Colin Allen

That is what I use to cut them.

If it is inconsistent, check the seal between the nozzle and the hop rubber. After making sure that the hop chamber is empty, turn the gun upside down and place a small piece of paper over the feed tube and pull the trigger. If the paper does an impression of a Russian tank turret, your nozzle is not engaging properly with the hop rubber lips. What is the barrel length and what type of cylinder is fitted?

Having collected the lad from university yesterday, which involved 9 hours of driving, today we set off for Dragon's Lair, a nice little site in Essex which is soon to move from its current location to a much larger site which is conveniently much closer for us. Attendance was unusually light, with only 46 players in attendance. We started off with a simple attack and defend game; the defenders had three lives in the village, while we had infinite regens on our rearmost player. There were two routes from our start point to the village, one either side of a lake; as usual, we took the right hand path as there more structures on that side, providing more cover for the attackers. We advanced steadily, eventually taking the central building which was our objective. After a short break to reload, the game was turned around. Along with several others, the lad and I took up positions on the right, covering the approaches to the two bridges that the attackers had to use to cross the stream. The lad disappeared into a large patch of ferns, several of which he attached to his hat, rendering him almost invisible. The opponents made a series of determined attacks, eventually crossing the bridges; however, by putting up a coordinated defence, our little band held them up and they never managed to break through. The little PP-19-01 reached out, taking out lots of runners and opponents lurking behind whatever cover they could find. To be fair, attacking from that side is really difficult due to the very limited cover. However, those attacking the other side of the village eventually wore down the defenders in that direction and secured the building. Following this, the next game involved us attacking the fort; again, the attackers had infinite regens on the last player and the defenders had three lives. The lad and I decided to attack up the right hand boundary ditch; the sight of the lad crawling up the ditch on his belt buckle seemed to surprise several players. After clearing the ditch, we started to attack the flank of the fort against strong resistance, eventually moving into it and helping to clear it, despite one last enemy player popping out from the basement and shooting me in the back; he died in a hail of BBs from my teammates. Lunch then followed. In the reverse of the fort game, I took up a position in the same ditch, intending to help stop the attackers flanking the fort. After being hit, I moved back to a new position in the ditch. As the enemy moved up, I noticed an enemy player to my front who was half concealed by a tree while he shot at the fort. I put a number of rounds into him, watching them hit him and him flinching while he continued to shoot at the fort. I decided to shoot other people instead. Eventually, of course, the fort fell. The next game, with similar regen rules except that the attackers had to regen on the back wall of the fort, involved us attacking the two bridges; we had to get either a smoke grenade, a flashbang or a foot onto each bridge to take it. This was hard, as it always is; eventually, one of our players got onto the right hand bridge and we then focussed on the left hand one. The lad managed to crawl close to it and lobbed a couple of grenades, but they both fell a bit short. He also launched a solo assault against two enemy players behind a barrier, taking them both out with his pistol, albeit at the cost of a walk back to regen. At around this point, about half our team suddenly decided to go home, which was slightly frustrating. Eventually, one of our team managed to reach the left bridge! As there were not many people left, we then played a game of infection in the village; four of us decided to conceal ourselves at the top of the tower; unfortunately, one of us was the initial infected player and he shot the rest of us as soon as the game started. After everyone had been infected, the game was run again; we decided that the best approach was to come out of hiding and generally mooch around with the infected players, hoping that they would think that we were also infected, akin to when people in The Walking Dead covered themselves in gore in an attempt to convince the Walkers that they were also zombies. This worked well and, when the game ended with the infected claiming that everyone had been infected, we announced that we had not, as did three other players who had been hiding on the top floor of the barn. It was a good day of old fashioned airsoft; it will be a shame to see the site close after so many years, but the new site promises to be even better. The lower player numbers today made for much more open games, with more opportunities for sneakiness and movement. Weapons used: Me: LCT PP-19-01 APS UAR ASG XP18 Commander CO2 The lad: CYMA AK105 CYMA AKS74U ASG XP Commander CO2

It is good to hear that the VSS performed well; a pity about everything else though!

You do not need UKARA membership to own or use a RIF; take it along and play with it. If the ICS M4 hasn't been used for 16 years, it is probably worth getting it checked over, as it is likely that the sealing parts will have given up and you may have very low power. It would probably be worth having it overhauled and regreased.

LOL; mine is great. I don’t think there is much left internally that is original. I even had to create a new COL.

Which does not make your statement any less inaccurate. 😉

There really is no defence for that, is there?

UKAPU; that was what the discussion was about.

Ah! I assumed that it was a nod towards the 501st PIR.

Bucketheads?

I will indeed.

Have you ever encountered the Ares L1A1 and Masada hop units and the SRC MP5 hop unit?

Given that BL is one weekend per month and that the dates only sometimes overlap, that does not seem to be a huge issue. The photos of the site are somewhat underwhelming, which is why I was asking if anyone had actually played there. Indeed; the photos on FB are somewhat uninspiring and, based on them, numbers appear low. I might wander down there to try it out at some point.

