shadowfacex

She’s obviously a keeper. 😉

Hey folks! Another update that went out of testing: 5-day weather forecast for each location. Now, you can check whether to pack gaiters or shorts! Enjoy!

If you’re looking for some more info on each site (game types, facilities, prices, weather, location, etc), you can find it here: NSC Airsoft No Limits NTACentre Dirty Dog Airsoft District 23 Adrenalin Airsoft If you happen to find any more that aren’t on PlayAirsoft, feel free to send your suggestions.

I started marking my gear with UV pens two years ago. Each RIF has an inconspicuously placed mark that serves to identify it, in case it gets stolen. Touch wood 🪵 I hope it never happens, but this can help speed up detection and recovery. Nevertheless, it’s a shame people prefer to steal instead of going to work to earn a few good quid, especially when there’s such a huge demand for low-skilled workers (stealing doesn’t require any skill). My mate says the company he works for pays £15/hr for picking and they’re short on staff, so may go up soon. It’s the best time to get to work.

☝🏻This. Most LiPos are designed to retain optimal performance around 70-80%, when you store them at this level. Unless you want to decommission your battery, I suggest you keep some juice in it between games, and charge them fully before each game. This should give you the best compromise without consciously trying to “optimise my battery’s life at the cost of being constantly on edge.” Average lifespan of a lipo is about 3-4 years, depending on the storage conditions and number of cycles put through it. Some will start to puff a few charging cycles in (like shitty Nuprol ones) or it may last you 5 years when on good terms. I recently had to buy a spare one and realised my current mini-stick has been with me through 4 years and my charger shows me still about 85% capacity available. So yeah, don’t waste time on magic tricks and keep it simple. Unless you go through batteries like tea or coffee, then there’s no point in overkill. Also, invest in a really good charger. ISDT does marvellous gear for RC/Airsoft. Exactly. If you were to fork out £6k for a battery replacement (cheapest battery for Renault Zoe), or £12k (BMW i3), or just scrap your car because fuck paying £30k for a replacement (Tesla), you’d think about charging cycles. Paying £20 for a good RC battery once every few years is par for the course, so don’t sweat it.

You’re missing one big sticking point here about TM RIFs: they’re made for a specific market only (Japan) with super fine tolerances due to the specifics of said market (regulations). Picking up any TM gun with the intent to upgrade it is akin to taking a finely crafted katana and trying to add bits of steel to it “ to improve its performance”: it’s pointless and will ruin the reliability of said weapon. As long as you know what you’re buying and you’re fine with it (out-of-the-box performance and reliability), then TM is a perfectly fine choice. It won’t throw 100m but it’s not exactly why people buy them in the first place.

Hey @Vellum, welcome back to the rainy Blighty! I hope there's more airsoft sites around, as Dogtag seem to be a bit of a drive from Brighton. There's also Driver Wood and Battle Lakes not much further away than Dogtag, but if you discover any new ones, feel free to send your suggestions through the site.

While we’re here, would it be an overkill to run anything but green gas on TM pistols? I keep hearing that they don’t tolerate more powerful gas well due to their plastic builds, but I want to verify before stowing my HK45 for the winter.

Yeah, I’m going to ditch Nuprol as well, it’s been all over the place. Their batteries are shit. Bought three identical sticks for my PTS CM4, and one swelled then stopped working after 3-4 cycles, so I had to “decommission” it using my charger’s “destroy battery” mode... BBs seem to be all over the place quality-wise. No major issues per se, but loading them I keep seeing weird tiny defects, so time to empty my mags a bit quicker and switch to something better. Recommendations? I have recently decided to add “Bio BBs” as an attribute to PlayAirsoft for precisely this reason. Some sites seem to require the use of bio ammo, so it would be good to let players know about it. Normally, it’s something that you get to find at the end of a lengthy “rules” section or “FAQ” or something similar, if at all. Trying be mindful about trashing our lovely nature with plastic is not hard. The price difference isn’t wallet breaking either, so there’s all the more reason to do our bit.

I was there with my best mate, and we’ve had a blast. I know some people will moan about “if I wanted to get pissed, I’d go to a pub”, but they seem to be missing the point. We did score a few raids, got a hold of some stolen cash and gold and... finished last anyway (Bravo!), but the vibe of the place and people being super friendly and approachable is second to none. I want to write a few words for PlayAirsoft blog about it, like a recap, but I need some free time to put my thoughts into words.

Me and my mate attended one of Saturday open days at Anzio last week (18/09), and it was a glorious day for airsoft weather-wise. Good opportunity for sneaky approaches and satisfying tactics. One dude pissed a lot of people off by being a power player, but aside from that and three pillocks with hot guns everything was smooth sailing. Surprisingly, FAO tries to to make games interesting by putting players out of their comfort zones and despite still being a typical skirmish day, it was good. Good flow, good timing, and decent player base. Nothing to complain, maybe aside from the day being too short. I’m starved for more, but can’t play until November 😏

Hey folks, just a quick one to say that as of today you can browse and filter airsoft sites with this nifty little page. Read more about the whole autumn update on the blog: https://playairsoft.uk/blog/playairsoft-autumn-update/

@Rogerborg I understand where you’re coming from. My SG553 had shit wiring and overload on contacts was causing it to lock up. I’m not sure what batteries the motor or wiring was rated to but anything above 25C in G&G AEGs used to be problematic according to the guy who handled my upgrades. Unless you know exactly what’s in your AEGs and you know what to do with that knowledge the above information would likely do the trick with a margin of safety. I doubt a lot of us here know enough about electrical wiring to play the game of “let’s put the biggest, beefiest battery and see what happens”… What you suggested about rewiring has actually happened to my SG553.

