TheFull9

What people probably wanna see on the gram vs how I've actually used it.

Whole bunch of cans of paint and oils (each containing a little compressed gas bomb) directly adjacent to lipo charging area? tf...

Check the file type (usually wanna be .jpg or .png), you can get a pretty big and high quality image (in airsoft terms) at well under 2mb. Also check your upload allowance on here - shown below post when typing on desktop.

Had to double check for myself, but yeah I can't find a confirmed made-by-HK M-LOK forend. Only possibility might be the newest L85A3 handguard but I don't know for sure if HK themselves are manufacturing that (though it does have a big HK logo, so it's probable). HKey makes sense for them financially short term, but not many large forces will want a proprietary system that's different to the direction us and the US are going I'd imagine. For normal folks, my personal opinion is it shouldn't matter too much on your handguard type. Foregrips and bi-pods can be comfortable for some folks, but they're certainly not necessary. The only thing you would ever maybe find utterly essential as a handguard weapon attachment is a white light IF you play super dark indoor areas, in which case if you can't find KeyMod you just use the pic rail along the top and you should still have room to spare for a front BUIS or sight protector (and if it comes down to it.. tape on the light). Lasers and cameras are fluff and unless you've got the weapon to level 69 and unlocked the plastic phallus you should be fine. Obviously it is airsoft so if you just want certain attachments for looks that's fine, handguards are easily swapped on most guns for quad pic or M-LOK aftermarket. There's pretty decent quality stuff around for the cost of 2-3 PTS midcaps.

Bunch of long discontinued stuff mushed together.

Tackle is 100% correct. What do doctors and physios (ie people with serious education and training) tell overweight people with joint issues all the time? To lose weight. So adding any extra dead mass to your kit is almost certainly going to have negative effects. Any excess weight on your body puts more pressure down on your entire system, joints being the areas that will compress and endure the most egregious effects from that compression. Use fewer/lighter magazines, only carry what's truly necessary and spread it around you so it balances. Personally I've mostly found that hydro bladders on the back will cause plastic midcaps on the front of any gear to rise up excessively if anything. After all these years experimenting I mostly use either a small chest rig with basically only a few mags up front, or a compact PC with a small bladder on the back and the rest spread around the front/sides/to a belt. Spreading is kind of the key word here, force = pressure/area. You'll find with most load weights in airsoft that drinking from your back won't have that much effect on kit balance when considering the friction against your torso; just top it up a bit once or twice in a day and it'll be fine.

Wow 😂 I knew the rifle grenades were loong gone and the raf and army don't have them anymore, never heard of such a thing as that. The navy still had Lanchester SMGs in to the 70s though so I shouldn't be surprised at these things really.

They are our standard issue 556 blanks yes, but cordite was a thing back in the .303 days. Modern smokeless powder is a very different thing, though people often still say cordite and 'gunpowder' (aka, black powder). Ballastite rounds are so long out of service they'd almost certainly be gnarly and corroded at this point if found in a shed in 2021. Also pretty damn rare in general I'd think, be surprised if more than a few exist even in the army's collection/reference storage and maybe some munitions museums. Been a long time since I've seen a picture of the 556 version but I think they were partially blackened towards the front hence folks sometimes mix them up.

The VCRA is written based on a common (and all around bad) legislative assumption that real guns are black, if that changed substantially in the real world the impact on airsoft would be.. totally unknowable right now. If I were to guess right now, it'd kill off both RIFs and IFs, probably Nerf too given that laws on such things are based in significant part on how things look vs how physically dangerous they are. Fortunately the only thing that's likely to change in the real world is tan finishes becoming more standard for military weapons, which will bleed over to the commercial market to some extent. The L85A3 is tan and all the NGSW options the US Army are considering are currently in flavours of tan.

Import VAT and duty have been around forever, there's no such thing as a brexit charge. Makes as much sense as a UKARA license.

