Impulse

When I did a spring setup in my VSR, it was 2.2J on .2s and 2.9J on .48s. I haven't tried feeding .2s into any of my snipers since then, but I might do it out of curiosity, as they're all set to 2.3J (apart from the m21 and spring VSR which are 1.14J)

Mostly just calorie restrictions, intermittent fasting, maintaining my total abandonment of public transport forcing me to cycle everywhere I need to go. I'd be doing martial arts too, but I can only afford airsoft or martial arts while I'm unemployed and I chose airsoft. Hoping as the we transfer into spring I'll get out a bit more, but at the moment it's just dreary, grey and chilly so I have no desire to cycle along the seafront for fun right now

I have been summoned! So, I've done a lot of testing around this with my HPA m21 build and it really does come down to what you value more and what power limits you're working with. I will preface this by saying that I value effective range, so that's all the testing I work with. I don't care if you can spray your AEG at a 75m target and maybe hit it with 1 of 10 BBs, I measure if you the gun can consistently hit a man-sized target 9/10 times at a certain range. Some sites operate DMRs at 1.48J, which is utterly pointless in my opinion as you gain barely anything (I didn't notice any visible increase in effective range) but you trade off the ability to point-blank shoot, which can come up more often than you'd think. Some sites operate DMRs at 1.64J, which is a bit more arguable in its use since you do notice a slight difference. I noticed just about 5m more effective range (if that, honestly...) when running my m21 at 1.64J on .4s, however again you're trading off that MED for a, in my opinion, negligible increase in effective range. My local site runs DMRs at 1.64J with a 30m MED which I've looked at and decided I'm never running a DMR there because just about 5m more effective range vs not being able to shoot at anyone within 30m is a no-brainer for me. However, some sites allow DMRs up to 1.88J (which is what it was most places back when we measured in fps) with either a 20m or 30m MED. At this point I feel like you gain enough of a benefit to counteract the drawback, though mostly just in the marksman role, as I noticed I started to hit an effective range of about 10m more than my 1.14J setup while running 1.88J on .4s (I would probably use .43s or maybe experiment with .45s at this power, I just didn't have any). 1.88J with a 20m MED is where I'd run a DMR, otherwise I'm just going to run 1.14J or I'll use a BASR instead at 2.3J. I cannot stress enough how useful having no MED is; it won't come up all the time, but you'll remember every time you get hit out because you've had to swap to your pistol since the enemy are too close. Running a 1.14J "DMR" is a great idea and I've had a lot of success with it, even with my spring TM VSR build which is also a 1.14J build (it's consistently around 1.1J). An effective range of 60m is what I've achieved running my m21 at 1.14J on .32s and it's more than enough; I've been out-ranging the braggarts who claim their AEG hits out to 70m and even contending with a lot of the BASRs people seem to run (a lot of people don't put enough time and effort into their builds...), so I'm happy with it. You can go heavier for a little more consistency, but I go .32s because after that is where ammo gets exponentially more expensive and the benefits I get from heavier BBs at 1.14J isn't worth the investment at the moment. Let me make a few career jumps then we'll talk again Out of the box it... isn't that great. When you're trying to take long range shots, you really start to feel the 0.8J and the fact it can't hop much heavier than a .28 out of the box. I love my TM m14, but I've put a lot of money into it and wanted the TM externals for my HPA m21 build because it was going to be my magnum opus 1.14J build (and oh boy is it ever...). If you want something more affordable and you're not too bothered about a lack of trades / slightly worse quality externals, go with a Cyma m14. I have a Cyma m14 that I've set up as a Vietnam-era m21, though I will convert it to a DMR stock when I can afford one / one is in stock somewhere, and it's fantastic. It will likely come out of the box at around 1J if you order it in the UK (they're higher power out of the factory, but I believe most places reduce the power before selling them because otherwise they're a section 5 firearm out of the box!), but a quick hop rubber and barrel change will have it shooting incredibly well for the price point. My Cyma m14 build has cost me... about £130 in total because I got mine from TG before Brexit, but a Cyma m14 is £150 from Patrol Base, plus Maple Leaf macaron (£10), Omega nub (£5) and a ZCI stainless steel inner barrel (£25) will be a pretty powerful setup for under £200. It's what's in mine and while I haven't run it in a long time it was performing almost as well as my super-expensive TM m21 setup. Almost because it's not as quiet and not quite as consistent, but it's more than enough! Upgrading the gearbox internals of an m14 isn't too difficult either, but it's a laborious process. Dismantling the m14 takes a lot of time and care because there are springy bits all over the gearbox that you have to remove to get inside since the fire-selector and trigger contacts are on the outside of the gearbox. It's easy once you know the gearbox, but the first time will take you hours... You and me both; it's why I'm now transitioning away from AEGs (will use my NGRS 416d until I can get an MWS or more mags for my AKM). HPA for sneakybeaky, GBB for speedyboi clackclackclack. If you wanted to do a GBBR DMR build, I'd recommend the MWS platform on red gas. I haven't done my MWS build yet, but it's something I might toy with the idea if I can get the external parts to turn it into a mk12 SPR. Now, with gas guns you definitely lose consistency, however what you lose in consistency you gain in FUN. Seriously, I took my AKM out for its first game day over the weekend and my decision to start transitioning completely away from AEGs was just solidified in my mind. Every kill was more satisfying because 35rd magazines and cool-guy-oper8r-tac-reloads and firing it was an absolute blast with the recoil. You will get fantastic range on a GBBR if it's set up right and it's far easier to work on than any gearbox AEG, but it won't be the most "competitive" choice. However, that can be a wonderful catalyst for improving your drills and general gameplay performance as you're essentially playing with a handicap that you'll have to make up the gap with your own skills. Anyway, that's enough from me. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Since I'm no longer dressing up like a bush, I finally got snapped while playing! Weight loss loadout in its full glory because I've put 20 of the 45 kilos I originally lost back on thanks to stress eating over unemployment Even managed to use my GBBR AK instead of my NGRS 416, since my friend didn't want to use his last weekend so I could borrow his mags (I only have 1, he has 4, so 5 in total at 35 BBs each is usable). If I managed to lose 45kg before, surely I can lose 35kg now! I'm even going to the gym and healthy eating (again) and stuff 😮

