The_Lord_Poncho

With respect to the title of this thread, I wonder I'm correct in that, ownership and indeed, use of tanks that are past their testing dates is not actually unlawful. But rather the relevant regulations place restrictions and duties upon employers as opposed to private users of such kit. Of course, if that is true, then it places a duty on sites - for the protection of their workers - to pay attention to the testing dates etc, but does not mean that anyone using an out of date tank is likely to have their collar felt by the law. Unless it all goes badly wrong.

I had two issues with my AAP carbine build - based on the TTI kit. 1) the bolt being seemingly 'sticky' and not always returning to battery despite upgraded springs, and 2) a gap between the receiver and hand guard! I resolved issue 1 by removing the short stroke buffers that i had put in there, and removing the cocking handle extension too (my theory being to reduce the weight of the (stock) bolt. I suspect that it was the short stroke buffers that were the main problem though. I never resolved issue 2, but to be fair the gap isn't quite as big as yours - but it still bothers me!

Top - air gun (based on the semi-only selector) middle - firearm (H&K logo on the folding stock) bottom - airsoft (process of elimination) actually - just spotted the bottom one too only has semi. But loads of white text safety blurb printed on both the top and bottom options, so those must be the more dangerous ones. Oh, wait, hang on....

I definitely prefer variety over having a few extremely expensive guns. I've built up rather a lot of decent (enough) performers - most of which are on the budget end of the spectrum, but feel solid enough, look the part, and achieve good accuracy and range (especially if I've successfully tweaked them). I just enjoy having a variety of historic guns, smgs, long rifles, a few pistols, a single sniper etc. If I was purely going for outright performance on every game morning, I'd only ever select a particular lightweight HPA DMR build that I have, and an AAP with a great hop inside. But in reality, I get a lot of pleasure from simply rotating through all my variety of AEGs, my four HPA options, and swapping between my pistols for secondary. Unless I'm having an off day, I usually achieve a roughly similar favourable kill/killed ratio irrespective of whether I have my 'worst' performing gun in my hands. It's the same for my clothing/kit - I derive an odd amount of pleasure from wearing what I might view as 'interesting' patterns - plain olive, classic tiger stripe, partizan, and the more mainstream but annoyingly effective MC Tropic. I'd rather have a variety of comfortable, functional, robust yet cheaper gear that I cycle between to keep things interesting for me, than a single set of uber expensive e.g. crye kit.

I do my best to achieve cost neutrality with my Airsoft expenditure... Well, kind of. I relentlessly hammer my train company for delay repay, and all the compensation is paid into my PayPal account (cough, toy fund), which is then spent on the next Airsoft purchase once it builds to the requisite amount. It makes all those waits on overcrowded trains just that little bit more bearable...

I usually find that its the wiring breaking down inside the cables associated with the cheap (ish) radio accessories that are to blame, rather than the radios themselves. Perhaps buy a cheap speaker mic, and see if that works to rule out the radios themselves (but it would be very unusual for three radios to have all failed simultaneously).

I find the Pheas airsoft videos probably the most useful and genuine -his disassembly videos are some of the best out there. But ultimately all you tube content has to be viewed with suspicion - they are helpful for understanding features, internals etc etc regardless though.

I haven't been there for a while- I probably ought to give it another go. About an 80:20 cracking evening to very average evening ratio based on my past ten or so visits over a few years.

I'm up for that!

Anyone else slowly falling victim to the reverse phycology here, and now also becoming desperate to visit this site?!

Pretty sure that this is now run by the guy who runs my local site (Driver Wood). Also characterised by a good amount of investment in the site infrastructure. I am generally rather well disposed to Driver Wood, and always have a good time - so if its to be run along the same lines, hopefully that's a positive thing. Strange they run that medic rule there - in Driver Wood they used to have a medic rule involving white arm bands (i.e., in effect, two lives - a white arm band placed on by a nearby team mate when you got hit, max one on each arm before respawn). They scrapped it a while back as they felt it promoted cheating (probably correct) and replaced instead with a roaming spawn point (flag) for each team that moves about some way behind the action. I much prefer it - it allows game play to be balanced out a little by moving an overly dominants' team roaming spawn a little further from the action, whilst preventing a very lengthy trudge back to the 'hard'/non roaming team re-spawn which again can promote cheating. Strange they don't do something similar at Exeter. Possibly they were lacking the spare 2x marshalls to run that on the day of your visit?

