RostokMcSpoons

I've been comparing the Tippmann vs Wolverine vs Scorpion last night... I'm not so tempted with a DIY approach, as my "bedroom tech-ing" is still at the "hit and miss" stage. I wouldn't want to mess up a decent gun. Bear with me while I think out aloud here... There's already a number of advantages for the Tippmann: 1) Obviously I get to carry on with my existing mag pouches 2) I can use my existing high cap mags (I like laying down suppressing fire) 3) It's metal 4) It has recoil. 5) It's relatively cheap to buy new (£470 with tank, line, regulator) And the disadvantages 1) Relatively limited RoF (no more than my DE M906, at 15rps) 2) Unsure of max range With the Scorpion the advantages are 1) Long range even with super-compact gun (65m on video I've seen) 2) Lightweight (polymer) 3) Price... the used one I'm looking at is at a reasonable discount from new Disadvantages 1) New pouches required, maybe a whole separate belt rig for ease of swapping when changing guns 2) Polymer. Yeah I know the real gun is too 3) Mid cap mags. I'll probably need to buy an Odin, I guess? (If I can find one) The Wolverine I know a bit less about but it can be summed up I think as 1) Bestest 2) Mostest expensivest I like the metal construction of my DE so I'd like more of that feel please. Yeah the scorpion might be realistic and very solidly made (except for the stock when extended, that is a tad loose), but steel > polymer unless there's a good reason (pistol gas cooldown, weight) The recoil on the Tippmann is actually a big advantage. Perhaps the worst thing about HPA is that without the physicality of the piston slamming around, the two I tried are impressively smooth, but feel very much like devices for throwing BBs rather than pew-pew guns. It's perhaps a tiny psychological difference, but it was there for me. The mid caps are an issue. What's the point of having a gun firing at 20+ rps if you've only got 300 rounds to fire across several mags? I've been tempted with the idea of mid caps because I don't like winding, and I don't like rattles, but I've got somewhat used to the winding (might buy a Lonex flashmag to try that out), and the rattles can be mostly avoided by either having mags totally brimmed or completely empty. And I try to move slow-and-smooth most of the time anyway. (It suits my age and fitness!) Maybe I need to slow down a little. The scorpion is local and good, but not my only option, even at its reduced price point. But I'm going to test shoot it later, we'll have to see if the money in my pocket is fully on fire...

Thanks very much Hunka, I've looked at some text reviews of the Wolverine and indeed it seems to be the very thing. Quite expensive though, especially as I'd want the Milspec version. I'm comparing the cost of that versus the ~£500 cost of the all in bundle for the scorpion, and it makes it a tricky decision. How often do the MTWs turn up on the used market?

This has been prompted by the perfect storm of me trying a couple of HPA guns at the weekend (and being impressed, natch), an advert for a used Scorpion appearing, a better-paid job on the immediate horizon, and my natural desire to be one of the cool kids a total w*nker with an accurate-at-long-range, high-ish RoF pew pew. That I won't need to / be tempted to break / upgrade. I think it's acknowledged the Scorpion is a pretty damned good gun, whether it's HPA or AEG, and I like 'compact', but it will mean different mag pouches etc (so likely a second webbing setup) whereas if I go with M4 then my current stuff works (apart from somewhere to stash the bottle). Oh, and a divorce if my wife finds out the price 😕 Are there any good HPA M4s that work out-of-the-box, and have the same reliability, range etc that I should look for? Also, an ecumenical matter. I bought a gun last week. And now I'm thinking of spending *lots* this week. Is this how it's going to be? Is this how bankruptcy starts?

I went old-school-ish and bought Austrian Paratrooper boots. I can't fault the ankle protection and the build quality, and they've even been quite comfortable, but they weigh an absolute ton. Well, a kilo or more each I think. The advantage is you can hose them off if they're muddy without stressing about it, but the disadvantage is they must be sapping my limited fitness, so I'll be in the market for some lighter boots at some point. Are all these Cordura style boots ok for wet / muddy conditions? And do they have adequate ankle support?

