Impulse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I can't believe you wasted a perfectly good Mr Kipling apple pie. This might be a worse crime than picking up someone else's pyro to be honest. But to talk about the topic at hand... there's nothing wrong with throwing a not-grenade into a room to try and clear it, but nobody should take a hit because of it. My favourite is pine cones, but I'd never expect anyone to take a hit as if it was actually a grenade. The whole idea of fake grenades is to get people to run out of the room or clear the area because they think it's a grenade. If someone obviously called a hit from it, I'd tell them they're not dead and it was a cheeky pine cone to try and get them to displace. However, the guy picking up your grenade and tossing it back is a big no-no. Never touch anyone else's reusable grenades, because that's how they go missing. The person who has spent the money on that reusable pyro is 100% going to head into the room at some point to pick it up ad not just forget about it, because they're not cheap!

https://locknloadairsoft.com/products/premium-full-metal-m1a-mag-well-replacement-airsoft?_pos=14&_sid=80f5d21b4&_ss=r I've never bought from them and I've never heard of them so I can't vouch for them as a vendor, but... this might be the part you need. It doesn't state whether it's G&G or TM/Cyma/G&P compatible, but the high cap mags they have on their website for the m14 look like the TM/Cyma/G&P style ones (G&G m14 mags are noticeably different), so I'm going to assume that the parts they have are also TM/Cyma/G&P compatible parts

Super lightweight challenge-mode kit. No ghillie, no camo, very limited rifle ammo (4x 10rd mags for the rifle) Upside is it's incredibly lightweight and super breathable; that Austrian summer kit is so nice. Got spare ammo and gas in the backpack so I'm not going back to the safe zone too much, but being limited to 40 shots with the rifle before having to reload is great for honing the skill to pick your shots and be accurate.

I just worked out what you were thinking then. m110 is about 360fps... on a .2, but I imagine the online power converter when you were running the numbers through that was doing 360fps on a .3, which would be 1.8J. This is not how springs work, so just assume the M rating is related to speed on .2s. The best way to work out which spring is best is... trial and error, honestly. Not all springs are created equally, and there are other factors that will go into the power at the end. An m150 spring is the most accurate for getting to the 2.3J limit on a .2, but it won't work in all builds with all BB weights as there are other things that go into it. When I put an m150 spring in my VSR setup it got me to 2.8J because of my setup, while my friend needed to put an m160 in his (it was shorter). I have another with a bore-up kit that I put an m135 spring in and it was 2.6J, so I reckon I might need to put an m120 in that one to get it below 2.32J. At least springs aren't expensive. I went through quite a few with my VSR builds finding the best ones for the builds I did.

I'm assuming you don't mean that you have an m110 spring in the bolt rifle expecting more than 1.2J, because m110 would get 1.2J(ish) and that would be my expectation. I'm assuming you mean you had an m130 or something and were expecting 1.8J? I am a gas gun person now, so my understanding of spring stuff is older knowledge, but I will attempt to give some sort of answer from my experience building spring VSRs a few years back So, the M rating is essentially a ballpark estimate of the m/s speed of a 0.2 BB. M100 = 100m/s with a 0.2 BB, or 328fps, M110 = 110m/s, or 360fps, and so on and so forth. AEG and bolt action springs do tend to be designed differently because they are different systems, but the M rating if it has one should be the same, for the platform it's designed for. For example: The m100 AEG spring for my m14 and the sp100 spring (Laylax use sp to denote, but it's the same thing) for my VSR are rated for the same power, but they're very different springs. VSR springs tend to be a lot longer than AEG springs because the VSR cylinder is a lot longer than an AEG cylinder, so if I put a VSR spring in my m14, it's going to have a wildly different power. The VSR sp100 spring is designed so that when that spring is compressed in a VSR with the VSR's compression distance, it will produce the force to propel the 0.2 BB at 100m/s. However, if I put that in an AEG which has a much shorter space, the spring is compressed more and therefore will produce a lot more force when extended, since the spring is compressed a lot more in that much shorter AEG gearbox. The opposite is also true. If you get an AEG spring and put it in a VSR, it will produce far less force (and will probably be less consistent too) since it's supposed to compress more and extend less, but the VSR's cylinder is massively longer. It's also why there are specific springs for the TM PSG1, because that gearbox was pretty different, though I also think it is the same for the v2.5 gearbox in the SR-25 and now I want to dig mine out again to try and fine tune the power again. Probably won't because I never use it, but you've given me food for thought. And after we've considered all of this, then we also have to consider cylinder to barrel ratio (yay, maths!), but I don't think that's going to be the issue here. It could very much be an issue (I don't know your build so I can't say) and will be a factor when it comes to power, but I don't think it is going to cause 0.6J difference on .3s and it's a whole other thing on its own and I don't want to bore everyone here with a wall of text as I talk about it (again). Look, long range stuff is my jam and I like it, okay? ?

