Impulse

My friend shoved a Wolverine Hydra Gen2 into his Real Sword SVD because the stock internals shattered and Real Sword never sent him his replacement (they told him they would, but we both reckon they're out of business or something as he has pestered them for over 2 years) The only downsides are that it uses AEG hop rubbers and not VSR rubbers and it requires a bit of tweaking to get it just right (need a shorter inner barrel for a 1.1J build), but it's probably the best semi-auto SVD build I've seen.

My thoughts exactly. If I was getting an SVD, it's going to be semi-auto! I find myself curious why it has to be straight pull though. The best sniper platforms in airsoft are not straight pull (I like my VSRs and gas m700s, but people also like the SRS, Steyr Scout and Tac-41)

I only have two gripes with the TM HK45, though it is my favourite GBB pistol I currently own in terms of aesthetic, ergonomics and just how quiet it is for a GBB. One issue is that the mags are the pin design (like most pistols) rather than the screw design like Hi-Capa, p226 or 1911 mags which makes them awful to work on if they spring a leak. The other issue is that either mine was a bit of a lemon, or the hop unit doesn't like engaging all the way, with the hop arm catching on the adjustment wheel about 2/3 of the way. This meant that I couldn't hop .32s which is what I tend to use in all of my other 1.1J builds, be they rifle or pistol, plus I think the H-plate was applying hop slightly unevenly, just looking at the deformation in the rubber when inspecting through the barrel with hop applied. So imagine how happy I was to find out that the guys at Hadron had come out with an outer barrel assembly for the TM HK45 with TDC and a H-arm to go with it. Forgot to take pictures before installing it, but I'm pleased so far. The deformation in the rubber now is far more even and I am sure I can apply enough hop for .32s now with the 50 degree ML autobot in there, though if not I'll slap a 60 degree in because I prefer them for air seal and have a spare anyway. Will test next game day (that's 4th Dec for me), as I want to be able to run .32s for the most part or .28s if I go to an event that limits ammo weight. Don't care about heavier because it's generally my shooting-within-MED or moving-around-the-site gun so I'll typically be shooting fairly close with it but want it to be able to hit the 50m just in case I need to engage quickly while moving around the woodland.

I think part of it is just purely financial. Christmas is always tight for a lot of people, and for reasons-totally-unrelated-to-lockdowns-we-swear a lot of people are currently suffering financially and therefore simply can't afford to play.

We only had 30 players today max. Very low numbers at the moment!

Oooooooooh I'm so happyyyyyyyy. The foliage has finally receded at Worthing Airsoft and the sight lines are back to being long. There's enough foliage for cover and concealment, but it's no longer the woodland CQB of the summer months. I didn't manage to play nearly as much as I wanted to because it's amazing what difference 5 degree celcius makes. The 1.1J m700 just wasn't having it today; if it's much higher than 1.1J, it sends .48s into the sky, but if it's too much lower it doesn't get enough traction to hop the BB effectively, and in today's 10 degree celcius temperatures it was around 0.7J, which wasn't enough. Spent the rest of the day tweaking the 2J m700 (which I was very very very happy with), but next weekend I'm bringing the HPA VSR back out as my mags for the m700 were absolutely freezing cold all day. With the sight lines opened up, it's time to bring out all the 2.3J builds! Also, haven't used the mp7 in about 9 months and it still floats BBs out to 45m. It may be an AEP, it may only be about 0.6J, it may be totally stock, but TM hop up never disappoints! Having a full auto electric SMG in a holster as a secondary during the winter months is so useful.

That's my plan. Putting them through both m700s tomorrow and will swap over if I like them for all weights.

With Geoffs BBs seemingly increasing in price on a weekly basis, I felt it was time for a change

See, for me it's the other way around. I would never touch an SR-25 with a v2 gearbox because I want that long cylinder from the v2.5 for the setup I want to do with it (being either a 1.1J or DMR power).

They're actually one of my preferred retailers. Always been really good with me and they've ordered stuff in for me in the past from Europe (they order from https://www.airsoftzone.com/ semi-regularly). Super helpful for me because KJW m700 parts, magazines and after-market upgrade parts can be hell to find in the UK, but airsoftzone orders them in regularly. Can't recommend them enough. Always done well by me and thus they're one of my favourite retailers now.

I just bought one of these because they're £10 off at the moment, bringing it to a paltry £20 investment https://www.patrolbase.co.uk/8fields-tactical-hybrid-chest-rig?pv=17024 8fields are usually good. One of my favourite holsters is 8fields and my favourite drop-leg panel is 8fields. Got a bunch of their pistol mag pouches too and they're pretty great.

This isn't just local to Rift. I see a horde of bolt actions at Worthing Airsoft too, even during the summer where the site is basically woodland CQB with how bushy it gets; I've specifically got multiple 1.1J BASR and semi-auto sniper builds for the summer months because a 30m MED makes about 80% of the site unplayable and I've been playing sniper for over a decade now because I love the satisfaction. Personally, I blame certain Youtube content creators for the massive influx... I've also ended up being the front line before because not wanting to push isn't just for snipers and low-crawling forward might be slow, but at least it's moving in the right direction. Better late than never!

