TheFull9

The Osprey is an armour carrier for conventional troops with a whole crap load of space for soft armour protection, not just a plate carrier. Hence, in an environment such as airsoft and military cadets where you're not getting blown up by IEDs, RPGs and other IDF, it does not make any sense at all. It's huge, bulky and heavy; massively over the top compared to a decent set of webbing as mentioned. Personally I'd never recommend them to anyone for airsoft, child or adult, total overkill. If people like the look/for brit mil impressions then sure, but in terms of practicality - poor choice compared to many other options on the market.

Haha, sorry for not providing that info mate.

I'm not sure the clones (presuming that's what the OP wants) follow the naming convention do they? I've never really looked but I seem to recall reading that. I know there is a brand that makes a copy of the Large or XL, but no idea who I'm afraid. Probably be better off asking on a forum/FB group related to US SF gear.

I've had a proper arm chair permanently installed to my fence on account of the amount of time sitting there. I can see why it could be an issue for some really young players, but as an adult (presuming the site has a shop) then I think if you literally don't have even a tenner to your name by the time you've paid for your skirmish day, you possibly shouldn't have paid the £25-35 for the skirmish day in the first place. There's no need to be running your bank account on empty for the sake of a hobby.

You'll always sweat in something waterproof and the more breathable you go, the less water it'll keep out. There's not really any ideal solution, though I think the main priority should be lightweight uniform that dries quickly once it does get wet, so you're not staying soaked once the sun does come out; really old school gear is pretty bad in that regard usually. Thin and lightweight synthetics do the best in that regard, so if (for example) it hammers down all morning then the sun comes out, you'll be dry again after lunch. I got soaked through standing on parade in denim coveralls once, crappy day that was, darn things literally did not dry the slightest bit; CS95 and PCS however by comparison would dry from just your body heat in very little time. The best middle ground is probably a non-insulated softshell, would want to be from a reasonable brand though. You can try adding extra water-proofing treatments to garments as well, lots of those on the market that seem to work pretty well (long as you re-apply them every so often).

Realistically, for me, any gun that actually looks what I'd call 'sorted'. Don't care on the platform or the make, but it's really bloody rare I see a gun with a setup that makes me think "that's actually well done" (obviously excluding the comedy guns in this one). I get people might be limited on the batteries the have in relation to the gun and their budget etc, but if you can't afford to setup your rifle in such a way that all the weight of that Large type NiMh isn't entirely dangling directly from the wire connection.. well I think you should just wait til next payday before attending another game. If anything for your own sake as that's just not a good thing for the battery, the gun or the shooter. Also anyone that actually uses their attached foregrip, be it vertical or angled. I almost never see those used, they're just hanging out in front there while the shooter grips the magwell all day long. Not saying people 'aren't allowed' to grip the magwell that's entirely personal preference, but it's rare I see anyone actually utilise the foregrip they've paid for and attached, so that stands out to me.

Honestly, I've never in all my years come across someone that straight run out of ammunition; any time I've seen that happen, said person has gone straight to the site shop and bought another bottle. Yes,I know this doesn't work for sites without a shop but I'm pretty sure they're the exception not the rule from what I've seen. I've leant someone my speedloader when they had no tool for bombing up their midcaps and they gave a general shout across the safe zone, so I volunteered my kit. But not once have I seen someone straight run out of BBs or ask me for BBs. I often only bring a very small amount with me due to the small amount I shoot in day, so if someone did ask me then my response would depend entirely on the way in which they asked. Someone who's got a legitimate reason, approached and ask politely without presuming or giving the impression they'll get shitty if I did say no - absolutely, I'll sort them out. However I've had more than a few little s*** bags address me as 'Oi!' at games before and they get the hardest blanking possible, if some little f***** came over demanding BBs with a bucket full of crap over-entitled attitude they're getting the square root of sweet-FA from me personally.

You just have to pick carefully with WE. Lots of their Glock series guns do fine, I've read good reports on the M&Ps, XDMs, PX4s and Sigs; the 1911 line however is almost universally severly slated, similar story with the Hi-Capas. You hear of lemons amongst the 'good models' and unlikely-performers amongst the 1911s, but generally if you stick to the more recently released/redesigned models (their Glocks for example have been around much less time than the 1911s) you should get a decent pistol considering the metal parts and low prices. Always a good idea to buy from the likes of Pro Airsoft, As Zone etc who're known to be good on the customer service side of things.