I wouldn't have minded the shotgun hit so much, except we traded shots at the much the same moment, with me firing first as I was pre-aimed, waiting for him to show himself (he'd shot me from the same point a couple of minutes earlier). I took my hit, he didn't take his 😕

I think on balance we're all better off if I don't post a pic of my very upper thigh on here but it has a triple welt pattern from a gas shotgun hit (from about 5m)... luckily it's fading away now. The other thigh has a big impressive bruise but that's from football... I managed to get myself shot in the palm of my hand at absolute point-blank range and that hurt like a bugger at the time. There's not a mark to show for it

I think pretty much any non-M4's are inherently cooler, but if I was only allowed one gun to play airsoft with for ever more, it'd be my DE M906C, or something similar to it. It's just ergonomically so good* and compact (including it's relatively low height profile when aiming over the top of obstacles, or when crawling), it's all-round great. So I can't really argue against having a collection of them. * I wish the fire selector was a 90deg version, and a little more positive.

This is a silly argument to be having, but I tried independently to find out which of you was right. While COAL is definitely a thing, I couldn't find any evidence for COL, it's CAL on guns on all the images I've seen. So if I can be bold and be the arbiter of this disagreement, it's down to you Louish to provide some evidence, just one pic of a real steel gun would be enough to validate your point.

TM HC was fun (if a little short ranged - I'll try a new hop bucking), and my JG S-552 is working (though wheezy on anything less than 11.1v due to the shagged motor and maybe some shimming issues), so I'll be buying some extra mags. I will need to be able to run these non-STANAG mags without changing out my whole belt. Yesterday's game showed the SA80 pouches weren't great.... as they weren't in the prime spots towards the front of the belt, I couldn't really seem them with my current mask / goggle setup (which I'm not intending on changing). I could pull the mags by feel, but trying to stuff them back in when emptied was a non-runner, as the soft material collapsed. Falling back on stuffing mags into zipped chest pockets lead to some of the most non-Tactical reloads known to man A workaround could be a dump pouch at the back, but I'll go back to looking at replacement pouches.

Good day at Special Ops. 80 people there meant the games inevitably ended up with some stalemates due to the weight of suppressing fire, but the marshals did a good job of encouraging, and if that didn't work then even moving some extra cover in place, or simply declaring an objective taken. I noticed the teenagers weren't very keen on trekking back to respawns, they'd just walk 20m from the front line and then go back again, whereas this old man with his arthritic knees and chocolate ankles was toiling backwards and forwards. Oh well. Had a couple of hero moments when pushing forward, had two rifles (two! count 'em! two!) working and used, and when the battery gave out in the TM Aug HC, right when I was pushed up on the objective area, I even pulled the pistol out. I managed to try a couple of HPA guns. So yeah, an Evo Scorpion with the necessary bits at several hundred quid might be a bit of a big bill to swallow, but it really was nice to shoot. The guys were impressed with how good the DE M906 was, especially for the price. The TM got some compliments too (mostly no doubt for Not Being Another M4, I'm sure :)) I think our team won every single round through the day.

I empty their boneyard section whenever there's anything good in there, so just buy cheap stuff, but Paul has always been helpful. I'd happily spend on a full price aeg.

Cheers guys, good suggestions. I'm going to play the skirmish tomorrow with a couple of the SA80 pouches on the left, and the two displaced plastic pouches on the right side, see how the picks and the gun get on. .. If the gun isn't really the thing for my site (because of the typicalTM 270fps) then there's no need for the new pouches. I'll make a call on Monday

Infrastructure? Isn't that clicking buttons on an Azure dashboard, these days? I code in BASIC. And I'm not talking about that new-fangled Visual Basic malarkey either...

Roger's showing off his modern technology. He's got a rubber duck as a Pair Programming companion AND he writes in a language which uses curly brackets! What about you? (sorry for the off-topicness)

That's not fair, you've got Advanced Mode enabled!

