TheFull9

Good looking setup mate, which insert do you have in there?

The only people (person? speaking dog? sentient rock monster?) I can think of who might have a rough number of active players would be UKARA. Except far as I'm aware we still have zero real clue who holds this mystical database with (presumably) 10s of thousands of people's information on it. I'd honestly love to be wrong on this one though. Actually just had a quick dig, not sure if it's been mentioned before but the random-af address linked to UKARA's GDPR reg is just a totally bland wood block on the Cornish coast right next to a GCHQ site. Said site has a stronger fence line that any MoD establishment I've ever visited and is bristling with radar/radio dishes.. tinfoil fully deployed ? The first google review for the site is just stunning lol.

I've mulled over one of these many a time over the years, ultimately went for an ACOG for my M16 carry handle upper because that's what the Bad Company 2 M16 in BF2042 has and I love it tbh (early 2000s aesthetic). But I've never not been able to find airsoft clones of the retro Colt scope clones in stock somewhere any time I've looked, I have to say. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006287579209.html?spm=a2g0o.store_pc_allItems_or_groupList.0.0.197c1c55QbPYS5&pdp_npi=4%40dis!GBP!￡41.64!￡41.64!!!51.45!51.45!%402103846917172473533577324ea631!12000036620160530!sh!UK!0! https://www.amazon.co.uk/SPINA-OPTICS-Hunting-Handle-Reticle/dp/B0C5CXQRP4 (Same product at these 2 links I'd guess) https://www.octagonairsoft.com/product-page/fcw-4x20-scope-with-colt-marking

Stick to camo clothing, nylon kit etc. I have no idea what your tastes are but somewhat as was said above, US surplus costs peanuts there but the postage is of course a lot; easy way to save on whatever you fancy (I like woodland camo kit from the early 00s myself). This may not be relevant to the offer you received, but tons of surplus stores in the US are literally owned by some crusty old vet who hates tech, doesn't want to use the internet etc etc so their stores don't even have websites. From what my mates over there say a lot of the bargains require shopping the 1980s way.

Yeah, but they're not interested, as the recruiting numbers show (and various retention numbers reinforce). Understandably so in a lot of respects I'm sure. Which I'd guess is at least partly why they're considering just forcing people; election theatrics aside. I don't know what the minimum service time is for most jobs outside my own, but it's probably not much longer than the national service idea except with better pay and prospects, so yeah maybe the plan is make the NS look less appealing and just corral recruits that way lol.

It'll get easier and cheaper over time. Give it long enough and if they stay popular and someone like G&G will release a ready-to-go AEG replica right out of the box. But by then the novelty will have faded and it won't be impressive anymore since anyone can just buy one easy as that. And just like the L119A1 and A2 before it the impression crowd will lose interest and move on to the next fashion trend. So yeah just be prepared to really commit if you want to be an early adopter, I'd guess the incoming HAO kits will be.. £1200+, without base gun, then you still need the optics.

At first I was very surprised to hear this, but then remembered the election is coming lol. Glad to not see any predictably emotional way-OTT rants in this airsoft forum thread. ? It's all public knowledge that the MOD has been closing/selling bases and shrinking on pers numbers at a steady rate for decades, though as with anything if you're not serving in the affected branch then the majority of the population naturally won't be aware of everything. Physically we are.. tight on space, i.e. physical barrack blocks on stations (all 3 services), even for the current cohort. Same story for instructors; lots of legal boxes to tick for being allowed to train young people, as mentioned above. I presume back in the 50s there were tons of camps with thousands of Nissen huts left over from the war to shove folks in for their 2 years; the war time military was just sort of stretched/dragged out a big. Definitely a challenge to just go back in to it now, but when you're looking at a very decent possibility of an election loss then I guess the 'big ideas' suddenly all come out. The wording is that the kids in the military would be full time so they'd have to get paid, and as with anything in life that significantly challenges you most folks come out the side overall better for it and it's not like they'd be on the front lines having a really bad time. You'd at least come out with some skills, experience and more interesting stories whereas the weekend volunteers presumably wouldn't be getting paid given the use of the word volunteer. Seems iffy to say the least in a lot of respects, since you're just forcing these kids to work for free, they won't add much value most likely given the minimal training they'd get and the inevitable risk aversion to giving them any responsibility. Plus they'll need to be trained and managed and the overall scheme is actually going to cost tons of money even though the 'volunteers' aren't getting paid. Yeah that'll kill most of the youth vote for the Conservatives big time, so presumably they're banking on the older turn out, probably pretty standard battle lines there.