LiPos are easy really, barely any maintenance needed compared to the old types in my experience. You can buy fire-resistant storage bags which will contain them at least to some extent if the worst happened (which is absurdly unlikely and would generally require deliberate physical abuse of the battery), they also remove the shorting risk being fabric and all. Tbh I give all mine a charge before I put them away, have about 8 packs here and owned most for at least 4-5 years, never had any trouble. For taking to a game I use said 'Fire Safe' bag within my gun bag just as an extra belt and braces Only time I've had a battery puff up on me personally was actually in my PSP funnily enough. Bought it in 2007, used it loads when I was going through training as I couldn't afford a laptop and we had no internet for the first few months. Put it away some time in 08, got it out when I moved base a few months back (so it'd been totally flat for around 6 years) and the pack had expanded just enough that the bay door wouldn't shut any more. I've personally only ever seen issues in airsoft when they're run too close to empty; or one time when I left my battery with the site staff at a certain place in Norfolk (said staff were utterly shite at running an airsoft game and everything related to it) who somehow managed to make my pack puff right out almost immediately, despite the fact I'd been using it for some time with zero issues using a very basic charger. You'd think someone running the shop at a site would know the day 1 school-boy basics of what sort of juice to put in to a given style of battery.. but apparently not. They didn't give a fuck about my equipment they'd literally just destroyed through their sheer incompetence and then got a sulk on when I left it on their counter to dispose of. Genuine morons.

That's a better end solution, it'll cut a lot of weight from the very end of the gun as a bonus. Less likely to wear your outer barrel/muzzle device over time vs the standard steel part.

It'll be a hell of a job to drill through the centre bolt. There's a reason those things are so hefty. If you can find someone with a really good quality drill press and (presumably) some diamond tipped bits, then with enough time I'd imagine it's possible. My knowledge of machine work is absolutely minimal, but given the BFA can capture at least a couple of SS109 spec 556 bullets (I'm fairly sure we're still using those as standard, and they're really good at penetrating solid objects when fired out of an L85 barrel) it's gonna be a tricky task for sure. If you can find somewhere to do it they may charge a pretty penny, but I reckon it'd be unique. I've seen people with airsoft L85s who had BFAs and a blank mag or two inside their gun cases just for the cool look of it, but to my knowledge nobody has ever drilled one out to actually use it while shooting.

BULLE gear's a great choice, always been well made in my experience, similar deal with the customer service from Flecktarn. It's an old design of chest rig but for airsoft it's still probably one of the most sensible options going in a lot of ways. Gives you the PALS space up front on your abdomen area exactly where you need it. Only thing you might need to think about is a method of carrying water if you're playing outdoors/long games away from the SZ.

gunfire.pl list them but OOS unfortunately, closest I can find. The impression I get when looking through various HK retailers is that E&L haven't distributed any new stock for a while. Selection of guns actually in stock seems very sparse with largely the more funny-looking models left over; always an indicator of a brand that's not manufactured anything for a while. Happens with a lot of the brands other than WE and G&G it seems, either demand for RIFs has gone up a lot or they're producing a load of guns then going out of business for one reason or another.

Regards the WAS/Viper/Guarder gun bags, they often look the same because they all copy the same design, but they don't come from the same place and in some instances are actually quite different when you get a better look than the tiny website pictures. I used a cheap chinese bag initially, fell apart in short order. Then went with the Guarder in the style linked, good quality but a little shorter than ideal. Upgraded to the Warrior maybe 5-6 years ago now, it still looks new frankly; the build quality is far above any Viper kit I've seen and I happily trust it to carry any weapon(s) in my collection. Proper mil-spec cordura (which Warrior use) carries certain guarantees along with the name relating to the overall strength and abrasion resistance of the fabric; wouldn't say it's necessary all the time for airsoft by any means, depends what you're doing. But overall it'd probably last 5x longer than a product that costs half as much, again depending on what you do with it. Never personally been a fan of hard cases as they tend to have less capacity generally per volume of the case itself, but then obviously they can give the gun a lot more protection if you really like flinging the thing around and dropping it on concrete. My current gun bag for every skirmish is a Voodoo tactical which can hold 2-3 long guns, up to about 6 pistols if you cram them in, maybe ~30 rifle mags and 10-12 pistol mags plus extra ancillaries (not that I ever bring anything like that much with me) but they seem to have closed their EU operation. I think a decent hard case is probably better if you have room to store it and tend to just take the one primary to a game as you can cut the foam to suit that gun along with the specific mags and extras. I prefer a good nylon bag to carry a rifle, backup long gun, pistol/holster, all the the mags and batteries/gas/speedloader. Just the system I've found to work over the years for me, but obviously I take more stuff on a sunday than some people (though still quite a bit less than some others).