I just got home from playing airsoft in a swamp (not really, but Worthing Airsoft is on an incline and we played at the bottom today and it was quite swampy and it was a great day all things considered. Played aggressive, played hard, but the main reason it was good is I managed to play the whole day. Now, that might seem like a weirdly low bar for a young'n like me, but two things: 1. I missed last game day because I was ill, so I've had a month of eating baaaaaaaadly with very little exercise (I am a notoriously bad stress eater and unemployment + sickness wasn't a nice combo) 2. I was running my full "weight loss" setup to try and counteract the weight I've put back on over the past few months. The weight loss loadout worked. I could really feel it and now I'm totally knackered; plate carrier with 4kg weighted plates in it (so 8kg because 2 plates), all my mags and spare ammo and stuff in pouches and a backpack with more gas (GBBRs use a lot) and water to drink. It was a really heavy loadout, but I'm so happy that it was as it's exactly what I was going for. Was running around with the my TM AKM GBBR and it was firing fantastically. Need to bed the hop up rubber in a bit as it was the first time out with it, but it was shooting really nicely if a little inconsistently, though I imagine the mild rain in the morning and the ambient cold didn't help it too much in that regard. One bad thing that did happen was I dropped to one knee... right on a little rock in the ground, so my right knee hurts. Plenty of rest for that... I think I'm going to keep up my break from bush wookiee-ing and keep running this weight loss loadout as I move forward for now. Weight loss is half of it, but also just working on improving an aspect of the game that I don't typically do much and haven't done much in a long time; I feel like I have sniping down, so I'll work on what I'm weaker at for now. The goal is to not only do that, but also try and carry 3 guns total (rifle, sniper and a pistol) as I'm a big lad at 6'5" with a heavy Dutch build so I think it'll be doable. It may not be and may just be more hassle than it's worth with slings everywhere, but it's a nice goal to strive for. Roll on next game day!

