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Round two of my Zenitco parts finally arrived from Russia, the build is finally ready for someone much more capable than I to put it together. Had a B11u, B18 and some different length rail segments in this one.

Don't have a horse in this race (nor a suggestion for what is and isn't a good first RIF). Just wanted to clarify that assuming it's the angle of the inner barrel/the gap around it that is the guilty party here I wouldn't have said that's a miscast or anything like that. Simply a case that the usual centering plug and o-ring isn't present, so when the inner barrel isn't being supported by an outer barrel you'll get one hell of a lean going on... as seen in your photo. If it's not this we're supposed to be looking at and I'm missing some really obvious miscasting, I apologise in advance. Is that a booboo on Specna's part? Yes. Is this post largely just splitting hairs? Also yes. Figured I'd 'show my working' below as this is a thread started by a newer player, I've circled the missing things in the image below:

Some EPMs for the NGRS to fill a void until I can stumble onto some pmags, opened them up as soon as they arrived and did some weathering/shading on the ‘bullet’ inserts because they look awful without it. Managed to find some Gen M2 ranger plates in stock so grabbed those immediately, make EPMs look so much nicer IMO. And to wrap up, a Ferro 45 degree QD mount... just an aesthetic upgrade over the Magpul one I’ve used on and off.

Bar the zips and the materials used for the attaching straps it seems pretty much identical to the Crye 6x6x3 GP pouch (though based on the dimensions provided by Spiritus it's .5 of an inch smaller in height and width). Nalgene pouch is exactly what you'd expect, I'm not personally a huge fan of the S.A.C.K. I found it too big for what I want a dangler for, I'm not sure anything would ever replace the Ferro Mini Dangler for me... but that obviously depends what you want it for. Where many of the other danglers feel like they get in the way doing various crouching/prone movements the mini dangler does not. As always, YMMV based on what you want out of it... just figured a few words might be useful if you're looking at making some more purchases :).

Because I have zero self control I gave into the pull of the Spiritus delivery at TK. Bought some bits for a plate carrier I was intending to be selling 😅.

For sure, it certainly feels like 'less of a toy' in the weight department but not heavy enough for me to think I'll struggle using it for a day... at least not with any notably increased amount of ache across the following days. Aye, it's something I've seen mentioned a few times. Any recommendations in terms of what to use?

Being entirely honest it's lighter than I'd been expecting based on what I've read, and it only stands to get lighter as I swap out the E&L Zenit front end with the real one. Built like an absolute rock though.

The E&L arrived today, what an absolute lump it is. I wasn't expecting my biggest take away to be 'fuck me, that smells good'... but here we are. Just waiting on a delivery from Russia and we’ll finally be underway on getting it together.

It may well be the bucking needs to bed in a bit before it'll 'play nice' with .32s. Might worth intermitently dipping back to .32s every thousand rounds or so to see... though the more expedient way (if .32s are what you want to use) would be to play around with different nubs/remove some material from the nub currently being used in Monkman's case. I'd never had any issues with .32s with mine, but admittedly my G&G green is anything but fresh out of the packet, I dread to think how many rounds that thing has seen. G&G may have also changed the design/material slightly since I picked mine up, but I feel like that'd be something plenty of folks would pick up on had that been the case given how many folks use them in a veriety of RIFs. Nevertheless, good to hear that shots aren't hooking anymore.

First bits from Russia arrived, absolutely in love with the design on the sling mount.

Turned up entirely unopened and everything is present and correct. Though I imagine it's more luck than judgement I will note that I have not contacted UPS at all throughout the entire process bar when I had emails from brokerage to supply whatever it was they were after. However, I did email TG twice. No response the first time, second time I implied I would be getting PayPal involved if I wasn't to hear anything. Unsurprisingly got a fairly swift response saying they were going to contact UPS, that was on March 30th (roughly 4 weeks after my order shipped, shipping date being February 25th).

Mine arrived this morning, I’ll pop a screenshot up of the last few tracking updates. For those still waiting, I wish you luck!

Link to the stock here for your convenience. Worth noting there are replicas of the stocks available from various airsoft companies, for the generally not huge difference in price I'd likely be inclined to go for the one I've linked but just wanted to mention there are cheaper alternatives. And link to the slim grips here, again I imagine there are cheaper replicas available. I just happened to have the links buried in a folder somewhere from when I was toying with doing something similar, of which sourcing the upper receiver ended up being the deal breaker. I wish you luck if you hope to see it through .

