Impulse

Best is definitely the Wolverine Bolt for my VSR. It got me into HPA sniping and it really changed the game on how well my VSR performs. Absolutely amazing piece of kit! Worst is probably... any of the random sale items I bought thinking "that's a good price and I might use it in the future" and then never used and relegated to my kit bag. Fortunately it's not that much, but it doesn't change the fact that they were awful purchases.

Have you heard the word of the LPVO? (Low Power Variable Optic) I love LPVOs on my "regular" rifles. You can use it like a red dot, setting it to 1x and looking down the rifle with both eyes open, but having that flexibility to go up to 4x, 6x or even 8x is great for those long range shots and also reconnaissance stuff. I only use red dots on my SMGs. All my rifles have some sort of variable zoom optic.

So what you're saying is, that as someone who loves all things gas and HPA, I should avoid Anzio. I think I'm picking up what you guys are putting down there. Seriously stupid though. The whole point you sometimes run lighter BBs in gas guns is because they creep like mad. My m700 only has a 500mm barrel, not the stock 630mm one, and on 144a it will shoot a .3 at about 1.1J and a .48 at about 1.6J. Pretty sure my MWS would be hot if I put anything heavier than a .32 in it too.

Depends on your local site, in my opinion. For me, DMRs are useless at Worthing, as 1.6J with a 30m MED just isn't worth it; even if you want to play marksman you're better off with a bolt action since 2.3J will get you significant range increases and the MED is the same at 30m (and it's incredibly thick with foliage 6 months of the year, making snipers useless too). Different sites tend to have different rules for DMRs and I've written basically a thesis on it in another thread on this forum somewhere since I used my m21 setup to experiment with different powers (HPA is useful like that), but TL:DR is this: 1.48J - totally useless. Stay at 1.1J for no MED. I saw no noticeable difference in effective range. 1.64J - mostly useless. Maybe consider if your local site is fairly open and your MED is only 20m. Even then I only really saw a difference of about 5m effective range over 1.1J. 1.88J - enough to be useful. Probably wouldn't consider with a 30m MED as I have a bolt action with a 30m MED at 2.3J and an effortless bolt pull so I can shoot it fairly fast (still might though) but would go for it with a 20m MED easy. Saw enough of a boost in effective range to make it worthwhile. As a result of Worthing's DMR rules being craptastic, I've long since been honing the idea of a 1.1J "semi-auto sniper" build myself; the goal was to get the most range, consistency and silence while having no MED by keeping to 1.1J. I managed around 65m effective range (at least 9/10 shots hitting a man-sized target) and I find it to be more than enough for most engagements, though Worthing is not a very sniper rifle friendly site even in winter (but it's way better than the woodland CQB of summer). I am a big advocate of the 1.1J DMR/Sniper build and think they're underestimated in the airsoft community for just how savage they can be. Plus people moaning "that's a bit close for a sniper/DMR" is always amusing. Now that I've rambled enough, I'll actually get to my recommendation. Pick up your DMR rifle of choice, whether it's a Cyma m14 (they're nice...), SR-25 or something else. Then don't touch the gearbox, leave it at 1J and pick up a new hop rubber (I like 70 degree maple leaf macarons for AEG style rubbers), hop up nub and if you've got the cash a new inner barrel. Then simply play like a DMR as @Tackle suggested and see if you like the play style and get a feel for how much an MED might inconvenience you; remain mindful of your shots and the distances you're typically shooting at and experiment. Maybe play a game where you shoot only at targets over 20/30m, depending on the DMR MED at your site, then play the next game with no such limitation and see which you prefer. However, I will refute his point that they're 100% compatible and say they're about 95% compatible. There are tiny tolerances that are different, though you'll only encounter them if you work extensively on it. For example, TM magazines will fit in a Cyma m14, but they're really, REALLY picky about how you put them in and if you don't put them in right they'll fall out, while Cyma magazines in a TM will need to be forced in a little. Also, a Cyma stock won't fit on a TM gearbox and upper receiver. How do I know? Because I have both a Cyma and TM m14 and have discovered these while working on them

YEET CANNON?! 😮 Don't be silly, nobody is masochistic enough to own one of these...