Usually there is, but Simon, the guy who runs the shop and is usually set up where all the Western stuff was displayed this weekend, wasn't there this game day as he was busy doing something for a VE day event in Worthing. He usually has some snacks to buy, so I'm sure you'll see him next game day The worst part of the site is the fact it can be a bit too overgrown (good luck using something with an MED without knowing the site well, especially during summer) and there's lots of brambles around, but pretty much everything else is excellently run and managed and the marshall team are very, very experienced. It's one of the old sites, been around for a long, long time. I started there in 2005ish when it was still run by Tom Andrews (rest in peace, absolute legend of a man), and the two current owners were both there when I first started when I was barely a teenager; one as a marshall, the other as a player.

I had a cracking day today at Worthing Airsoft. Not only did I get out of the safe zone today, but I was out properly on time! All my mags were loaded with BBs and gas, and I had managed to adjust the power on my Kar98k up to 2.3J, as the last time I used it was years ago at 1.1J. However, since I bought the Tanaka G33/40 (the mountaineer, shorter version of the Kar98k) and run that at 1.1J with iron sights, my full length PPS Kar98k now has a lovely scope on it and is a proper sniper rifle using a real-steel scope mount. Got it up to about 2.1J and left it there because that was fine and it was shooting really well, even though I do really need to change out the hop rubber and barrel at some point. I was also using my superduper lightweight setup with the Aliexpress velcro belt (it worked really well...), but that did mean I only had 40 shots for my rifle (4x 10rd Kar98k mags). I also decided to use no ghillie and no camo clothing at all, because there are already a LOT of ghillies showing up and there's part of me that wants to just say "you need a ghillie to stay hidden? Skill issue", so the OD Österreich Bundesheer summer kit came out to see just how much I could get away with. It was a lot ? Anyway, first game was a simple flip can game and... we got steamrolled. Nobody was playing aggressively to the point where one of my friends had to shame a group of rentals into pushing up after me and him were the front line, me with my 30m MED bolt action and him with a 1.1J lever action. Second game we got let out 3 seconds early to help us not get steamrolled again. I ran (yes, I RAN!) to my spot and there were people already there somehow, so while we got let out early, they must've been let out even earlier! We lost this game too, though at least with this one I managed to burn through basically all of my magazines after respawning. I took another position and terrorised a very busy structure that people love to use as cover; I had a pretty clear line of sight to it at an angle that made it super easy to hit people every time they tried to peek out. Had to ration my ammo and I had a player looking directly at me for about 20 mins, unable to locate where I was shooting from. In my no-camo setup, shooting a wood stocked, unsuppressed, gas Kar98k. When the marshall called 2 mins left and I still had 1 and a half mags left, I decided to shoot the guy who was trying to find me and got him square on the goggles with the first shot. Should've done that earlier ? Next game was Star Wars themed. We had 3 bounty hunters walking around in proper Mandalorian style armour that we had to turn in "bounties" to; they would also shoot anyone who tried to camp them and had juggernaut rules themselves, to dissuade a team from trying to follow them around and stop the other team from getting anywhere near. The "bounties" were a bunch of plushies (I think?) that were hidden around the site. I only played half of this game though, because I realised my hop wasn't hopping like I wanted it and I didn't have a screwdriver out with me to adjust the hop. I wandered around trying to find stuff to do, but they put the objectives at the bottom of the site. With a 30m MED, there's no point me going to the bottom of the site as it is wildly overgrown and is unplayable for me. When I then saw my shots weren't hopping how I wanted, I just decided to head back to the safe zone to set that up. I managed to get it shooting phenomenally well, but I decided to grab an early lunch and have a chat with some of the guys in the safe zone rather than go out. After lunch we played a game where we had to find Darth Vader's helmet, take it to a base and defend that base for a set amount of time. What steam the blues had from the morning had completely gone, and us yellows managed to absolutely dominate this game. It got to the point where a bunch of us were moved off by the marshalls because while we weren't spawncamping them, we had them pinned in one part of the site and they just couldn't break through our lines. I didn't do much this game apart from relay enemy positions. I did get a few crispy shots with the Kar98k, but with my ammo scarcity I was being careful with my shots so I wasn't taking many shots that I wasn't confident I could hit like I might normally with more ammo. 10rd magazines don't last long, see? After this game we played... the most fun game of the day. It was a silly idea one of the head marshalls had where he put three flip cans in a line, and had marshalls standing in a line with them. You could not cross this line and anyone on the other side of the line was an enemy. Why is that distinction important? Because when you were hit, there were no medic rules and you went back to respawn... on the other team. Yes, when you were hit, you joined the enemy team, so you either won by having all three flip cans with your team's colour, or by killing the entire enemy team off. There were so many laughs and this game was absolute gold, though the flip can colour did get very confusing, to the point where one of the regulars managed to crawl all the way up to it... only to flip them to the enemy team's colour, then put them back to neutral when we all yelled at him. It was a really funny game, though the flip can colour was a bit confusing which the marshall admitted. However, the best way to test these games out is to play them, and we all had a massive laugh with it. It was so much fun! Last game of the day was a classic 3 base domination. Not too much to say about it, but it worked well, especially since numbers were down by this point as some people had definitely gone home by this point. Maybe they wanted to beat the traffic as Brighton were playing at home (and yes, we got stuck in football traffic on the way back...), but it went well enough. I got into a really cheeky spot shooting down a main path, but eventually had to move off when a load of people realised where I was and started hosing the barricade with a LOT of BBs. I'm just glad I managed to disengage well enough to avoid getting hit, as in that situation that was the best thing I could do. I also managed to do it without some people realising, so they spent the next 10 - 15 mins continuing to hose that area with BBs despite me being long gone. Sometimes, just leaving the enemy team guessing about your location is better than standing your ground and getting hit. Anyway, I had a lot of fun today. Learning point is that I need to swap my rifle mag pouches and my utility pouch, because having all my rifle mags and pistol mags next to each other means all the weight is on one side and it bounced about a bit. Never even came close to coming loose though, but I think it'll be more comfortable to have the weight a bit more even. Will test next game day.