The Wehrmacht largely wore grey in the late30s/early 40s, worked for them and it's come back around now massively. Works fine indoors in my experience, just not much cop anywhere outside (to put it mildly). Aesthetically I like it when done right, should be a fair amount going fairly cheap on ebay given how the US Army is now switching over to multicam(ish).

If you're playing somewhere that'll require a light, get a decent dedicated light (with a momentary only switch/pad if possible) and mount it for the necessary games only. Done.

Amongst the actual 'players' there's section medic amongst the different roles to choose from as well.

These are a few stores I've used and liked in the states with good selections of kit: http://www.optactical.com/ http://www.skdtac.com/ http://www.tacticaldistributors.com/ http://www.us-elitegear.com/ When buying from the states, never do so unless they have a sale on. These stores have sales of varying degrees literally every single holiday or event throughout the year. Christmas, halloween, easter, black friday, memorial and veterans weekends, 4 July, thanksgiving... etc etc etc. They happen so often that the most you'll ever have to wait if you've just missed one is another month or so tops. But if you want the slightly less common stuff like MC Black and specifically ATACS-LE, this HK store is probably the best option overall: http://www.ur-tactical.com/

Make sure to give the stock barrel a good clean out as well if you haven't already, probably coated in dirt and gunk from the factory.

I doubt Coleman gas does any damage to rubber components. Between gas blowback pistols, rifles and 40mms I have roughly 50 gas containing devices and I've used cans of Colemans propane with some silicone oil from AI that they recommend for use with their adapters. Every single mag and shell is stored with said lubrictaed Colemans inside, many of them for half a decade or more. Number of leaks or U/S seals I've encountered is so close to nil it makes no odds. I've had some TM 1911A1 mags in my collection for bordering on 9 years now and they've had colemans inside them for pushing 7 of those years, literally not a single sign of a leak, 100% solid. I see nothing to backup the idea that camping propane does damage to your airsoft stuff amongst any of my collection, including all the hop rubbers for the GBB pistols I've owned for many many years and have been shot using Colemans for the vast majority of their usage. If anything I had way more troubles with stuff leaking back when I wasted my money buying cans of green gas. The filling up Colemans green cans from large bottles I have no idea about, don't have the space for a large bottle even if I really need to go down that route.

How many options do you want? What sort of price ranges?

Custom totally slick panels to replace the rails on my TM SCAR-L. Came up with the idea a long time ago and after managing to find someone with the mill and skills necessary they're finally installed; further write up with more info on my page if anybody's interested.

I don't think speedsoft happens much outside of the far east. It's odd because I know Japan in particular has a lot of seriously hardcore impressionists who spend the sort of money that makes the SEAL/Delta/SAS re-enactors in the US and Europe look like little kids with pocket money. That said, in Hong Kong a fair bit of the skirmishing is (or certainly was in the past) based on a 'how much can you stand' system with people unloading their electrically fed box mags at 2 joules with no MED. All armoured up tofuck as you only called hit when you physically couldn't take the pain of getting constantly laced any further. Absolutely dread to think how many people would lose their eyes and teeth if something like that happened often here, especially with the bargain bucket, shitty, non-sealed eye pro some new players buy.

Some sort of 3-gun or other practical shooting is ideally what I'd like to do quite often if I could, personally I love the idea. Need to look in to some sort of map of places in the UK that actually offer it. The impression I get is that conventional airsoft skirmishing it a lot more popular, but I've not really dug in to the topic. I know redwolf are advertising a supposedly 'big' airsoft pistol shooting competition this year but it's not cheap to enter and gets spread out over 3 days; doesn't seem to entail a lot of actual time spent shooting either. Lot of money for not a lot of action once you factor in 3-4 nights in a hotel and food. Something like that over 1 day (maybe 2 max) I'd quite probably check out.

Not to tread on Okto's toes, but to add something to the current discussion. I actually did a bit of reading on the site of a company that organises 'milsim' games for the first time yesterday, noticed they have quite a lot of slots open for the roleplaying side of things at their next event. http://war-zone.co.uk/live-role-play-booking-form/4589032664