You can always get anything you wanted printed by stitchmeup.biz, minimum of 1, entirely affordable. They've been around forever and they get mentioned on here occasionally but it's hard to spread that kind of knowledge around consistently online (tell 'em I sent you haha). They don't do the embroided-type edges and they didn't do mine, I used someone new I can't mention atm, but the end result is extremely similar. With the old PVC and embroidered patches you'd have big minimums and couldn't just get any photo/image, but yeah these days with printing you can get literally any image you can imagine done for <£10. They're no good in bulk since the prices don't really scale like with the other styles (or at least as much, afaik), but if you want 1 or a couple/lots of detail then printed will do you well. Super easy to get anything you want slapped on your gear and they're quick to make as well.

Had a custom patch made.

Anyone who tells you 'X archetype of gear is de facto good/bad' doesn't have the slightest bloody clue what they're talking about. Said this on here before, will say it again - There are big, heavy, sweaty armour vests and plate carriers that exist out there on the market and there are slim, lightweight, breathable and flexible ones. The exact same sorts of things apply for chest rigs, regular vests, uniforms and anything else you'd wear. A huge part of airsoft is cosplay anyway, get whichever type of thing you want but get a good example of that thing. Military issued kit is built to an alright standard, but the designs always lag behind by about 10 years in anything the military adopts because government agencies have the turning circles of cruise liners. Issue uniforms represent good value because they're made in giant quantities that far eclipse commercial offerings so you get economy of scale, but modern standard issue load bearing kit (armour vests and belts) is designed with protection in mind and is overly bulky and heavy for airsoft on top of being dated in design principles. Better a half decent clone JPC (or equivalent) than surplus Osprey any day. Flecktarn is probably the best store for kit applicable to airsoft in the UK, cannot go wrong with an MLE. With any other purchases along the lines of belts/vests in future, when buying from stores you do get what you pay for, and it's not possible to make a high quality (even mid range quality) PC with PALS and a set of pouches for sub-£40 retail. You don't have to buy crye either there's good stuff inbetween the SF kit and true chinese garbage that so many players start with and 99% inevitably ditch in short order. It's much better to keep checking ebay, pre-fired, facebook gear groups and the classifieds for a good 2nd hand deal on a solid brand than it is spending the same money on something lower quality from a retailer.

Not super thread relevant, but having been importing loads from the US every year for a good 6-7 years or more, the one thing I'd recommend above all else is to find an american you can trust who'll happily take a few extra bucks to forward things. It sounds counterintuitive, but paying shipping twice if you use a mate and tipping them a few vs. the crazy money the stores charge to ship right to you will always work out cheaper and if they don't mind putting a few orders in together for you the savings rocket up exponentially. Shipping within the lower 48 states is cheap af, as many will have seen at checkout the cost for international compared to US is crazy. So if you buy a few pouches, a shirt and a stock (for example) it'll cost maybe $5-10 to get to your mate, then if they pool a few such orders together in a box that box will probably cost $50 or so to the UK and you'll get dozens of items in it. Even after tipping them $10-20 you can save in the region of hundreds sometimes. Personally I import heavy boxes with roughly the volume of a box for a 32" tv, they'll cost around $110 to send but each one will have items from a dozen+ different stores and ebay sellers etc, which each would've costed in the $30-60 region. Obviously be most certain that they are 110% super duper honest with the customs declaration form because HMRC don't have a damn clue what pouches and camo are worth. Don't accidentally pay short on your tax bill (meaning your outlay is lowered even further), that would be bad and I discourage it with much fervor. Granted if you've got no family or friend connections there this won't work for everyone, but if you've even got a mate across the pond you've ended up chatting to on IG or through a facebook group there's a decent chance they'll be happy to make a couple of extra notes in their spare time.

Whoever put together that first setup needs dressing in a onesie and handing over to a bunch of drunken nonces.

How many CoD points was that? AK traditionalist tears sparkle so beautifully in the morning sun.

Real niche question tbh, if you haven't yet try searching for FB groups related specifically to the TM recoils. Might well be someone here that's tried it but the odds are kinda slim.

I've got some sealskinz as well for these sorts of times, pretty old so I'm not sure they're TSC but I'm sure they do something now.. yep here: https://www.sealskinz.com/products/waterproof-all-weather-glove Had the older version of those for many years, hit the exact right balance I found. There is a PIG cold weather glove now too, not tried it yet but I'm sure they're good.

Ngl I was interested because that pattern looks just like the fabric Crye used for their G3 run of TS recently so I am a tad dubious of the original fabrics part, but interesting none-the-less.

