Pseudotectonic

Some video/pictures of the inside (doesn't seem very big) https://www.lcpproperties.co.uk/unit-details/3368/upper-floor https://www.novaloca.com/retail-premises/to-let/walsall/park-place-shopping-centre/72544 https://www.primelocation.com/to-rent/commercial/details/65779732/ Re how economical, since the place is already vacant, I guess for the owner (LCP) anything is better than nothing, on LCP's page it says flexible terms / short term let available so I guess First & Only (seems they run a lot of sites) managed to negotiate something Not sure how much they are even allowed to knock down, judging by the tone of the planning statement it seems they don't intent to alter anything "There would be no alterations either internally or externally to the premise as it is an ideal layout for the proposed use" I wonder with all those glass facade facing the high street (and skylights), how are they going to protect all the glass and how are they going to cover up all the RIFs from being seen, it seems it is a town centre location so there will be lots of random people walking about

Watching with interest The actual application: https://planning.walsall.gov.uk/swift/apas/run/WPHAPPDETAIL.DisplayUrl?theApnID=23/1524 The proposed plan: https://planning.walsall.gov.uk/swift/MediaTemp/76733-421574.pdf The main level says 21,151 sq ft which is about 1965 m2, discounting safe zones etc it will be a bit smaller so it will be a Class S indoor site according to my classification table The linear central corridor with many shops branching from it is far from ideal from a good layout in terms of map design, you can imagine all the shop frontages will become camping spots and there will be a lot of these with no options for going around, it will be extremely challenging if not impossible to design a good map with this sort of layout

I didn't know we had an official body. I thought we were an autonomous collective.

ew it's two tone

Is having standards a good thing, yes But the thing is, airsoft retailers and field owners are not a regulated profession by any stature, the best anyone can do is come up with something similar to an ISO 9001 so any business can voluntarily adopt it, so they get an excuse to display a mostly decorative badge on their website You can't enforce it

Any facebook group can sell patches and claim to be sending emails and monitoring google, but it takes UKAPU to be claiming they "preserve UK airsoft" by sending some claim forms for you and defend airsoft (what even does that mean) with patch sales. It will take a group of volunteers to begin to think about a new airsoft ruleset, but UKAPU is not it.

Just brainstorming but are there other airsoft bodies in other countries that are somewhat similar to a regulation body in that country? How are they shaped in relation to the triangle of retailers, site owners, and players? Because let's say in the far future airsoft develops an international federation of its own, which is required for olympics (https://olympics.com/ioc/international-federations), it might be helpful to learn from other countries and their associations and it's never too early to start I suppose Back to the UK, I think UKARA at least has a clear purpose and is functional. It seems UKAPU is at least poised to sit in the players corner. At the moment the site owners corner is vacant, because ATB/UKAF does not inspire a whole lot of confidence let alone looking competent enough. I guess in order to research and develop some version of a federation airsoft we will at least need the player's corner and site owner's corner to co-lead the process (probably as a consortium), while having UKARA on the side as support because the growth of the sport also means growth of their profit. Because it needs to be a project that benefits everyone. And if UKAF is non-functioning, it is all down to UKAPU to step up. But they don't seem to have the resources. But I don't think the final result should be a governing body (at least not in the beginning), to even to start, we really just need the rules and definitions of the sport written on a piece of paper. It is largely just a white paper. And the only thing to do afterwards is to wait for fields to adopt and players to adopt and for the hobby to catch up, and hopefully the benefits will be clear enough to become a de-facto adopted format of airsoft, then we can talk about regulating and governing. -- I think we need AI to do the work

Best you can do is do surveys of the rules of every field and publish a white paper on the findings, then you can think about how to draw similarities and think about pros and cons of unifying which rules at what costs and what impact Then you can try to come up with one version of a regularised version of airsoft, publish it, and hope the fields will adopt it the UKARA list of registered fields is a good starting point You can set up a dedicated forum (somewhere outside facebook) and then use it as a base of operation, do a program and recruit volunteers to complete chunks of surveys for you and then have people write the stuff and publish it But surely that is not part of the UKAPU's mission, they have got enough on their plate You need a consortium for airsoft regularisation research (come up with a better name), for the sole mission of coming up with one version of a semi-improved airsoft ruleset, or some sort of standard framework for fields to adopt Later on you can convince some fields for testing and also publish the experiment results and go from there

I mean, their claim of "Preservation of UK airsoft" is obviously a lie, because if it is true, they would have at least some evidence to show for it, but there is zero evidence of this. And UK airsoft is not under any threat that needs any entity to work "tirelessly" to preserve. If they work tirelessly, what exactly are they doing tirelessly?

lol so it's true they do absolutely nothing and then lie about it on their page to lure people to donate? that is fraud, you know

I was referencing the membership "donation" and to their claimed purpose of "Preservation of UK airsoft" and "worked tirelessly to protect UK airsoft form various attempts to ban or overly restrict airsoft by the government and police" which frankly is pure horseshit, excuse my language If I say I "work all day and night keeping bad juju at bay so the world is safe for everybody to live in" and ask people to setup standing orders to give me £3 a year they'd put me away

What specifically is the legal help? It says it only deals with border force seized goods and issues with police, so what exactly do you do to help? Do you submit notice of claim for the person and follow up? And what do you do with the police exactly?

