The_Lord_Poncho

I'm really invested in this now. You can't ban him. It would be like a production company pulling the plug on the last episode of the season! We need to know what it is!

I finally jumped onto the El Cheapo Ares 'drop in' HPA gearboxes. Time will tell if it really does drop in without any alignment issues. It certainly seems to be working well out of the gun though. Pleasantly surprised to see that they appear to have upgraded the latest batch with the battery cable being wired to deans, and to be rear wired with a long enough length to go through the buffer tube (the first batch had a very short wire with an XT30 connector). Cautiously I have also obtained an Ares rotary hop unit, in case the gearbox doesn't play well with my usual hop unit choices. Not bad for £131 posted.....

What's the suppressor?

yep - this was my thinking - I suppose it depends if you use your pistol as a primary or not. But for me, I only tend to use half a mag or so in a typical mornings play, so that’s quite a lot of wasted gas (and its supposedly not great for the seals to leave the bulbs pierced in the mags for days on end)

Well, I've eventually got my own one. Seems to be a slightly updated version - with a much longer battery wire (rear wired), and terminated already with a deans connector. A quick plug into a tank, and a worrying hissing noise from the box indicating a leak as I turned up the pressure with the reg. As soon as I disconnected, got the pressure up on the regulator first, and reconnected the leak has gone - I put it down to the seals or something not being seated fully, and needing a bit of a 'jolt' of air pressure to rectify. I've not popped it in a gun yet, but it seems nicely functional so far. I can confirm that the control unit needs an 11.1v battery to operate - doesn't function at all on a 7.4. I thought MP5Ks used a V3 gearbox? In any regard, I was originally considering one of these for a (full fat) MP5 that uses a standard V2 gearbox case. But in the end, decided that it might not work - my logic being that it doesn't seem that the nozzle can be swapped out/nozzle length adjusted - so I think you are stuck with an M4 length nozzle (albeit I'd love for someone to prove me wrong on that). Potentially also a little bit of inventiveness would be needed for the selector plate.

There was a bloke in the safe zone the other week who absolutely reeked after the first game. Not sure he ever washed his clothes, let alone his gear....! I'd venture it was so extreme, that it would put him at a tactical disadvantage. Like the rats in 28 days later, alerting the survivors by 'running from the infected'....

Fair, but very quickly the higher cost of the Co2 will outstrip your initial outlay on a bottle of green gas....

I haven’t gone as far with my M14, but it has sped up considerably after changing the battery connector to deans, wiring in a very basic mosfet (and using with a big lipo), and using an M140 big dragon high torque motor.

Same for the V7 (M14 etc) which has the trigger contacts on the outside- about the only easier aspect of the V7!

Looks very similar to the load of target backstops that i knocked up using an end of life trampoline net (the pole sleeves are perfect to take canes for positioning in the ground).

Yep! And when they do on occasion, I mean, its equally valid to state that RS use is teaching airsofters bad habits!

The marksmanship principles do translate directly into airsoft, just probably not in the way you imagine. Having the rifle butt in the shoulder is irrelevant - and not something that is dictated by the marksmanship principles. Indeed there are plenty of RS techniques that don't demand this, yet meet the principles for any particular application. With guns that are generally much lighter than the RS equivalent, and recoil that is non existent to negligible, the first two principles can be achieved rather easily, and without particular reference to more traditional positioning. The third principle (sight alignment) is clearly fundamental, but the fourth principle (shot release) is largely irrelevant, unless the gun is really being wildly waved around by the trigger pull. Factoring in the generally short airsoft ranges + inherent wild inaccuracy of our platform, fast trigger pulls will generally be better practice than a slow deliberate follow through after a shot - perhaps the exception being using a very well set up sniper rifle at the extremities of its range....

A chap at our local site had one of the new SSP28s, with the little nov folding stock attached the other week, and let me have a go. To be fair, very impressive. Doesn't really do anything that the AAP can't do of course - but then 90% of my collection of guns doesn't do anything meaningfully different from the first 10% that I acquired. But that's not really the point is it! I've only got a couple of Novritsch items - an SSX 303, and one of the goggle fan things. Both are good bits of kit, that have been well thought out. Not spectacular, but good.

aha - i thought this was a typo of 'DMR' - I stand corrected!

deleted as I now know what a 'DSR' is!