"I need to go to Italy for work reasons and definitely not for a holiday I promise."

Just got home from a great private game at UCAP tunnels in Portsmouth. I took my 1.1J spring VSR with me, much to basically everyone's confusion as the tunnels are very CQB, as well as the mp9 and the mk23, one on each hip, as the ammo weight limit was .28s at most and they are some of my guns that can use .28s and not overhop as I typically play woodland and build for .32s. We were encouraged to bring LARP weapons, as only LARP weapons could kill the juggernauts that would be coming out, plus it's a bit of silly fun swatting each other with foam hammers and the like, so I packed my rubber knife too. Through the morning I made my presence very known and just held corridors. I would find a nice pitch black spot and just hold down the corridor in front of me, preventing the other team advancing down the tunnel I was watching. Was it the most practical gun? Hell no, but I was doing it as a partial joke as everyone knows me at Worthing Airsoft as a sniper and it did have it's uses; it wasn't entirely useless as some of those corridors are very long and having a gun built for range, accuracy and silence turned out to be quite the boon to our team. We were getting hammered in the morning, but I was at least holding down one of a potential 5 or so avenues of attack for them which was all I wanted to do and the best way for me to contribute. I don't really do CQB and I'm a 6'5 weight lifter; those tunnels are not built for me 😂 However, after lunch I had to change tactics. The other team had a juggernaut and constantly used him to push into our base to steal an objective we managed to recover nice and early, so I couldn't use the bolt action to hold corridors because the juggernaut was just coming down with a minigun and enemy players using him as cover. We held them off for a long time though, considering they were being escorted by a juggernaut and managed to hold onto the objective for an hour or so. I managed to learn by being a sneaky sniper eavesdropping from the shadows that only one person on their team could move the objective, so I started targeting her, waiting for the juggernaut to pass as I hid away and then ambushing the players who could be shot. The mk23 and mp9 really showed their worth, taking shots from concealment with the mk23, but pulling the mp9 as soon as I needed a bit of a snappier gun. Even managed to get a melee kill on the juggernaut (the only way to kill them), hiding in a dark room as he came down the corridor and quietly stabbing with the rubber knife as he walked past. We managed to pull out a win at the end of the day when my friend decided to go out with only a melee weapon. He crept around the entire enemy team and cleared them out with melee kills, allowing the rest of our team to push up and detonate the bomb. In the meantime, another team made not one, but two raids on the enemy base and stole all their objectives. After receiving a bit of a hiding for most of the day, we managed to pull out a sizeable win in the final moments which was nice My main gripe was the ammo limit, but otherwise the rules were great and made the game super fun. The ammo limit was 600 BBs per life, which in the tunnels basically just meant a lot of trigger spam down corridors; I probably would've done 300 (which was what we had at the last private game we played there) just so it wasn't quite so spammy. All in all I had a really good day, even though it was very much not my type of game. Helped that this time our respawn was the other side of the site to where my team spawned in the last private game we ran there, so I got to experience the other side. Just going to say, and any of the UCAP bunker regulars will know what I mean, but the toilet block is such a great place to ambush from! I was moving through there with the mk23 causing absolute havoc on the enemy team as they tried pushing into our base. Next time, I'll bring something a little more practical. I'll bring my SR-25 or my m21 instead so I at least have semi-auto instead of a bolt action

For the one burst of auto I did, my SR-25 had pretty good ROF out of the box on an 11.1v... Until I swapped the 13:1 gears for 18:1 and the motor for a superduper high torque one. Now I imagine the full-auto is probably kinda sluggish, if I even still had the capability for it

I have their M40A3 and it's pretty good. Just haven't got around to tuning it properly yet because other projects have taken up my time, but eventually I will.

You aren't nuts for wanting a .308. As someone who owns pretty much all RIFs where the real-steel versions are 7.62x51mm, I can vouch for a whole bunch of good ones. If you like that AR style platform, the Cyma SR-25 is absolutely amazing. A little pricey as it's part of their platinum series, but having taken mine apart and put it back together, I can vouch for the internals; they're really impressive out of the box. Ok, so you play predominantly CQB so ignore all of what I just said as I was attacking the .308 side from a sniper perspective; yes, I'm taking a 1.1J BASR (complete with 3.5-10x scope!) to a CQB game this weekend, but I'm weird. Don't be like me. As to your concerns, you don't have to get an M4 as your first rifle and there are plenty of parts available for other gearbox types. V3 gearboxes are used by both AKs and mp5s, both of which will do CQB pretty well, or at least have variants that will do CQB well like a folding stock AK. I typically try to avoid G&G because they love doing weird proprietary things that make them a bit weirder to work on, but I can vouch for Cyma. Every Cyma gun I have ever had has been an absolute workhorse of a RIF. The m14 socom I had 12 years ago was one of the best performing RIFs at the site I played at in the south of Spain out of all the players, my Cyma m14 that I have built as a 1.1J m21 has people with 2.3J BASRs fearing it for its range and accuracy when I'm counter-sniping them, my Cyma mp5k is probably my all around best gun that I would take to a game if I wanted to play to win and be the most effective player in game I could be and my Cyma SR-25 is... broken because I can't do AEG gearbox teching (but it will soon live again and once more terrorise the enemy team!). Also, Cyma AKs have been consistently great for over a decade now. I used to be a TM shill (and still am for their gas guns), but now I'm a total Cyma shill. I'm constantly impressed by how consistently well they perform with the most minor of modifications, which is generally just a ML rubber, nub and maybe a ZCI stainless steel barrel if I'm feeling spendy. No idea on their M4s though, and back in the day their M4s were crap.