I'd suggest one of two avenues to approach this. The "out of the box" approach: Get a TM NGRS. They fire great out of the box, recoil is present (though it's nothing to write home about. Get a GBBR if you want a bit more kick and impracticality) and it stops shooting when your mag is empty which is a nice little addition. Shove a 7.4v lipo in and run .25s or .28s in it and you'll love life. Maybe put a maple leaf hop rubber and omega nub in at a later date if you're feeling spicy The "I'm going to tinker" approach: Get a Cyma AK, m14 or mp5 (or whoever does a good m4 if you like AR15s, idk). Get a 60 or 70 degree maple leaf macaron rubber, an omega nub and a 6.03 prommy or a ZCI barrel. Spend the rest of the money on blackjack and hookers because that'll probably come to only around £200ish and the upgrades are easy to install. I never open AEG gearboxes (outside of stripping them entirely and shoving an HPA engine inside) because all the gears and stuff is techno-sorcery, but barrels and hops are incredibly easy to change out.

#NotAllHPAUsers I feel called out by the title 😐. In short, that guy is a cretin. Even if it was two guys it would be wrong, because you should never go for blows over BB wars, but the fact he goes in swinging on a woman is plain despicable. However, she is also partially in the wrong for spamming all those shots at his face at point blank range. Also, the guy recording is really slow to get involved. He should've jumped in there immediately to separate the two, but he just stands there and lets the assaulter swing a bunch before limply pulling the guy away. Literally all three people in this video are at fault and I hate it.

AAP to Ruger project is going well. Lower receiver arrived and that's the first pistol lower I've had to completely strip out (as the Ruger lower comes empty, you have to take all the AAP-01 bits out of the stock lower and put them into the Ruger lower apart from the safety and the mag release button). Still want to get some real wood grips, a metal upper (but they're pricey), a new inner barrel as the stock one is short and some different rear sights, but it's now very much usable as a Ruger. New Namsoft sidearm acquired, and this one is more reliable and shoots better than my 1911. VC sniper now has a period-appropriate assassin pistol

I just ordered a lower for my AAP-01 from them last week and they were great. Delivery took 9 days, no additional fees on a $35ish parcel and it all arrived nicely packaged. Would buy from them again.

What a weekend; Namsoft is incredibly fun. Went to Operation Boogaloo at Gunman Eversley Alpha as VC with two friends and we caused havoc. Myself and one of my friends were a pair of VC snipers who harassed the US forces all through both Saturday and Sunday. We would shoot a few, then bug out before they could organise a counter-attack and we basically did this all weekend. US forces kept leaving their radio masts unguarded, so it would've been rude of us not to constantly take their radio masts down through the weekend, which sent their morale-o-meter into the gutter (which was our objective as VC and PAVN). The other guy in our group spent the entire Saturday playing as a farmer, ditching all his military equipment and walking around the site with a rake, watching the US forces and their movements, then getting somewhere quiet and radio-ing in their locations. They were getting very jumpy, but to their credit they never shot him as he played the part of the scared farmer very well. This continued into Sunday, where we kept going with the same tactics. Our farmer changed out into a French uniform and played the part of a French mercenary HVT for the Aus forces to hunt down and kill, but they never got him. We even went on a stealth mission as two snipers (my friend was also marked as a HVT by this point), our French HVT and a PAVN soldier to take out one of their radio masts, but we managed to sneak past the US platoon in the area, do the objective and then bug out. Our HVTs never died (though the Aussies got very close to the French merc) and it was a fairly dominant performance by the VC and PAVN. Numbers were 55 US/Aus vs 22 VC/PAVN on Saturday, down to 25 US/Aus vs 15 VC/PAVN on Sunday, so while outnumbered we played to our strengths really well and the VC/PAVN guys I played with were all absolutely knackered by the end because we had to fire and fade so much over the weekend and Eversley Alpha is a pretty hilly site... Only my 2nd Namsoft game, but I'm definitely going back. The VSR performed amazingly and I think all bar two of my kills were 60+ metres (with most of those being 70+ and one of the less than 60m kills being with the pistol) and I thoroughly enjoyed the filmsim experience. I'll never get into milsim, as when I tried that I didn't really enjoy it, but filmsim is an absolute blast and I encourage people to give it a go. Also, especially considering how annoying we were being, I didn't have anyone get mad and square up to me this time (that group wasn't there, funnily enough), but I did have someone moan to me about a headshot I did at about 60m. I'll always aim for the chest and tried explaining how long range shots work (like how the hop up makes the BB go upwards towards the end of the trajectory, how a slight breeze will take the BB on a magical mystery tour, how a leaf will knock the BB out of the park and get a home run), but he wasn't prepared for me to speak and clearly just wanted to have a go at me; I tried explaining my side of it, but he wasn't interested in listening, only venting, so I gave up. Otherwise my experience was fantastic and I loved the whole thing. Some of the special forces guys shook my hand after the first day and said how impressive some of my shots were. Playing as a sniper can be pretty uneventful sometimes, but when you have one of these games where you feel like you're making a silly amount of impact on the game, it makes it all worthwhile. Haven't had such a good game in a long time!