I think I already know the answer to this question, but has anyone played at 501st Airsoft, which is a new site near Tunbridge Wells?

Is the nozzle fully forward? You can only really test the nozzle/rubber seal when it is.

A decent seal then.

Have you tried the paper test on the feed tube to see if there is an air loss between the nozzle and the hop rubber?

You should put the price up; that is the incredibly rare left handed version.

We did what had to be done; nobody liked doing it, but it was necessary for the sake of future generations.

Today, the armed forces of Atropia (me) went to a rather warm Airsoft Plantation in the much maligned county of Essex. As usual, the place was busy, with possibly about 200 players in attendance. The first game of the day was simple; in its first iteration the attackers (Red Team) had to transport five crates from Swaziland to the Hill Fort ("If you don't know what it is, it's a fort. On a hill") and get them inside it. They had unlimited regens on eight medics while we, as the defenders, had two lives each. We started at the back of the Mortar Pits and had a 30 second head start to get into position, which we did rather well. Most of the fighting was in the scrubland, where the maze of paths between dense bushes added to the complexity of the combat, with small opposing groups bumping into each other. I took up a position in a bush and potted three attackers before their colleagues worked out where I was and potted me. As I fell back the required 30m to regen, I noticed that the Reds were working around our right flank via the Village; I slithered into a small and heavily overgrown bunker that covers one of the exits from the Village and was surprised to find a teammate already in there. We put up a good fight, taking out a number of attackers before the defence behind us collapsed and we were shot in the back at close range. With mags reloaded, the game was turned around; I volunteered to be a medic and moved forward with one of the attacking groups, keeping about 4-5m behind them so that any casualties could quickly return to the fray. However, as a rather heavily armed medic (rifle, pistol, pyro and poison gas), I couldn't resist taking out a few targets of opportunity that presented themselves. Unfortunately, we took two minutes longer to complete the mission than the Reds. After once again reloading mags, we set off for a fallback game. As the defenders, we had one life at each of the Kill House (deploy within 30m of it), the Border and the Village. The attackers had infinite marshal regens and had to set off a siren at each location. As usual, I positioned myself on the left (known as "doing a Corbyn") along with a few other colleagues, with the aim of holding off any flanking attack from that side. The Red's main attack came through the centre and our right, but we did our bit for what felt like ages, sending lots of the enemy back to find a marshal while the sounds of conflict grew massively to our right . My highlight of this part of the game was taking out two snipers with the trusty MPiKM. When I was eventually hit, I fell back to the pill box at the Border, which is actually just three low wooden walls with large rectangular holes in them. Once the siren in the Kill House had been set off, our surviving players were given an opportunity to fall back and dig in before the Reds were unleashed. This turned out to be something akin to what U-Boat crews called the "Happy Time"; I had a superb field of fire and took out every enemy player who entered it, which they kept doing. When I was eventually taken out, I turned around to find the site owner behind me, who congratulated me on what I had been doing. I fell back to the Village, taking up a position on the left (again!) but only seeing limited action before enemy players on the other side of the Village reached the well and set off the siren. We then retired to the safe zone and took luncheon which, for me, consisted of a bottle of water. After refreshing ourselves the fallback game was reversed, albeit with a twist. We would have to set off the siren in the Village first, before moving on to the Border and finally into the woods to set off the one in the Kill House. This was a daunting prospect as taking the Village from our start point is rather tricky and assaulting the Border from the Village is a huge challenge as the large bushes and the barricades channel the attacks down two paths which are easily covered by the defenders. We slowly fought our way into the Village, with some of us flanking around to the left while the main force pinned the enemy frontally. After a very hard fight, the siren was sounded and we regrouped to attack the Border. As the site owner commented, this was one of the hardest fought actions he had seen as we gradually whittled down the enemy and pushed forward down what were perfect killing zones. However, working in small teams, we eventually cleared most of the enemy out and one of our players made it into the hut to set off the siren. After the defenders had regrouped, we moved into the woods and seemed to eliminate the defenders rather rapidly; however, it turned out that most of them had deployed very close to the Kill House, where they put up a ferocious defence until they were eventually overrun and the siren was sounded. Having reloaded again, we went out to the Mortar Pits to play an infected game; to nobody's surprise, this ended with everyone being infected. It was a great day of airsoft; the games were well designed and the site easily absorbed the large number of players present. From my perspective, the gameplay was really good, although there were the usual accusations around hit taking, which always seem more numerous after lunch at every site I have been to. I saw one possible incident of non-hit taking; the marshals reacted to it quickly and appropriately. Weapons used: CYMA MPiKM (with genuine rubbish East German furniture) Golden Eagle (JG) AMD65 ASG XP18 Commander (CO2)

The lad and I might be there next weekend.

Are you going to AP tomorrow? If you are, I can bring an LCT nozzle.

That would involve stripping it down. I believe it is a standard LCT nozzle, which should be 19.7mm.

Yep! That would seem to be an issue. I have just looked at the lad's one and the nozzle is fully engaged with the hop rubber lips.