Gunboat Diplomat

I reckon old Monty would be right at home in a ghillie, laying in wait for the fool who steps on his hydrangeas. Don by name...

Got through a few thousand of their .25s without issue in the past. I'd use them again happily.

I watched the first episode the other night after seeing this thread, and thought it was utter shite. Does it get better? Worth another go? Struck me as just another low-IQ combat-bro series with slightly above average use of props.

I use Bolle Tracker IIs (about £10 a pair) along with Revision antifog wipes (about £5 each but they are multi use). As long as I'm on the move they stay fog free.

I'll second the vote for any of the Specna Edge 2.0 models or the Double Eagle Falcon equipped RIFs. I wouldn't buy something without a proper ETU (Electronic Trigger Unit) these days and the Aster in the Edge 2.0s and the Falcon in the Double Eagles are both solid, well featured units. The X-ASR in the plain Specna Edge models is reportedly crap and prone to failure so I'd avoid them. Airsoft internal barrel length is largely academic and the performance variations between the extremes of barrel length are minimal. Handgaurd and outer barrel lengh are going to be more significant in terms of ergonomics. Do you want a long gun with lots of rail space or do you want something shorter that you can use in CQB environments?

Can you not order from someone like WGC shop or JKArmy and have them ship it directly to SA? I'm not sure what the import rules are for SA but presumably no different to your sister trying to bring it in person on the plane.

If you like that one you should see their other auction... only £20 for an instant site ban and a personal injury claim. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/126540465210?itmmeta=01J1PZ3SRGWNSZ5WFMS97V4HAT&hash=item1d7666443a:g:p7gAAOSwWbVmFDwv

Close to the sun indeed, didn’t realise at the time just how close to the limit the Guarder 100 would take me. I’ve kept the factory spring in my game day kit so I can do a quick change should I fail chrono. Oh I’ve no plans to try and chase any more consistency, it shoots fine irrespective of the numbers. This thread is really just for curiosity sake, the result of a quiet afternoon when I probably should have been fixing my garden fence but instead decided to play with my toys. I am yes, as you say shifting the muzzle around can make quite a difference so for each group of shots I keep it pretty much static.

I recently picked up a cheap chrono from AliExpress so have been doing some testing to see how my Double Eagle fairs in terms of consistency, but I'm wondering what the benchmark is? I've done several runs of between 10 and 20 shots and nearly all are between 1-3FPS of one another, but then occasionally one shot may deviate by maybe 10-12FPS. I'm not really sure here if that is an error in the chrono reading or a sporadic inconsistency in the gun. Here's an egregious example where one shot drops by 28fps, but the variance can be up or down and is usually less dramatic: I had another example of a shot reading at 307fps, which for a .28g BB puts me well over the UK limit, but I'm struggling to see where it suddenly gained all that extra power from for a single shot. For reference the gun has a Guarder 100 spring, ZCI hop unit, Macron 60 and Omega nub. I'll frame this all by saying I don't really have any complaints about the gun in the field, this is all the the name of science/being a geek.

You could buy some of those silica gel pouches and chuck one in each box.

Can’t imagine it’s a problem. I think most hop rubbers are made of silicone which can tolerate temperatures much higher than your loft is ever going to reach. Assuming your house doesn’t catch fire.

