Von Kirk

The underlying company running this is Project Zodiac Limited, they have a website you can visit https://www.projectzodiac.org/about, it seems the idea is to run large scale airsoft and paintball events and then funnel that money back into the industry, its in theory a nice idea but I question given how low some of the ticket prices are what sort of money they're making on this event that they can break even let alone help fund Airsoft and Paintball events for the next 2 years.

Decided to have a look into this as have a mate near Cheltenham and though it might be interesting to check out having read through as much as I could on their site this event seems weird to say the least. The price of standard play entry seems a bit of a red flag due to just how low it is £100 for 5 days of airsoft, 4 nights of camping and other entertainment, that's £20 a day, you'd be lucky to find a site that would run a standard 6-8hr game for that price let alone a big event. Reading through the tournament rules though is where this get wild to me though, as while it is possible that a team could win the £100,000 the odds are on the impossible side, this isn't a simple knockout style tournament winner takes the cash. To quickly (as possible) summarize how the 'tournament' works (as best I understand it) there are 10 'heats' over 2 days, these heats are more like challenges though test your aim, team building, etc. where teams can score a maximum of 10 points per 'heat' (100 points total), at the end of the second day the top 4 scoring teams will enter into a knockout style playoff. Now the team that wins the playoffs doesn't instantly win the money they only have a chance to win it, the winning team then needs to play against the 5th - 15th place teams (so a team of 8 against a possible team of 80) if the team of 8 complete all the objectives in the final game they win the £100,000, if the opposing team of 80 wins the money is split among them. However the team of 80 can only get a cut of that money up to £1250 and they must survive to get anything so if only 20 people from that team of 80 survives only 20 x £1250 = £25,000 is handed out. HOWEVER if the team of 8 completes some of the objectives then the £1250 each player receives is decreased for each objective they complete e.g. if there are 5 objectives and 3 are completed and 20 players from the team of 80 survive and each objective knock off £250 then the winnings handed out will be (20 x (1250 - (3 x 250))) = £10,000. Feel free to double check this with the website https://www.operation-scorpio.net/programme as it took me quite a while to wrap my head around it so may well have missed something but that was as best I could understand it. So the only way £100,000 is getting handed out is if one team of 8 takes on and defeats 80 players or 80 players successfully hold x number of objectives without a single player going down.

I got one of these for the exact same purpose, I've so far only tried a crude conversion using some 6mm brass tubing I had lying about and was only able to hit ~150fps, there is an upgrade spring available for it which I have but just have yet to install. Its been sitting on my project to do list for ages but need to get round to buying some pin punches to install it. If you have any success I'd be interested to know what works.

I've run a fair few helmets mainly cheap steel surplus helmets and police protective helmets this has primarily been for the 'dress up factor' but there's certainly been occasions where I'm glad I was wearing them. For more practical protection mainly at indoor sites where knocks are more common I've personally found bump caps/hard caps to be quite useful, they're lighter and more breathable than a conventional helmet and don't tend to cause as may fogging issues or interfere with other face protection but offer as good if not better protection from hits to the head, especially since most are safety rated to some extent(I do question how much protection the cheap FAST, PASGT, MICH, etc. replica style helmets offer, probably better than nothing but for a fall or hard knock to the head I wouldn't want to rely on one). Main downside is they don't offer as much wrap around protection from bbs particularly at the back. If you do go for a more conventional helmet I would say you largely get what you pay for quality wise especially if purchasing brand new, there's also the other perk of mounting systems on helmets if you did ever want to run NVG, ear protection, head mounted flashlights, visors, etc. to consider.