I'm pretty jealous of that hat haha.

Cheers mate! Glad you think so.

Edit to add - I did clear this post with the admin team ahead of time. Left is before, right is after, centre is the actual product (a prototype anyway, the production TS is a little more vivid). Many years ago I attached a patch to a Crye G3 shirt and didn't like the lack of security with the split velcro, I also didn't like the fact that the AC and G3 lines have never featured pattern matched loop. After a while I started getting custom tactical sewing guys in the US to just sew hook on the back of camo loop in different MC patterns, US Woodland, Desert Night etc to both bridge those gaps and add camo to my Crye shirts and replicas from Roman Kurmaz. Fast forward to 2019 I heard of a company able to print loop almost as easily as using an inkjet at home and in similarly small quantities, whereas getting real camo velcro loop made usually requires spending in the region of tens of thousands on ordering multiple thousand yard rolls. Then if you only have raw loop you've got to find a trustworthy tailor who knows and understands uniforms, wait in their inevitably long queue, pay a reasonable sum for their time and skill and hope the damn post office doesn't lose your rare uniform pieces somewhere along the way; I went through all of the above many times. Yesterday, after a lengthy process, my Camo Plates were finally made available and are now in stock and ready to buy in a range of cool camos, most of which have previously been unavailable in velcro form. They come in 2x4" and 4x4" versions shown above which cover the arm pocket areas on a Crye shirt (or replica), with the 4" also perfectly fitting on a Spiritus half flap. There is also a 4x8" (below) version that entirely covers the front of a Spiritus chassis/replica thereof or similar small chest rig with the same size loop field on the front. Whether you own something like a Crye G3 shirt that has plain loop and you want to add camo, or you simply want to change the camo loop on a given product for a different pattern that you like (works particularly well on Spiritus chassis), these are cheap and take, ooh.. roughly 1 whole second to apply with zero permanent modifications to your kit. Unfortunately, at the moment shipping from Indonesia (where my retailer Vajra Concepts is based) is not very cheap when using UK addresses due to COVID and the cost of the product ratio to the cost of shipping is far from ideal, but that is what we're stuck with at the moment. In the event I can secure retailers in the UK/US I'll certainly endeavour to, though that may be a tricky feat but it's what I'm striving for. For links to purchase and further reading please click here and do ask any questions in the thread, cheers guys. https://thefull9.net/camoplates/

I'd have to say the impression cadets gave you is the wrong one overall. Some parts of the army are somewhat strict on polishing and ironing but I've not had my uniform inspected for a regular day in work in over a decade. I'm trusted to be a grown adult and just keep myself clean and tidy to a common sense level that is sustainable for an entire career, ranks above me care much more about whether I do my job well, security, general behaviour; same applies for most people who are in. Since you don't actually produce work with operational output as a cadet they have to fill your time with drill and training, in regular service it's basically the total opposite for the majority of people.

Just one example off the top of my head that's actually public about himself - www.instagram.com/christian_craighead/?hl=en I don't follow any, but most who are on social media (which obviously won't be many) will have locked/private accounts as you can imagine.

The actual real shit you've done is inversely proportional to likelihood you're gonna chat a big game, ignore hits, get angry, shout at people (on both teams) etc. I think most people can imagine why. I say likelihood because I've known one slight exception but he'd just huff a lot to people he knew and quit games sometimes, not actually get real angry at strangers mid round. I think when you look at pure airsofters vs cadets vs regulars at different levels most folks will have seen this to be a trend. Airsoft weapons and ordnance are nothing like the real stuff so the tactics/marksmanship mostly don't work and if you lose at airsoft it doesn't matter at all we all go home, most people know that, but chances you'll actually care about the game might be a bit higher if you lack the real experience to know how insignificant a little sunday afternoon bb war truly is in the scheme of things. As I think about it, I come to the conclusion it's more down to what you think airsoft is. The worst players overall I've encountered or see online tend to be far too hard in to milsim, maybe did basic training then left the forces or just straight failed basic, have/have had some military mates who they quote all the time, imitate the lingo and/or or got a like on IG from an ex-SF guy one time. Either way, the more of a fantasy about the game someone builds up in their mind the more unpleasant they are to be around.