That is a real shame to hear. Once I got my driving license (hopefully soon(ish)), I was planning on heading out there for a few game days, but now it seems like I won't get the chance as I don't think I'll pass my test by July (because tests are so hard to book anyway...) Sites in the south east are dropping like flies and it sucks

I've never had any issues with leaky mags or shattered nozzles, so I think there's an element of bad luck on your part there. In terms of what I do, I make sure to never use gas that will be too strong for it (depending on temperature, as gas has different psi at different temps), and for the mags I always keep them stored with a little bit of Abbey maintenance gas in them to keep the seals nice and lubed.

Yeah, but if we think about it, impersonating a police officer and carrying an imitation firearm around in the open is nowhere near as bad as calling someone a stinky poopyhead on the internet. Ooooooh, there's some nice flashing blue lights outside my window. I wonder wha-...

Part of the reason I love my bolt actions and DMRs. An MED is just an excuse to use my pistol more. I usually advise people looking for a pistol to go with an AEG to go with the mk23 purely because it gives them something that their AEG won't do for them (the capacity for silent kills). You will rarely, if ever, use your pistol for actual gunfighting since your rifle is just the better option and midcaps last a long time, so why not have a pistol that does something your rifle doesn't do. Squishy trigger isn't really an issue if all you're using it for is taking the occasional silent shot.

That's my plan with my scorpion; I want to make it into a little monster as a sniper secondary. Got a shoulder rig that will hold it, and I also have two drum mags for it. If it goes well, I'll probably send them my mp7 as well, but that actually shoots fine out of the box. But you are correct. CMGs are... similar but different to AEPs, and far more capable of upgrading. Traditional AEPs are basically as good as they will be when you them, and that level of performance is awful, especially the trigger response as you say; it's absolutely horrendous. One other consideration with AEPs is... your target won't always feel your hits, especially at range. I've had it before where I've tapped someone, a trustworthy player that I know and who does take his hits, with a single shot at 40m with my mp7 and he turned and shot me because he simply did not feel that .25 being fired at 0.6J hitting his plate carrier at that range. It's an unfortunate reality of airsoft and isn't always because your target is a cheating bastard

I would warn against Raven pistols. I have never heard a good review on them that wasn't paid for in Airsoft International If you want a cheap pistol, I will echo @EDcase on the second one though. An ASG or STTI mk23 with a hop rubber upgrade (I like 4uantum or Flamingo rubbers) and a hadron h-arm goes incredibly hard for about £80 all in, but my experience with them just out of the box is pretty lacklustre; my STTI mk23 barely hit 30m out of the box, but a hop rubber and h-arm or h-plate solved that immediately and they're not expensive upgrades. For a GBB, the Action Army AAP-01 is really good for the price too and will be fine out of the box and even have full auto, though without upgrades I'd caution against using the full auto as the sears tend to shatter if you use full auto too much. Plus all consistency goes out of the window when you flick the brrrrttt switch. AEPs are usually not worth it, and that's coming from someone who owns a TM mp7 and an ASG scorpion, both of which are built like AEPs but a little bit bigger. When it comes to pistols, even the more expensive Cyma mosfet ones are underwhelming, and they're probably the best ones available. You won't get much more than 0.5J out of it, it won't hop anything heavier than a .25 and you'll probably get about 30m range, maybe 40m for a higher end one. My TM mp7 is larger than a regular AEP and costs about £250 new and that just about floats .28s out to 45m. I don't think I'd ever buy an AEP pistol; even my little AEP SMGs barely get any use.

It's a fantastic idea in concept, but in practice it's an awful idea. Me and my friend have pretty extensively tested with the grey Geoffs .5s in our bolt action rifles and went back to white BBs pretty quickly. The issue is that airsoft guns aren't precision instruments and a whole host of things will affect your shots pretty substantially. A brisk breeze, for example, will knock your BBs off course, but you can adjust for that with white BBs since you can see the general path that your BBs are taking in the wind. With grey, black, brown or any other "stealth" BB, you can't do that as you can't see where your BBs are going, so you might be shooting and internally raging because you're "totally hitting that cheater over there" when in reality your BBs are drifting about 5m to the left of him and you're just missing. I also tried the grey Geoffs .4s in a DMR and the BBs were awful quality. They were shattering in my hop up and I had to replace the hop rubber and clean the barrel and nozzle after trying a few mags of them. I threw them all away.