Very true, in my IT job we consider that to be the 'Cardboard Man Pair Programming' approach Given the context, explain it to this chap:

Yeah, as a man with 4 guns not working properly (after 'upgrades' and 'fixes'), and a couple of working guns (either completely or mostly left unmolested), I can agree with leaving it alone. Especially as G&Gs are quite known for being reliable. Keep that as your safe fall-back, and go buy a second hand gun for your project. Teching is fun, but can be hard. There's no guarantee you'll have the gun back in a good state in time for your next skirmish. It's a bit sad when you have to leave a gun at home and rent one

Cheers guys, those suggestions all look good, especially the Templars. The thing is, I'm still a tight-wad at heart, and I've noticed that Novritsch are selling the green pouches at a mere 10 Euros a piece (because they're discontinuing that colour), and they do seem to be everything I need (I like the inserts which can alter the height / grip of the mags in the pouches). As I've also had my eye on their hi-capa pistol pouches with a similar system, so I might go ahead and buy them all together. I'll have another look tomorrow

Admin / mod, can you zap this thread? I had a CloudFlare error on Submit and submitted again.

So I've got my belt rig all set up nicely for M4 mags for my 3 STANAG guns. They're only cheap Chinese plastic pouches, a fiver each I think but they work ok. I do prefer the solid-shelled pouches for my tactical reloads. And then I go and do something silly and buy an AUG. And the mags don't quite fit in the pouches I know I can remove / loosen those elastic bands, the problem is in the other direction, if you get my drift. I've got a couple of SA80 mag pouches that will stretch and accommodate any of my mags, and with the bungee cord over the top even my AK mags won't fall out. They're also dirt cheap. So they're actually very good in many ways - but they're not quite 'it' for speed reloads. I could therefore swap out two of the plastic pouches with those and I'm sort-of 'good to go' - I'm most realistically going to be carrying 3 hi-caps for the AUG, so one in the pocket / gun, and a couple on the belt would be ok. But never miss a good (or even bad) excuse to buy more / better gear. Soooooooo....... Are there any good mag pouches that will hold just about anything, allow for fast reloads, won't have me losing mags every time I fall over a log, AND DON'T COST A BLEEDIN' FORTUNE. Cos I'll buy four of the buggers if I'm going to do a proper job. Shockingly enough, the Novritsch ones are pretty damned close to what I'm looking for, but maybe there's something better out there? https://eu.novritsch.com/product/assault-rifle-magazine-pouch-gen2/

Took this off @Asomodai's hands .... TM High Cycle pushing out ~25rps. Oh dear, broke the '20 is plenty' rule, making me a hypocrite. In my defence, m'lud, I was getting owned up by the HPA'ers last time. This won't give me the range but at least it'll compete on rate of fire. I might stick an amplifier on it, see whether it freaks people out Edit: Got to say this has the best fake bolt action of any AEG I've meddled with so far, a really nice metallic 'clickety-clack' when pulling and releasing on the charging handle. I wish more gnus would pay attention to that!

Bah humbug. Well I never got around to saying that I took the gun along to the skirmish a couple of weeks back, and it stopped firing on the range after only a few shots. Having just taken it apart, I could see the trigger was jammed - so it wouldn't go back far enough to actually make contact for single or full auto. I meddled with the spring and the lever from the left side of the gearbox, and the trigger released. So I tried a test fire. Ughhh. First I made the mistake of using my DE mag which is the one the F2000 really doesn't like, so I think I had some double feeding. Then I tried another, and things went downhill fast. It spat out a few shots, not very accurately, and then I got the death scream / rattle. Yup, it's eaten another piston. Ho hum. Any recommendations for a replacement piston? Is it worth trying a 14 tooth one? And should I avoid metal teeth in case it tries to do the same again? Anyway, in other news... spotted off the starboard bow... Yes, another one

That sounds likely. You could try to record the arrival of the package and the unwrapping, with one continuous video from the moment the delivery guy hands it to you... (Ask him nicely, maybe he'll stick with you for a couple of minutes and he can be a witness too) If it does indeed turn up empty or with a brick in it, that might be useful somehow?

Damn, I'm glad this thread has been resurrected... a Double Eagle that's not an M4, but takes M4 mags... that's getting very near to the top of my shopping list! Does anyone in the UK actually sell them though???