The main thing you'll struggle with is finding a matching/close enough upper receiver complete with carry handle. If you can tick that box the rest should be relatively simple. Brownells do a Car stock which is manufacturer by B5 Systems (which means it's probably very good quality), may as well order the slim handguards from there while you're at it. Then it's just a question of how accurate you care to be with the gizmo's you attach to it.

The Phoenix is great (some argue borderline necessary) if you want to run ML buckings, I'd just never felt the need with G&G Greens performing as they were. I had 3 at one point, granted I'd anticipated number 1 being gone before 2 and 3 turned up 😅. I'd wanted two so I could one set up for a 10" rail/outer bareel and 285mm barrel with the hop set up to be running .32s-.36s outdoors, and a shorter 7" rail/outer barrel with a shorter inner barrel for CQB with a CO2 stock with the hop set up for 0.25s-0.28s. Very much a luxury given how easy it is to swap those components around, but the thought of having either of those set ups running perfectly and wanting to tear it down each time I wanted to change set up wasn't a reality I wanted to be in.

I wouldn't even dare speculate, I work in board games which is a fairly similar hobby/market in that it's niche (though not as niche as airsoft), and tends to lead to large spends (I'd say airsoft spends are higher, so in my brain the 2 points somewhat cancel each other out). And I know from the sales folks at our company that the number of variables when making those sorts of decisions far surpasses my understanding when considering various taxes and the like. We don't ship to Brazil for instance, because the cost to do so is astronomical and ultimately cost is king. Granted that's a very extreme example... but I don't think they'd actually see enough of a decline in sales to the UK to push a decision of either changing supplier or stop shipping here full stop. Length of contract plus whether there is an 'inadequate service' (or words to that effect) clause they'd want to trigger meaning they can leave the agreement early without cost would be another contributing factor, should it ever be a realistic thing to review. My best guess is it simply isn't worth it for them, folks will still order from them despite the aggro for the list of reasons which have been stated in here on multiple ocassions. And then the fact, by my understanding, they're a distributor so I've tended to assume their own store is more of a 'side gig for pocket money' than it is the bread winner... and only contributing further to potential limitations on their logistics agreements because they need agreements that enable them to send distribution sized orders without it annihilating their profits. I'm in the fortunate position of not really wanting any more airsoft bits for the foreseeable, so it's hard to put myself in a situation where I'd have to choose whether it was worth it or not.

Ohh sure, I'll assume it's absolutely down to a contract they've signed to get the cheapest price but I refuse to believe UPS are their only option... which is what TG are currently claiming. There is a difference between 'we won't change because it works out the cheapest/best for us' versus 'we can't change because there is no other option'. The latter being their claim, and one which I believe to be disengenuous. Assuming that's the case I guess they'll have to weigh up whether the savings they make on shipping are worth the cost of orders they miss out on from folks that won't use them because of the UPS fuster cluck.

UPS is the short answer. UPS and a combination of general logistics things being all over the place courtesy of Brexit and COVID being the longer answer. Other couriers have demostrated far less issues, hence UPS footing the bulk of the blame. Honestly, there isn't enough information to support how long this'll be the case. Being able to use a courier that isn't UPS would likely help, but TG have said multiple times that they aren't looking to change... or rather that they don't have the option to. Though I don't at all believe that UPS is the only courier they could get a contract with. I'm sure there are folks that have had much less of an issue, but purely down to luck.

At £40 (give or take) a mag these are actually sitting right around, if not slightly below, the going rate. They’re highly desirable, for a popular platform and discontinued so though that price looks insane, for 8 of them it’s that not bad at all. Very much a case of ‘find me another’.

Cannot unsee 😂 (the below image is literally the first image on Google images if you search 'speedsoft team')

To answer that part, it's largely the fact that Marui's are set up purely for the Japanese market and they couldn't give a rats about anywhere else. The fact they come in 'low' FPS wise by the laws over here means many want to get that additional 70 FPS (give or take) out of them. But doing so puts additional strain on other gearbox components and such the 'upgrade' train starts-a-rollin'. Do you need to? As covered earlier it's, for some reason or another, hotly debated... but that's the reasoning. Ultimately 'adequate' is very much a subjective term, having been around the hobby for a long time it's easy for me to forget that stock parts from other manufacturers have come a long way... but I'll never trust brass barrels 😅.