I'll give it a go. For me, the fill valve is on the underside of the buffer tube, so I think a fairly easy fit. @Cannonfodder have you taken the plunge yet?

I bought the black versions of the IKEA peg boards. But, the white ones are definitely the way to go so that you can actually see the RIFs!

I'm watching this with interest - I have a full stock GE 870 shotgun, and the performance is distinctly anaemic, with the useable range being probably 20m max.... HPA tapping it might just give it a new lease of life.

Do you have a 3d printer or a mate with one? (if not, you will be surprised how cheap a perfectly adequate entry model is). I downloaded a ready made file a few years ago, and just scale it up or down within my slicer programme to pair with the cheap poly carbonate discs from ebay. Something like this: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5561802

Do you think that your accuracy issues are due to the over-voluming? I have a number of AEGs which are theoretically over volumed, and an M4 with a mancraft gen 2 that is somewhat over volumed, and all are pretty accurate (in fact, I'd venture the Mancraft is the most accurate that I own). Might it be a barrel or hop issue, or even something as simple as clipping some errant foam in a suppressor?

Same here - I have a gen 3 E&C, and that has the extractor moulded too. The extractor (moulded or separate) is purely cosmetic, I would be surprised if that alone meant it was incompatible with a WE frame, but happy to be corrected. As an aside, the E&Cs are great pistols.

I'm a bit confused - if your bottle reg mates with a Balystyk 800 reg (same reg as I use), I would have thought the O-ring which seals the two together must be the industry standard size?!

Fair point - but I have three guns that this could benefit. 3x £8 -£24+ postage. Whereas (if i can get the right size of course - big 'if') I can get 5 bearings on their own with postage included for £2.50. That's a good saving!

I have a few spring guides which don't have bearings (and neither do the corresponding piston heads have bearings either). I believe the type of bearing that typically is used on spring guides is known as a 'thrust bearing'. Typically these can be had for a few pence, especially from the like of aliexpress. Upon measuring a number of my spring guides, the diameter of their shaft closest to the lugs at their rear measures just over 11mm. Spring outer diameter measures around 15mm, so I'm guessing the bearings i need have an inner diameter of, say, 11.5mm, and an outer of circa 16mm. I've been looking through countless listings, and failing to find bearings that fit these dimensions - has anyone else had any success? I know that there are purpose sold options, I'm just trying to save a few quid!

I can't help you directly - hopefully someone who has the sdik will be along shortly to provide specific help. However, after buying a old pdik that had multiple issues, Mancraft themselves couldn't have been more helpful. I used the chat function on their website on two occasions, and both resulted in them posting me out replacement parts completely free of charge (just paid the cost of postage). So I'd definitely encourage you to get in touch directly with them- you may be surprised.

Thanks - yes, you are correct, i hadn't 'manually' cycled the gearbox first out of the gun - probably ought to have. But without the box having a QD spring, and an ARL that is a particular nightmare, I was being lazy and trying to minimise the number of times i needed to close the gearbox up. Looks like I failed on that particular quest. Thank you for your detailed explanation - this is super helpful - i'll investigate further. It seems to be in place ok - if you mean the tiny spring that goes between the selector plate and the top of the COL where it pokes through the gearbox casing slightly? possibly a stronger spring could help?

ah yes, but all those other offers are china based with longer postage times. I want to get you up and playing as soon as possible!

Here you go - 10 for £7.63 (or best offer), postage included. I bought these a while back for my bottle, works fine. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/196068402675 Way I look at it, we are supposed to remove the regulator from the bottle after each game day, and these O rings will get knackered quite quickly - good to have a few spare....

yep - looks like it! In your post and that from Sewdhull you mention variously the casing is too tight, or the receiver is too tight. The trigger switch and CoL are actually the ones that came with the gearbox and it was working fine before i stripped it down to swap a few bits out - everything swapped except for the CoL, trigger, trigger switch (how many times has that been said!) - so in my mind at least, this indicates that the problem is not with the gearbox case itself, but rather Sewdhull's suggestion that the receiver is somehow squishing the selector plate and/or CoL. An SRL gearbox in an old metal G&G LR300 receiver - possibly just a compatibility problem with the only rectification being the fitting of the cheap FCU - or is there another way do you think?