Nah, they put it on a Worthing game day so none of the Worthing staff (or those of us who are good friends with the staff) will be along this time. It's a shame, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. This does, however, mean that people won't be finding Beans cards tucked into their gear (or around the hotel) this time

I don't trust any pistol with a metal slide in the UK climate. Most of the year it's just not warm enough for them to work well. Though I know some people use high-powered gas with better results I wouldn't want to put that strain on the pistol, especially with VFC's "fantastic" reputation for their internals. I can't confirm any of this because I've never owned a VFC USP, but I know that if I was going to get one I'd immediately get the TM one.

I just looked at these and as someone who likes to tweak and fine tune my RIFs to peak performance... these are awful. Could build better for less than half the price, not to mention I dislike the aesthetic. Also, £1250 for a pistol? I like my expensive pistols and will usually spend about £350 on mine plus magazines, but £1250 for something that most people won't even use? Well, I'm sure someone will buy these. I won't, but someone will.

CNN? Not clearly biased? [insert J. Jonah Jameson laughing meme here] Personally, I don't believe any of the mainstream media outlets any more and tend to find my news from multiple, independent sources, having been a journalist myself. You can give a journalist a set of facts and then they can write 3 different articles using the same set of facts, each telling a totally different story. It's really not that hard to do.

I've got no problem with people turning up in Russian kit because at the end of the day I know they aren't pro-Russian wannabe militia; they're a nerd playing BB wars in the woods. Will I be wearing Russian kit? No, though I've never really been interested in Russian stuff. I'm more about independent loadouts, but assuming I was big into my Russian kit, I'd probably look to use something else while this is going on. Would I blame someone for not doing so? Absolutely not, it's my personal choice not to run it and I don't much care about what other people do with their choices. We're a free society at the end of the day. Also, this is very true. Having been a journalist I can very much say that the media would put some horrific spin on it because shock content gets clicks, which is all they're chasing at the end of the day. For that reason alone (we know how journos love to paint our hobby anyway) I think it's probably a better idea to hang up the Russian kit for now, purely to safeguard the hobby from those who would destroy it for their own gain (journos, politicians etc).

I've bought... 6 TM pistols(?) and all of them have had trades on them. Shops say they don't have trades and sometimes blank them out in photos for legal reasons, but nobody goes through the effort of actually doing it and nobody seems to care.

I pretty much only run my TM mk23 and TM hk45 tactical these days, so my votes are for those two. They both perform amazingly and both work in the cold with no real issues. With the same upgrades, they both shoot about as well and accurate to 50m is more than enough. Could probably push more performance out of them if I used .48s instead of .32s, but it's excessive and expensive!

My local site classes both hip firing and dual wielding as blind fire, but side-sighting is fine. It's one of the few rules I very much disagree with, but I've given my feedback and it's still the way it is so I'm not going to push it any further. I agree hip firing is bad and I agree with their ruling of no key-holing (because it's basically just situational blind firing), but dual wielding and hip firing never came across as blind firing to me... To me it feels stupid. Hip firing and dual wielding you can very much see where you're shooting, arguably better than you can when you side-sight, since side-sighting means you can't see the other side of your gun. Yes, dual wielding you can shoot in both directions which would be blind firing as you can't look directly to both the left and right at the same time, but you can also fire a single gun to the right without looking so that's just blind firing and has nothing to do with dual wielding. Hip firing as well, some support guns aren't designed to be shouldered; as has been pointed out, are you going to make me shoulder a minigun? I think part of it is that people get mad about support gunners playing support gun properly. I've got a friend who has had multiple complaints against him because he suppresses an area and then people stick their heads out into the suppression to catch a few BBs to the face. Fires in bursts too, so he's doing nothing wrong, but people get mad; I think him moving up and hip firing is part of why hip firing got banned. Oh yeah, I also got properly blind fired last game day when I decided to not be a sniper for once. Someone on my team said "behind you!" and I turned to see an arm and the barrel of a rifle sticking around the corner. Fortunately the guy must've been shooting blanks or hadn't wound his high cap or something because I didn't feel anything and just pushed around and put two BBs into his leg.