I never played MW2 that much back in the day because it used matchmaking instead of people having privately owned dedicated servers that you browsed in a server browser like CoD4 had (this is all on PC, never been much of a console pleb). I saw matchmaking as a cancer in online gaming that eroded any sense of community and I still do; privately owned dedicated servers were the way to go and you would always go back to the same ones, so you'd know all the regulars and there was generally just an amazing sense of community, but matchmaking is just a cheap one and done. As such, I won't be getting it. I didn't even get CoD4 remastered (where I preferred both the single and multiplayer), because if I wanted to play it I'd just play the original, but where most people view MW2 with rose-tinted nostalgia goggles, I actually view it as the beginning of the end of good online PC gaming, because after MW2 it felt like every PC game decided to go with matchmaking instead and yes, I'm salty about that. Oh, also Activision-Blizzard are scum. Not giving them any money.

I was going to sell my AAP-01 at an airsoft car boot that Worthing did, but nobody wanted to buy my stuff (all custom builds, all more pricey than the stock stuff others were selling) and then my friend told me about some ruger outer barrels and I wondered at the possibility of building it to be another sidearm I can use for Namsoft. Still waiting on the grips to arrive from HK, but the outer barrel arrived and I love it. Well, apart from the fact it's a different colour black to the rest Will get a metal upper receiver for it too as it feels weird having a heavy barrel and a light frame, and I'll get a longer inner barrel that reaches a bit further down this one as it's longer than the original.

Plus they don't just have sales, they have FUCKIN' SALES! Might pick up some wood grips for my 1911 from them if they're good. Need some for my two 1911s and my ruger project which uses TM 1911 grips

Can't speak for Dogtag themselves because I've never been and don't plan on going (because I hear way more horror stories than good ones from there...), but the Defiant Events guys are great and run milsim events at sites around the south. I went to Op. Spectre (the one they ran at Worthing) and while it wasn't my cup of tea it was well run and organised. Their website is https://www.defiantevents.co.uk

Unless you're fine-tuning the build with some incredible granularity (we're talking the "the only thing stock are the externals" type builds), I agree with @Adolf Hamster. PDI aren't worth the investment and ZCI are both fantastic and cheap. In terms of hop rubber I prefer the macaron over the MR rubber myself as I find it more consistent, plus the macaron contact patch has no issues with barrels. ZCI barrel, Maple Leaf 60 or 70 degree macaron and an omega nub is all you need

I don't know if many companies do a 500mm with the correct cut for normal AEGs, as 500mm are typically m14 barrels which have a weird hop unit. I think ZCI are hybrid cut, but if you don't want a ZCI barrel, I'd look at 509mm barrels instead as they're far more plentiful with the correct hop up cuts.

Could be gas or HPA sniper rifles. Bolt pull is short and effortless on gas and HPA builds, as there's no spring you need to pull back and all you're doing is pulling back to load another BB in. It's part of the reason I love them so much; if movement is what gives you away, I want to be moving as little as possible

Didn't play too much today. Had no energy all day and first game I took a flanking route to get out of a spawn trap; the bases weren't planned very well that meant our team was easily cut off from half the site where all our objectives were, but the flanking route I took has massively overgrown and I had to fight through really thick foliage. Couldn't go back the way I came either as it was a steep, muddy, slippy incline covered in stinging nettles. Going up it was okay, but going down it I would fall and injure myself, or slide down on my backside and get covered head to toe in stinging nettles (they were probably about 5ft tall), so I spent about half an hour fighting my way through very thick foliage. Weather was muggy too, so I got back and was absolutely dripping with sweat and I just sat out the rest of the morning. Didn't recover much over lunch, so I toyed about with my VSR and now I can boast "my gnu am shot 100m ez" because I managed to hit the 100m target; barely heard the dink on the metal target as it was so far away, but I did hear it (because no way in hell was I seeing it, even with a 9x zoom). Yes, it was overhopping to where it would be impractical for most shots so I'll need to lower the hop, yes it was an angled shot on 9x zoom, and yes I was hitting it maybe around 1 in 10 shots, but I hit it. That means it's my effective range now, right? 😂 Looking forward to some Namsoft next weekend, but after that it's going to be hard for me to play for about 2 months. I think I might go insane, please send help.

Ready for Operation Boogaloo at Gunman Eversley next weekend, and this time the hop rubber ISN'T torn, so I can actually use it. Going to take it to Worthing this weekend to MAKE SURE it's working so I don't have a repeat of last time. Will shove a bunch of natural foliage in the scrim net on the day.

