TheFull9

If only every big business would suicide itself by making the 1927 sub-variant of a sub-variant of an air training pistol used by a Belgian scout troop I once heard of in a story my grandfather told me in the 90s. Sorry man you don't get to complain and simultaneously be literally exactly the reason for the thing you're complaining about 🤣 I'd say hundreds of thousands to get the production line going for a whole new gun, the injection mould for just 1 plastic part can cost many thousands. I've only just been noticing recently that some of the original all-plastic AEGs from around the turn of the millenium have been disappearing. I'm frankly shocked they've kept as many different models alive even in batch production for as long as they have.

I kinda want to do either the 'M4A1' or AK-47 from MW2 2009 and while the AR is pretty easy to closely replicate the AK seems a lot harder. I found a picture of a really well done effort: In the game (remaster, but it's accurate to the fuzzy model in the original): I cannot find a 47 with a side rail though, which makes sense in terms of replicating real rifles but given the random non-existent variants that do get made I was initially hopeful. I don't want to do an M as a base. I did learn basic riveting long long ago, but I'm yet to see a home-applied AK side mount on an airsoft gun so I'm sceptical of that tbh. This is probably more a thought/discussion exercise than anything tbh, but if anyone does have any thoughts I'd be interested to hear them.

Does anywhere actually have decent stock of Mk5s/useful smokes?

*the flavour of the month gang disliked that*

Of course you get better bloody pics than I ever did 🙄

I'd imagine you already checked and want a different scale or some other change, but just so folks know these exist: https://www.freedomstencils.com/products/dpm-camouflage-stencil-kit

Old belt config for greenery.

Thrice Amen. I don't know of any specifics, they just didn't really survive the late 2010s for some reason. When I started around 06 they were ramping up (initially more kits for plastic TMs I think?) and they were the go-to metal ARs for years in the late 00s and early 10s, tons of variants all with darn authentic trades plus accessories from UGLs down to the small parts. They probably peaked in the Magpul era, pumping out tons of AEG and WA system GBB ARs based on US civilian builds of the time, often with PTS plastic attached. Then PTS lost the Magpul license and at some point Cybergun or whoever has the Colt trades license agreement clearly put their big old foot down; around then G&P just stopped making anything vaguely based on any real firearm of any type. Granted that was the trend at the time (around the initial popularity of Keymod) and G&G/ICS/VFC were all doing the same, but G&P failed to move with the times and just faded away apparently. They released a batch of Mk18s in brown a few years back that got terrible reviews and very briefly had a 'recoil system' which had the same reception. E&C have completely taken over what was the G&P domain in my estimation (military AR AEG focus). An awful lot of the same guns and parts as G&P used to do, I don't think it's the same operation though. Edit - Looked up their IG: https://www.instagram.com/gnpairsoft/?hl=en Barely a post for years now. Forgot how hard they leant in to the Salient craze.. that won't have helped the business. Maybe they only do silent OEM stuff now? It can be comparatively easy work for an established factory. Not sure.

By weird coincidence I was also looking around just earlier, it seems most of the usual UK retailers for quality kit have stopped bothering stocking rifle bags for the most part, if not entirely. Every option I looked at on Tactical-Kit was OOS, Flecktarn have zero and I don't recall seeing any gun bags on UKTactical. Google offered up nothing of great interest either. Personally this is the only option I'm considering that I found in stock in the UK: https://www.military1st.co.uk/tb-du8-cd-01-helikon-double-upper-rifle-bag-18-black.html It's pretty annoying and probably an indicator of the times. I have a WAS bag from about 15 years ago that's all 1000D, 1 big space for a rifle, another that can fit a shorter rifle/SMG then outer pistol pocket + 2 general zip pockets. Built like a tank and.. not even shown on WAS's own website anymore (the one where they list every single product they seem to have made in the past couple of years). HSP looks to have stopped production of the Incog entirely and the Spiritus Autobag seems to have been a one off thing. My guess is that such large items with such expensive shipping are not particularly economically viable in this lovely post-covid economy; they're pretty hard to dispatch without also paying to send a large volume of air in each pallet.