Going to a CQB game at a place with very low light levels in April. Whoever said AEPs can't be run as a primary

Another good one today at Worthing, but in a very unexpected way. Fairly uneventful morning with the VSR, sniping people from hidden positions is always fun. However, nothing to write home about like the past few skirmishes, it was a very normal BB conservative morning. However, I knew it was going to rain in the afternoon, so I packed my TM416D with no attachments as well as rain + scopes = blurry vision and I really didn't want to have to dismantle the VSR and mk23 to clean them since I just did a few days ago. It's been literally years since I played with a normal AEG rifle and... it was so much easier. Still some sneakiness, but mostly just lots of fast paced speedyboi gameplay. Considering it was only firing at 0.7J (stock TM NGRS gearbox) it was shooting much further than I thought it would. I lost count of how many people I hit out with it, but I was making a lot of plays. Didn't think I had it in me as I haven't used a normal rifle since late 2019, but was surprised at just how much work I could get done with the iron sights and a very lightweight chest rig with a few mags and an Odin speedloader in my pocket. The sniper fundamentals definitely helped, plus my old old knowledge of how to use cover and using shoulder transfers to peek unpredictably. I had to leave before the final game because I ran out of battery (I only brought one because I was only using it for the afternoon games. Didn't think I'd need the second!). I look forward to when I can get my hands on an MWS and some AK mags, because I'm still not the biggest fan of AEGs, but I've definitely opened my eyes to the prospect of not dressing up like a bush monster.

I sure would love to use mine, if only I had more mags for it...

Another ridiculously good game day. I'm starting to think I'm just hitting my stride and getting back to how good I was as a teenager. Been burning through ammo and had to swap out to my big tank today as my little one ran out. Target rich environment with so many kills! Had a game where we had to push through a specific gap (it's a real killer. It's a fairly steep hill with the defenders shooting down on you. We call it Omaha!) and I was one of the people who pushed through with my bush suit and mk23 (after taking people out from just below the threshold on the flank). Pushed through and quickly made my way behind their whole team and just started picking everyone off from behind. Ah, I'm loving the ghillie and the VSR and the mk23 right now; it's amazing. We did have a group of rentals who were taking the piss though. Blatant non-hit taking to the point where it wasn't even amusing any more. So many instances of hitting them, hearing the impact from where I was firing from (not close, so everyone's hearing it) and seeing the impact on their baggy DPM jacket, only for them to just... ignore it. Started to give them a few Kicking Mustang specials as the day went on, but even thwacking BBs off the face masks was met with totally ignoring it to the point where I got a marshall to stand next to one of them, dinked one off his mask and he still tried not to take it; marshall wasn't having that. Only got annoyed by it when I shot a group of 4 of them with the mk23 when they took cover near me (didn't see me because ghillie is good and I was very still), none of them took the hit and they all just full-auto'd me from about 5m away. Not impressed! They were also just ignoring respawn rules, walking back about 20m, having a little ponder and then going back into game. I watched one of them do that, shot him twice with the mk23 so he put his hand up, walked 20m down the path and then just went back into the game. You have to laugh, because what else can we do. They were reported to the marshalls by a lot of people it sounded like. One of them also got told off for blind firing, and while he was being told off for blind firing his friend who was next to him started blind firing right in front of the marshall as the marshall was telling the original one not to. Going to ache tomorrow. Me playing like I'm 17 again means that while I am a slow, methodical bush-monster, there are times of explosive movement and fast play. At least it's good for the new year weight loss programme! I'm not old by any stretch of the imagination (especially not in this hobby, I still feel like a bit of a baby), but I'm also not 17 any more! 😅

Why yes, I do enjoy sniping. How could you tell?