Ordered from them on the 18th. Order arrived with no issues on the 30th. it was a small parcel, but I was impressed that the shipping was still only £6. One thing I hate is when you want to order a tiny part from HK and the shop charges you £15 for postage. Pretty sure I've ordered from WGCshop before as well and had no issues. Good place to shop from my perspective!

I went to a milsim with a stock Cyma mp5k and all my kit on a mid-range Warrior Assault Systems belt rig (I was going as my squad's sniper, but never got the opportunity to use my VSR). Not including the VSR, which I didn't use once, my total kit probably cost about as much as a pair of Crye trousers. I'll somewhat agree and disagree with the gear snob thing; nobody will care if you turn up in cheap kit as long as it looks the part and conforms to the rules as there are no arm bands; you identify the other team by their kit alone and that goes for both filmsim and milsim events. I think a lot of generic milsim events typically split it by tans vs greens, though some may have a theme due to narrative (so maybe like tans vs civvies or something). However, there will be people at milsims with kit that is veeeeeeery expensive and veeeeeeeery advanced. We had a group of professional urban surveillance guys on the other team at the milsim I went to and they had a drone with thermal imaging, night vision, the works. Not to mention most of the task force guys also had night vision goggles and our little group had nothing like that so we got rolled over at night and just retreated to our FOB and had a good night's rest; fortunately some of the other OpFor guys had NVGs and kept the task force busy. We were more knowledgeable of the site than anyone else who was there, so we picked a really out of the way location for our FOB and it never got discovered. Still put some trips and water mines out just in case though I can massively vouch for filmsims though; they're a really fun experience and I go to as many as I can now after experiencing my first Vietnam game a month or so ago. Roleplay is a big thing, but you also don't have to get too involved in that side of things if it makes you uncomfortable. For example, I don't tend to scream too much when I get hit, but I do a death groan and fall over before calling for a medic, usually resting my gun across me and out of my hands to make it clear I'm hit if anyone then comes up to me. If you're shouting "hit" and putting your hand up and then standing around like a normal skirmish day people may get annoyed, but as long as you make a token effort I've never seen anyone get too butthurt over not going full thespian. I'd say kit is more important in filmsim than in milsim, but again it's not usually a strict "you must have genuine issue US Army Vietnam kit". I typically go to Vietnam games with simple black shirt, trousers and boonie covered in scrim net with a chicom and a gas mask bag for random goodies. All in probably cost me around £60ish. Gun I use is my VSR because it's based on the m700/m40a1 which was used, then I just cover it with scrim net. Is it a perfect, historically accurate loadout? No way. Is it sufficient for themed BB wars? Yes.

Check with the organisers. For milsim? Yes. Some will do a level of kit rental, but since you'll be out in the field for 24 - 36 hours uninterrupted you probably want kit that is personalised to you, not rental kit. No idea, but Defiant Events do stuff in the south east and they're pretty good. They have a minimum age of 18 at their events. Milsim is not regular airsoft. It usually has a lot less trigger time, kit requirements, squad-based gameplay, will run for 24 hours or more uninterrupted, so you need to bring your own food, drinks, sleeping bag etc. It's not for everyone; I'm not a fan of it, prefering the filmsim/battlesim middleground, but I know other people who basically only do milsim.

Oooooh, more for the glorious PAVN / VC side? I'll be there as VC with a VSR and my attempts at a mostly period appropriate "ghillie" and rifle wrap (lots of scrim net and lots of natural foliage).

@strykerles hit the nail on the head for maintenance so I'll echo some of what he said. I keep my mags with a bit of gas in them while not in use and I've only had two mk23 mags start leaking. Just make sure they're stored with a bit of gas in (maintenance gas is best) to keep them nice and healthy. Keeping them unloaded to protect the spring from becoming compressed is good too and will make sure it feeds nicely as you move forward. Also, I take my pistols apart after each game day I use them, give them a good clean and relubing (mostly just the slide) to keep it working nice and snappy. You typically won't have to lube up the piston head, but if you notice the loading nozzle having a hard time returning after each shot, or you notice a lot of gas venting out the top with each shot you will have to do that. I've only done that with one pistol of mine and that's the 1911 as I was trying to get as much gas efficiency out of it as possible due to tiny mags with tiny gas reservoirs. It's generally not that difficult, it can just be a bit fiddly and feature springy bits that you don't want to lose or warp. USP is nice. I'm also a fan of HK pistols because I prefer the mag release.