Father's day blast at the Spec Ops CQB site yesterday (or The FirePlace to give it is proper name I think). My son got me an airsoft combat knife for father's day as he knows I'm partial to a sneaky knife kill, so now I no longer have to tap people on the shoulder, instead I can fumble getting a knife out of a holster, drop it and get shot at point blank instead. Also fielding my Double Eagle with it's new Guarder SP100 spring and my new ICS XAE pistol. The Eagle had been down on power for a while, hitting around 0.8 joules depending on ammo weight. With the new spring it was right back up to the joule limit on .25s. Got through chrono fine, but might invest in one of my own as I want to see if I get any joule creep with my usual .28s. New ICS pistol was pretty solid throughout the day, there is a bit of inconsistency with the hop, but that may settle down as it beds in. The hop wheel is stiff as a day old corpse though, so making fine adjustments is difficult. I may strip the hop unit down at some point, but to be honest at typical pistol engagement distances it's good enough. Easily clears a mag and a bit with a full gas charge and doesn't struggle too much with cool-down, though we were indoors in a roasting hot barn. Pretty happy with it for £65. We were in the afternoon slot today. When we arrived there were a group who were there for the full-day plus some other afternoon arrivals. First half of the session was really fast paced, there were a decent number of people (15 to 20 odd) with a mix of experienced players and rentals, the rental players were getting well and truly stuck in alongside the more experienced players so it was a real hail-storm of BBs. Hit taking was mostly pretty good, I had to tap a couple of people more than once but overall everyone played along. Had some solid trades during the day at near point blank range so have some good welts to record my visit. As the day wore on some of those who had been there since the morning started to thin out. Before departing a couple of guys let me waste a ton of their ammo trying out their TM AKM and HPA-tapped Saiga 12 SBS (didn't get their names, but if you are on these boards then cheers!). My first try of anything from the TM stables and despite reading up on their general high quality, it instantly becomes apparent how slick they are once you use one. Close of the day saw only 7 of us left, which to be frank I thought would be crap, but on the contrary it was the most fun of the day. We ran a mix of 1v1 and 1v+1 (when someone dies they can bring back an extra person from respawn until the entire team is wiped out) games and then a couple of rounds of defend and hold, where the defending team of 4 had to secure a couple of buildings and hold off the assault team of 3. Most airsoft games in big groups just turn into a shit storm of people running around like headless chickens under a near constant deluge of BBs, but with smaller teams communication and tactics suddenly came into play and I loved it. Honestly if you get the chance to play a CQB site with a small group it's utterly brilliant.

Honestly I have no constructive advice to give, but if you want to feel better about your own situation, I have a roughly 2m x 3m room into which I cram: * My WFH office setup, so desk, 3 screens, printer, couple of laptops * Mine and the boys RIFs and assorted ammo, gas, optics etc etc * 3 x 1/10 RC touring cars, tools, spare bodies, wheels, transmitters * Motorcycle gear * Electric guitar and amp Each unique 'hobby' more or less has its own space, so everything is in one place, but it all has to get sorted out in a roughly 1m square of carpet if I'm going to use any of it that day. Here it is in today's game-day chaos. Thankfully all this will be in the boot of the car shortly and then once done it will get stacked up behind the office door. Thus my RIF storage is limited by how many gun cases you can fit behind the door and still open it.

Picked up some Lonex 200rd mid caps and one of the clearance ICS XAEs from Fire-Support this week, plus a new Guarder spring for my Double Eagle, all of which I shall be trying out this afternoon.

Sounds like you did a great job, like you say expectation management is key. Explained to my daughter that you'll get shot dozens if not hundreds of times and for every 99 shots that you barely feel, much less hurt, there will sometimes be 1 that makes your eyes water. I've been spending rediculous sums of money on other equally superflous hobbies!

Very cool, working towards the same goal with my daughter. She's keen but anxious so have offered her a day where I chaperone her and act as a meat-shield. Meanwhile the boy and I had our first game after a hiatus due to other weekend commitments. Good to be back out in the woods at Spec Ops MK again, I'd forgotten how much fun airsoft is having been distracted by motorbikes and other hobbies this year.

Hmm... interesting. Be interested to see what they respond with. I've been hovering over these for a while, but if there is a revised version in the offing then I will wait longer.

Everyone in this thread (self included) is working diligently to set their retirement further and further back. Unless airsoft toys become an appreciating asset.

Just seen this update, good idea, I’ll drop you a PM. The irony of starting a thread to track Airsoft spending leading directly into more airsoft spending does not escape me.