I didn't know I can be disappointed in someone larping as a professional body, but I am thoroughly disappointed

Interesting find (Note UKAF is not UKAPU) The codes looks a bit pointless because they are all pretty normal things any business is already expected to do, and with extra restrictions you only find in professional bodies like disciplinary and complaints, lol, what are they gonna do, expel them from their excel file?

steel wire with crimp on ferrules, probably something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJEXgWAq1vo

I think another possible reason for the twang is if the spring is too short idk why some springs are different lengths

@Asomodai how does it work? do they give expert witness or something? or do they help finding lawyers etc and how does it work in terms of liability, since UKAPU is not a legal entity, would it be down to the assigned (?) volunteer (?) for each case?

@DanBow I think in the UK we already have a rather robust set of laws around airsoft already, which is not really in any danger that I am aware of, so there is no such shit that can hit the fan, so to speak, and even if it might, the UK legislation process is long enough and we will have opportunities to fight it, but until then, we cannot predict what it is about, and we cannot prepare for something we have no idea about that might not even exist. Not too long ago Canada had the Bill C-21 which threatened the airsoft community, as far as I know there was not one single "association" to save the day, but it did bought the whole community together and they all lobbied together (obviously there is someone organising some campaigns) but I don't think it was pre-planned. Similarly not too long ago the CPSC-2023-0021 in the US was just a matter of people coming together and put in some signatures (not sure how that turned out) but as far as I know, it didn't end up impacting airsoft in the US. As far as I know, again there was no single organisation responsible. So if such a mythical shit were to manifest and float towards the British fan, I don't think it will be any facebook group that can beat it alone but the entire industry and community will come together, and UKARA being our airsoft illuninati who is about to lose a lot of business is surely going to champion any campaign against such mythical shit. I think the last thread had someone had mentioned the behind the scenes of how UKARA came about or something like that. Just to say, I don't think there is any lobbying to do for anyone at the moment, nor there is any foreseeable existential threat, and even if there is, we won't need a facebook group to "save the day", therefore if you want to join one, you probably want to join it for the other reasons e.g. finding a a community, which is totally valid. But then again, nothing will bring the community together better like another VCRA or something. And if you are just talking about individual cases, I think UKAPU has a few blog posts explaining the law, but that's it, I don't think they provide direct support to any actual case.

-- Allow me to look at this critically, "voluntary non-profit" so logically it survives on donations (or selling patches) "purely to uphold and enhance the reputation of its members" so it's just a marketing consortium "demonstrating exemplary standards in their professional conduct" so it's not for players "within the bounds of legislation" so it's not for criminals (of course) I mean, it sounds like fiction Also, your patch says "I'm a supporter", not "a member", so it means you are basically just a fan, but you're not part of the club On the whole it doesn't seem to have any purpose, other than someone making patches as a hobby

The more I think about it the more I think we probably don't need such an organisation in the UK unless there is some clear specific purpose that calls for it (such as case of UKARA being a framework for providing actual legal defence) Going back to drawing board, these functions are more or less fulfilled without any centralised body. 1. Represent and Promote - already tons of airsoft content on social media and youtube 2. Regulate and Enhance - sort of perpetuated by field owners (game rules and so on) and perhaps insurance 3. Organise and Facilitate - anyone can organise any event Is the airsoft hobby fragmented? Maybe, but is there any benefit of changing that? I don't know -- I think making a patch about a fictional organisation (and writing backstories about it) can be a cool and creative exercise, but I think it needs to be honest in its execution and not mislead people into thinking it is something real. And until they can demonstrate something other than making a patch (anybody can do that) I remain sceptical. Happy to be proven wrong tho. But I don't feel there is an actual vision there, other than buzzwords.

Who runs it?

No names, no source of funding, collecting personal data... hmm...

My opinion has not changed about UKAPU, functionally they are a facebook group that does nothing other than holding AGMs and charging people monthly fee in preparation for a mythical prophecy that one day some legal apocalypse might happen that is when they will save the day. -- If one were to go back to the drawing board, and think of what an actually useful organisation would do, their mission would include fundamentally three things: 1. Represent and Promote 2. Regulate and Enhance 3. Organise and Facilitate 1. Represent and Promote: is basically PR activities (and lobbying, if necessary) for the hobby 2. Regulate and Enhance: is R&D into the nature and rules of the hobby, and developing best practices and codes and so on, to improve safety and fun 3. Organise and Facilitate: is basically running forums, or running events, that can benefit the hobby as a whole -- If we judge UKAPU by these measurements, I don't think they are too effective in any of these

Only 3 shims? Sounds suspicious... Solid bushings actually not a problem But 3 shims sounds too few to have

Perun ROF reduction settings? If not, could be shimming related Bearing bushings or solid bushings?