Saw the topic, ready to preach the good word of the m14... Then I read the post. I'm leaving now and I'm taking my collection of various beautiful m14s with me 😤

I never use red gas in my pistols, but mine are basically all TMs. They still function on green in winter and if I put red gas in them I'd be scared that they would explode (TMs are designed to use 144a, but green gas in winter works because it's so cold). When it's really cold I just switch to the mp7 AEP or the mk23, as AEPs and non-blowback works all year round. With most pistols, especially the heavier metal-slide pistols, you need red gas during winter because it just doesn't work otherwise. However, as has been said, make sure you switch back to lower power gas when the weather heats up or you'll damage the pistol. I run my AAP on green gas even when it's around 10 degrees celcius and it works no problem, but any colder and it struggles.

I don't think I've had such a good game day in years. Literally just over a decade ago. Last time I had a game day like this I was a teenager living and playing in Spain. Spent the morning before the safety brief doing my walk around the site, looking for new positions to use as hides with good sight lines on objective areas and bases, as well as improving some of my usual spots (moving foliage and stuff). When we played I used one of my new spots for the first game and literally got about 20 kills with a bolt action, though I didn't get fully into the position as my team was swarming around me, pulling lots of attention on the area meaning I couldn't move without being detected. Then we swapped sides, I went to one of my old spots I had improved and racked up another 20 or so (literally lost count both games). One of the marshalls came up after the game and said "you had a pretty nice little angle there. I was just watching them push up and then get shot in the side" after the game as he saw what was going on and had to step out of my line of fire a few times. Missed most of the 3rd game because I had to refill my mags, which I never usually have to do, and got chatting with people in the safe zone. When I got out, we were super losing, but I managed to get into another of my positions and was picking people off at the base we had to attack for a few minutes before the game ended. Ever since last game day where I discovered my VSR is effectively and accurately reaching out to 85m I've just been taking the piss and making the most of the absurd range. It hops a little at 65 - 70m, so I have to aim a little lower for those very specific shots, but the trade off of hitting 75 - 85m directly on is fantastic. Wasn't going to go out after lunch as I was tired (new year resolution to lose weight, so there's calorie restriction going on) and was like "can I top that morning? Probably not." Then I did. Held a base by myself for a long time, occasionally directing a few rental kids who came to reinforce me (which was massively appreciated!). Constantly picking people off, including a pair who took cover about 2m from me and didn't see me leaning against the branch barricade due to my ghillie. Hit one with the mk23, then the other when he came to medic his buddy, and then another guy about 30m off on the flank who also hadn't seen me. Eventually got taken out, ran back to respawn (up a hill. I don't usually run much, much less up a steep hill, but I was feeling it today and wanted to get back in the fight), then came back, lay on my belly about 60m out from the base that they had now taken and started terrorising the defenders just as I had when I was defending the base myself. They had no idea where the shots were coming from and I was just constantly picking them off. I think I probably ended up with 65, maybe 70 kills through the day. No exaggeration, I burned through a lot of my .48s and now I need to restock, I think I went through somewhere between 150 and 200 .48s. They expensive With a bolt action these game days rarely come up, but I'm really getting used to how my VSR shoots and the vegetation is very sparse, allowing me to take those super long distance shots. I'm usually content with like... 15 - 20 through the whole day, but when these days come around it makes you feel like a million dollars. As I said, last time it happened was in the south of Spain when I was 17 years old.

Geoffs, BLS or ASG blaster are my go-to BBs.