I will never make any effort to go back to as my experience of it, while not as bad as yours, was pretty awful. Anyway, for me today at Worthing Airsoft was simultaneously glorious and horrible conditions for sniping with my lovely gas guns; schroedinger's airsoft? I brought my m700 and mk12 MWS with me today as those were the guns I was planning on bringing to Shift Your RIFTs next weekend and wanted to make sure they were working well. Weirdest thing with my m700 was that the scope was off and all my shots were going to the right. Easily fixed by... rotating the rear scope ring 180 degrees? So now my lovely 3.5-25x56mm overkill scope is nice and straight again, but having one scope ring with the bolt one side and the other with the bolt the other side is doing my head in a little, but I can suffer the asymmetric nature of it since it's shooting lovely and straight now. The mk12 MWS is not coming with me to Shift Your RIFTs because it was not happy hopping .45s, even at 2.32J which seems to be their DMR limit; it was only going to be a backup gun anyway, so I'll just swap it out for my m14 scout instead. I plan on using the m700 anyway, and that was shooting like a dream, so no drama there. In terms of the gameplay, I only played in the morning. Lately my heart has been acting up (the symptoms are very light at least), so I didn't get as much sleep as I would've liked last night as it kept me up until 2am. I went out with the m700 and it was glorious. The weather was amazing! 18 - 20 degrees all day, barely any wind and lots of sun. Perfect airsoft weather! The thing that made the conditions horrible was just how much Worthing Airsoft has bushed up. Using anything with an MED right now is just difficult and a lot of the site is just impractical with a 30m radius of "no shoot". It's even more bushy than last year and it gets more bushy with every year it seems because it's largely uncontrolled. We have a lot more bushes sprouting up everywhere and it's making sight lines impossible, especially when firing from prone as I tend to do when sniping. I still managed to get into a spot where eventually one of the marshalls just told the enemy team where I was and I got hosed, because I was singlehandedly stopping them advancing through one part of the site. I almost ran out of ammo, and with 4 mags with me that never happens at a skirmish day as I'm very disciplined with my shots (still only about 100 total as each mag is about 25rds, but I tend to only shoot if I know I'll hit). Very pleased with the new belt kit setup and extremely pleased with how well my new £97 ghillie cape and boonie setup worked. Taking that next weekend for sure! All in all, very good day. Would've played the whole day, but I was pretty tired and I needed to make sure the m700 was shooting well (only fixed the off-centre scope after lunch) and had to test the MWS, which was lucky I did or I would've taken that to Shift Your RIFTs and it would've been dead weight. I need to pick up some .43s for it at some point, but I just don't want to spend the money yet. Looking forward to Shift Your RIFTs next weekend. This was weekend #1 of 5 consecutive weekends as I have Worthing game days every 2 weeks, and in between I have Shift Your RIFTs and a Vietnam filmsim weekend. Roll on next weekend, and I hope the weather holds out!

It is a summer setup and we get bluebells at Worthing Airsoft during the summer... ?

Just finished my new sub-£100 ghillie setup and I'm quite pleased with the results. Wanted a boonie + cloak setup to be lightweight, breathable, easy to move in, easy to crawl without picking up the entire forest floor and not getting caught on everything. I'll be using it with m81 woodland BDUs underneath, a pair of OD fingerless gloves and camo paint for my face to keep good airflow around my head to prevent eyepro fogging and keep general sweating to a minimum. The webtex vest I just cable tied directly onto, but the boonie hat I poked a bunch of holes in with an awl and then used the holes to cable tie material onto it. I hate the rather prevalent over-engineered all-over bush suits, so a boonie + cloak setup is far better for me! Also, the webtex vest has elastic veggie loops, so if I'm at a larger or more serious event I can put natural foliage all over it as well. It's totaled up as such: - Webtex Concealment Vest ~ £40 (but I already had this buried in my airsoft stuff) - Novritsch screen camo set ~ £28 - Novritsch raffia ~ £13 - Teesar boonie w/ neck flap - £16 Total ~ £97

I've been playing it a bunch and it's very unfinished. I think it'll be great in a few years, but at the moment it definitely shows that there's only 2.5 years of dev time behind it. Also it's poorly optimised at the moment, but again I think that'll get better. Basically, it's a lot of fun but a lot of unfinished too

Very nice. I'm waiting to make sure there are no issues or teething problems before I dive in, but planning on a pricey build with an air stock later this year!