I started playing Airsoft when the first AEG TM Mp5's and FAMAS's started to be available in the UK.
So we are talking 1996ish. I remember the date because I had to lie about my age to get a springer glock from Rebel Troop in Reading.
Airsoft back then was pretty comical. Everyone ran a springer except for maybe 1 person who could afford a famas.
Very little camo on the whole and people wore those B&Q plastic goggles for protection.
The first game I played was somewhere in Reading. Might have been Mapledurham, but its so long ago now.
I remember the game well. I had 3 mags. Which meant in relative terms, I was the geardo.
We all ran around and shot each other fairly close because not all BB guns back then had a hop. ( The good hop ones had gold barrels.. oooo fancy )
There was one guy there who had a SA80 Springer and because it had a scope on it. We all thought he was the pro'est thing on the planet.
There as no chrono but everything else was much the same.
I did it for a few weeks and honestly, it was kinda lame. Truly no one had AEG's or any real range back then.
Everything good was crazy expensive. An Mp5 AEG back then was about £280 and we are talking 1996.
I dropped out for a few years and picked it back up again in about 2001/2. Again went to Rebel Troop and bought a TM M4.
1 Spare Mag, a TN barrel and a silencer cover. Back then people really bigged up the properties of tightbores.
Ran it for a couple of games. Sent it to Airsoft Armouries for a power upgrade. It came back and had been modded to take a 9.6 3000 battery in a bag on the stock. ( Ghetto )
From there I played with the same gun for a long time. Still back them no one chrono'd and the rules of airsoft where kind of fluffy from site to site.
I finally started going to Stirling Airsoft and they were the best days ever. No real worries about safety or FPS, and no one got hurt as it was still quite a small community.
About a year after i got my gun back from AA, it was chrono'd at a game and was running 420fps. Ah fun times.
They still let me play at FireFight on that day and just politely asked for me to clip the spring.
So how is that for old school airsoft?
Hey Looking to play in a few weeks. Anyone used this site before and got any feedback? We had found another site just about London to visit but a friend said it was a great site filled with absolute twats, so we are avoiding that one Cheers