Honestly... Cyma AKs are really good for the price. They do a few metal / wood versions for around the £200 - £250 mark and require minimal modification to be truly amazing; typically just a hop rubber, nub and maybe a barrel change is all that's needed. Cyma have really upped their game in the last 15 years and their AKs, m14s and mp5s are all absolutely solid pieces of kit, and I also have an SR-25 from them that puts out some nasty shots. Plus, it's all very standard, so upgrade parts are very easy to come across. For more premium AKs, you're looking at E&L or LCT, with the former coming out of the same factory as real AKs and are largely compatible with real parts. I have no experience with either though so now idea how good they are. Real Sword were pretty good too, but I'm pretty sure they're out of business as they don't seem to be making any more and my friend was (well, is still) waiting for a replacement gearbox for his SVD from them after over 2 years. And for GBB, the new TM AKM is phenomenal and I can speak about that from personal experience. The only not-so-phenomenal thing about them is that you're not getting any extra mags any time soon, and a single 35rd magazine isn't going to cut it. Not wood, but there is a wood kit around for it that I plan on getting for mine when budget allows.

Welcome back to the hobby! As someone who also started when I was 14 and am a similar age (31 here, so it was 17 years ago for me), I can tell you that the hobby has changed from what it used to be and that has both good and bad parts. You'll see a lot more players at a skirmish weekend now; back in the day a busy day might have been 25 - 30 players at my local site, but now a busy day is knocking on 90 players (and that's only because they limit spaces as otherwise the site becomes overcrowded and gameplay suffers). You'll also see a major difference in how well the guns shoot. Now, a cheapo Cyma AK out of the box will hit 45m consistently and without any real issue which back in the day would've been unheard of even for upgraded AEGs. Also, two-tone is an okay thing and you can probably get something two-tone that will cost a comparable amount to renting 3x and can serve as a backup for when you finally get your UKARA and something not two-tone. A plastic bodied Cyma AK goes for £100ish and they're actually pretty damn good! Hope you enjoy your return to the hobby as much as I did!

*breaks into the thread to preach the good word of the TM MWS or Wolverine MTW* *notices budget* *leaves* I don't know anything about AEG m4s, but I had a Dboys m4 CQB a while ago and it was great. Heard Double Eagle ones are pretty good, but I don't like how they look.

Some of us are the other way around. I hate playing in the rain, though that's partially because I like sniping and sniping in the rain is a chore because your scope lens gets soaked and you can't see anything; if I'm using my SR-25 or my m21, I'll usually just take the scope off in the rain and run iron sights, but if I'm using any of my bolt actions, they don't have iron sights so I'll be reduced to just using my SMG secondary and my pistol. However, when everyone's calling it quits and lying around in the safe zone in the 35+ degree heat, I'll be out there playing as normal, drinking my body weight in water as I do.

I've only interacted with them in person at AI500 and I haggled a discount on two TM guns I wanted. They were the on-site retailer for both the Citadel in Dover and Flashpoint in Rochdale. Haven't really had any bad experience with them, honestly.

Has been said, but it's not the law. When I started at the age of 14, I wore only safety glasses because my site was okay with that (this was back when airsoft was still very niche). The reason why most sites will say that under 18s need to wear full face protection is due to the site's insurance cover. For example, my local site, Worthing Airsoft, says all under 18s have to wear full face protection, but only under 14s have to have it as one piece; people between the ages of 14-18 can choose to wear whatever combination as long as it covers their whole face, so can wear what you're thinking of getting. That's just my local site though and your mileage may vary. Might be worth checking with your local site just to make sure you'll be okay to run the eye-pro + face shield combo.

Unfortunately my experience is pretty much all with snipers, pistols and some GBBRs, but I'll throw the Cyma SR-25, m14 and mp5k into the mix as AEGs I have experience with. SR-25 is more expensive, but the platinum internals are really nice and it feels lighter than the m14. m14 is a great base and mine was fairly quiet out of the box for an AEG, but even just disassembling to get to the barrel and hop unit is a little involved and it's a bit heavier. mp5k is small and probably more usable by your son than the other two I would imagine In all of those, all you'd need to do is swap out the hop rubber and nub to get some spicy ranges; could do a barrel change while you're at it, but it's unnecessary. I like Maple Leaf macaron rubbers (70 degree is what I like, but 60 is also good), Maple Leaf omega nubs and ZCI stainless steel barrels. In terms of pistols, anything TM. 1911 has a small grip.