I was thinking about it a bit, and the conclusion I came to is that aside from the weight of the L85 the big issue is that there's no industry around it to iterate improvements. Our government has killed both private and public small arms production/development in the UK for the most part, so unless we setup and pay loads of money for specific iteration work and improvement on the SA80 series then nothing gets done. I don't think it'd be wildly untrue to say that essentially the opposite is true of the AR platform in the states; there's more companies than probably any one person knows, all of them constantly trying to beat the others at offering the latest and greatest variant of the western world's darling assault rifle. It's been a game of decreasing returns on investment for a long time now, just chipping away at very small performance increases as the technology is pretty much at it's limit, but when you have unimaginable amounts of money being poured in to seeking out those small gains you end up with an impressive end product. Heck that bloke pictured has almost nothing of British origin on him anywhere, even MTP as a pattern was mostly developed by Americans with only a smidge of input from ol' DPM. The biggest capability increases in the past 10-15 years have been in optics, lasers and other accessories and the other issue with the L85 is it's not quite as good of a mounting system for those things as the AR. Obviously the A3 is a lot better but not quite on the same level. Partly through the weight, partly the general layout and ergonomics and the fact all those gadgets are again designed with an eye on the DoD/US market (and therefore the AR layout even if it's something like the XM7). I'm sure other have seen US SOF guns (especially longer range setups) absolutely dripping with gadgets to the point you can barely see the rifle anymore. You can easily fit 10s of thousands worth of extras on something like a 6.5CM semi-auto that might 'only' cost say $5-8k and those things allow the shooter to pull off pretty crazy feats, especially at night and at long ranges. That's the sort of thing can really give us an advantage now over a bloke with an SVD or PKM. Or you know.. a PLA infantryman.

Standard V2 AEG M4A1 (ideally properly Colt marked) from a high quality brand/in high end form. I know I know big yawn, but we seem to have hit a point of having a million different ARs on the market yet the most basic type is comparatively unusual to find at this point.

I figured most likely, but that 1% doubt in the back of my mind was there.. I've heard some cringe stupidity in morning briefs.

As a joke, right?

I get where you're coming from, but people will have inevitably done more in depth maint on a weapon while under fire for real, so yeah as long as they have the tool in question that could and probably has happened. Now on a lot of civilian rifles owned by people with minimal training or experience then often the non-QD scope mount + irons is just a lack of thinking through the setup, but that's bound to happen. Personally in airsoft I like a magnified optic for ID/instead of prescription eyewear and any sort of BUIS/red dot are either aesthetic or a nice-to-have, since every airsoft shot is a 'tracer' and if they're close enough for airsoft you can obviously mostly just shoot instinctively, as has been mentioned (especially combined with the 'tracer' aspect with normal white BBs in daylight). Obviously if someone's build is a replication of a real build then none of the above matters anyway.

Yeesh imagine an entire game where everyone's dressed like a plant, not one of them actually doing anything as per usual 😴

Seems there must be no demand at the moment, given the total lack of stock everywhere? I've gone about 10 pages deep on google, all I can see are the horrible looking AIP versions. I'm very close to just buying a couple of Strike warriors, swapping MSHs to the guns I want the mag wells on and selling the strikes at a loss (if anyone wants a discount on one, drop me a dm). If anyone's got any alternatives I'd love to hear them please.

@heroshark I found another one.

Been posting these old photos (around 2010-12) on social media then remembered they've never been on here either, only Arnies back in the day. The quality isn't a bug on the forum or anything, the images are just intrinsically that low resolution. Couple of iterations of my 14.5" NGRS back when I had the King Arms CASV. These days it has a carbon fibre handguard so it's just a tad lighter than the EGLM setup.

I'd reckon there's a decent chance the Foliage Warrior is TM's slowest selling/least popular GBB pistol and perhaps the one most commonly regarded as their fugliest offering. Probably lounges on stock room shelves for years and years. So, here I am.

Are you a fan of quad rails and the KAC NT4 per chance? I'm just jealous because your biceps must be triple the size of mine at a minimum.