Hey Buck, welcome! I think you’re making the right choice by sticking to rentals for your first few events. 👍 If you’re looking to see what’s close to you or overall around the UK, give PlayAirsoft → a go and see if you can find a suitable site to play on, in addition to all the recommendations that you will likely find from people here. I’m from North West, so can’t help you with your location specifically, but hopefully more local souls with chime in below. Good luck and enjoy your first time! 🙌

Generally, no issues with 7.4v LiPos up to 25C discharge, however some guns have sensitive wiring; my G&G SG553 was a victim of this, and I had to fit a mosfet to get rid of it getting stuck in single fire. Every time this has been happening, I had to switch to auto, discharge, then switch back to semi. Annoying, but made me send it for a full Titan v3 upgrade along with everything internally, and it’s now my most reliable weapon since 2018.

@Adolf Hamster has already mentioned late starts and overly long briefs. If you need a special brief for newbs/rental, do it separately, tell them to come earlier, I don’t care, but don’t take 1hr for a brief just because you need to explain fundamental principles of shooting BBs to 5 people when the party is 120 strong. I don’t get power players, hyped up on adrenaline, who consistently do not take their shots and jump left and right dodging BBs when they get visibly and audibly hit then banged with a frag (or a few). Goddamn John Wick wannabes. What’s the point? You wanna piss off a few other guys so they spray you till you take your hits? Bad outcome for everyone.

I’d throw in MK1 DBOYS SCAR-L with its shitty locking hinge plate that broke often, and they replaced it right after shipping a few hundred units. You could never find a fitting buttstock to fit the gun. Was easier to replace the gun than the stock. Annoyed the shit out of me.

Watch this. The team behind it put science next to airsoft and give you facts about this stuff. They even designed a replicable grading system for testing rifles.

Krytacs are good but overrated. Their licensed Vector is a prime example: decent build quality on the outside only to be let down but bog-standard gearbox and so-so internals that need another £150 to make sense. My mate has one (stock) and he’s still wondering “why does anyone else’s Vector sounds different. 😂 If you’re looking to splash, try something from PTS, although if it’s made by KWA you are warned that parts most likely need to be shipped from the US and some are proprietary, but other than this KWA makes awesome builds that are solid out-of-the-box and use interchangeable parts, as long as you buy something based on VM4/RM4 platform. If you get one of their ERG variants, be warned that upgrading V3 ERG gearbox with a MOSFET is a mothe!#@$%er. The good thing about stuff from PTS, is that there’s a metric ton of parts and their QA is solid. I’ve got their Magpul PDR-C and Centurion Arms C4-10 (modded to a 15” M-LOK hand guard/barrel because I like it big) and both even share PMAGs, so I got a choice of 10 boxes, in case I wanna go ballistic. Not sure another AR-15 variant is what you want, but I’d say an alternative might be something a bit more exotic, like SG553 and a generally more expensive SCAR-L/H.

I made some stickers for PlayAirsoft. Just arrived and look pretty good for a trial run!

While I normally play with a sidearm only when I’ve run my primary dry, I get more and more into “pistol-only” load out. Recently acquired a TM HK45 and a few mags, and man... I had a blast playing an entire afternoon with it in the Woodlands of Ground Zero during NAF2021. I think I got more kills with HK45 than with my trusty SG 553, which has been kitted out internally like there’s no tomorrow. I also have a CZ P-09 and that beast is deadly, even at a moderate distance. I wouldn’t recommend it for a typical flat woodlands, you simply won’t have the distance to reach most people with AEGs, but if you’re going somewhere like Anzio Camp, with a mix of woodland, bushes and buildings, then I’ve seen a few people being more deadly with a single pistol than a whole regiment of typical snipers...

That’s a good point about improving the uptake of site submissions @DrAlexanderTobacco. Will add it to the list of things to work on next.

I've had this in mind early on, but I am not convinced this is beneficial to the players for a couple of reasons: not every site has a website, Facebook page, etc if they do, most of them don’t give players any info or even a description of what to expect if they do, it’s often hard to find between the fluff and broken layouts if it’s not hard to find, it’s often out of date If you find a site on the map, chances are you will find more info on its location page on PlayAirsoft than on its OG homepage. If you want to book, enquire or visit their website, the call to actions are clearly displayed (where available). This is supposed to save people anywhere between one to several clicks and in some cases a lot of time. You’re free to feast your eyeballs on outdated info and gruesome website design any time, my friend. I realise location pages are missing crucial info such as pictures, but that’s in the pipeline too. Unfortunately, I will have to create a new backend for this purpose, because with its current setup I’d have to pay quite high hosting costs for image storage and bandwidth.

Donation widget is now up and running on PlayAirsoft. Thanks in advance for all your support, and please: don’t feel obligated to donate. I will be looking into better ways of supporting the site than donations. Something that works both ways, as opposed to just “gimme me money”. Changelog: Improved homepage which is now faster and clearer Added newsletter sign-up throughout the site (for later) Created a dedicated map page with proper map controls Blog has now an RSS feed, for those who still remember what it is and how to use it Individual location and region pages load much faster now and look way better, especially on mobile Added a few new site attributes: Site limits (AEG, DMR, Sniper; in Joules) Pyros (allowed/limited) Bio BBs (required/optional) What’s next? Dedicated search page with advanced filtering based on already existing attributes Display the latest three site additions on the homepage to facilitate discovery

@Shamal I only see Vendetta, which seem to be run by UCAP (is it the same UCAP?). I’ll add your suggestion and see if I can dig up any more info on that.