Software QA / automation. Was in demand a couple of years ago, but I think the affect of higher interest rates drying up the liquidity in the tech world means there is less to go round, so most houses would rather spend on development than QA. Doesn't help when out of work developers are taking test automation roles - I can't compete with their skills yet! Expect you have made the right choice. I did something similar some time ago, took a very hefty pay cut to go from being a hardware engineer to software. Certainly paid off financially but far less satisfying. If I'm going to royally screw something up, I prefer to use tools to do it rather than a keyboard. AI tooling is going to make it much harder to stand out soon I think, various LLMs are producing solid (if not production ready) code already. Ah splendid, much obliged. At least if I stock up now I'll have enough to play with if I end up on the job hunt next year! You've probably saved me £££s!

Ouch. I've been looking for a good few months now (thankfully still gainfully employed but have some doubts over longevity next year) but the market has seemingly tanked compared to a couple of years ago for my line of work. Where did you get these? That's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for. That is a very healthy haul of goodies. I've had a look at Action's boneyard a few times and it's either empty or anything decent has already gone. I think I know who the culprit is now.

Yep a few places seem to be doing it with 3 extra mags for £575. Puts it squarely in MWS territory, but you're getting an equivalent of 240 rounds of total field-able capacity vs 140 on the MWS with the same number of mags. I realise they are very different propositions, but it's still airsoft toys at the end of the day.

That’s a good point, I certainly want to maintain that bias. I’m guilty of having a few hobbies where the time and money spent sourcing kit has far exceeded that spent on actually using it. I’ve got some truly egregious examples from cycling that, thankfully since this an airsoft forum, I don’t need to document.

So as 2023’s airsofting is over I thought I’d embark on the masochistic ritual of tallying up the year’s expenditure. We only started in May this year, but it’s quickly ascended to being a primary hobby with an outlay to match. I’ll preface this by pointing out this is for two as I’m covering me and my son, so you could reasonably expect to halve this for a single player. Overall, perhaps unsurprisingly, I’ve spent more than I thought over the year, but I’m still happy with the deal I get for time out with the boy doing something we both enjoy. There’s also chunk of discretionary spend in here. Things like the Hi-Capa, optics and some other addons were birthday presents for the boy. In effect that money was going to be spent regardless, if not on airsoft then some other interest or hobby. Wearables could have been far higher I suspect. He already has a full compliment of MTP gear from cadets and I just wear a mix of sports wear and black combats. Most of this spend has been on face-pro and carriers. If I was going to go down the full cosplay loadout route I expect this would be much higher. As it is I’m happy with my current I-Use-This-For-DIY-&-Decorating Terrain Pattern loadout. The weapon upgrades were entirely unnecessary. Certainly nice to have but not made a huge practical difference game to game. Both AEGs got motor upgrades, plus a new hop unit, bucking and nub for my M4 and a MOSFET for his G36. No regrets, I like to tinker but I doubt I could claim its changed the course of any battles. Biggest waste of money were two pairs of surplus Revision Bullet Ant goggles. They were bulky, uncomfortable and constantly fogged up. Replaced with Bolle Trackers for £8 a pair and they’ve been perfect. Best buy has been my Bulle chest rig from Flecktarn. Super cheap, super comfy, exceptionally well made and makes a vast difference to a game day. I think my number one recommendation to new players after weapons and face protection is some kind of carrier. Two AEGs and a pistol for a shade over £400 seems like a sensible spend for the year. Too soon to speak for the Hi-Capa as it’s new, but my Double Eagle and his Cyma have chewed through around 10,000 rounds each without complaint. Being sensible, 2024 could be much cheaper. We don’t need any more gear and if I bulk buy some BBs the ammo expenditure should be reasonable. However we’ve both got GBBRs on our list of interest so in reality it’s probably going to be another expensive year. I regret nothing.

Perun AB++? I have one in my son's G36 wired to the microswitch. As far as I'm aware it's the only Perun with a debouncing feature so is suitable for microswitches.