Don't mean to sound funny here but if you're shooting right handed then left side sling loop is the default, assuming you're looking from the butt end of the rifle down the bore, lol (i.e. same side as the mag catch). If you google image 'L85 airsoft' though there are indeed plenty of them on the right side of the weapon i.e. same as the ejection opening, which would of course not work out. ETA - looking through a small portion of the search results, seems that the ICS and G&Gs get it correct to the real rifle, but a lot of stock/retail pictures of the WE, Army and generic springers have it 'wrong'. Which as someone who's always been anti-WE gives me a weird little buzz in a bad way 'cause I'm just a bad person like that.

As I say, all you're pressing back against is the mag spring and it's when the mag spring is under basically no compression/tension since the mag is empty; which is how it has to work for that whole system to work. At least in the design as it stands, not sure if there's any sort of NGRS 2 on the horizon (probably not any time soon, I wouldn't think). I'm not sure how you seem to be routinely shooting-to-empty then walking around with the paddle sticking out having presumably not reloaded. Personally I've been using these guns pretty much since they launched and I've never had that so.. yeah, can't comment on that one I'm afraid.

What precisely do you mean by loose? On all of mine they just sit there in place until actuated by an empty mag. All of the force that pushes the paddle outwards comes from the magazine spring after being transferred through multiple other components, so there's quite a bit of lost energy in the system. The force required to press on the paddle upon completion of a reload is less than any GBBR of course, but (at least from what I've always been told) a good bit more than on any PTW or equivalent. I don't think you'd ever get near the 'feel' of a GBB bolt release by sheer nature of the system, but to increase the force required to depress the paddle you'd either need some monster of a magazine spring (which I think would be detrimental to the gun in other respects) or another spring added in to the system. Either directly behind the paddle or acting on one of the other parts, but you'd have to counter that force by also increasing the strength of whatever holds the paddle in the standard vertical position for firing, otherwise it'd just stick out all of the time.

Quick Release cables were allll the rage in new armour vests mid 00s, at least state side, long out of fashion with the fancy brands now. I don't know for sure if the DDPM Ospreys had them but I don't think so (?), my own issued MTP Mk4 certainly doesn't. The Virtus STV has a much abbreviated version on the left shoulder. JPCs have the pull handles that just make it a lot quicker and easier to rip all the velcro on the shoulders and cummerbund. The current USMC issued armour carrier just has FirstSpear Tubes which allow for rapid removal and of course there's lots of other vests/carriers that feature Tubes or the many other Tubes-copy QR buckles out there; far better idea than the old cables all things considered.

Which Stg actually has midcaps? I'd always thought the AEG out there only had hi-caps available (that's all I'd seen stocked anyway). P90 was my only thought, probably long enough but gonna be a close call width wise. Any shingle type pouch or placard that's 5 PALS rows high/deep would work of course since they're open topped but will have enough depth to actually secure the mags and sink the centre of gravity deep enough. Common flapped double mag pouches with the elastic in the middle often work for this type of thing if you tuck the flaps in. Potentially might have to look at the likes of radio pouches or tall GP pouches if you want a closed top.

I've seen some airsofters on here have rapid changes of heart...

That's a lucky scoop right there, a few firearm related shops here used to sell them but afaik every single one dried up years ago. Now that they're 'the thing you can't get' they're all the rage for collectors and aficionados state side. Seen many many comments on Magpul's social media posts asking for them.

Whoring myself to PTS/Magpul continues, courtesy of Land Warrior this time (one of the better places for RS bits I'm finding). Not bought, but a buddy that worked at Spiritus for a few years in their earlier days was moving house and having a clear out; sent me these prototypes of what ended up as the LV-119 (oldest on the left, newest on the right).

Nothing wrong with the extra gas idea of course, but for less than a refillable tank you can buy another mag. It's just options; you either carry extra mag(s) or a speed loader and tank and refill in a lull, or simply reload the gun. More total shots with the latter but much slower and more stuff to carry - fewer shots with the former but less bulk/weight and faster. I'm a big TM 1911 guy, the Marui 1911A1 was my first pistol and I've picked up more variants over the years. Wearing small-med gloves they work for me, but I only load in the region of 10-20 BBs (weather dependent) and don't generally plan/expect to rapidly fire off a whole mag tbh. Which should be fine, as unless you're doing pistol primary for fun that scenario pretty much isn't going to come up. I've always found the accuracy really made up for the capacity.

Narrow down from here and tell us a few you like the look of then we can advise further. https://www.fire-support.co.uk/category/marui-pistols/?manufacturer=&stock=&stpos=0&no_per_pg=999

I hope folks evolve to see that this kinda thing is absolutely up there in terms of what makes (or breaks) their games. Once you get on to a field it is soooo obvious which sites have been maintaining structures and features/replacing stuff that's beyond repair vs ones that just let everything rot forever, tape it off and call that good. Obviously this is not a big money industry so in some instances it's unavoidable or understandable, but since the last place I played had a fair few 'bridges' that were falling to bits and not safe I do enjoy seeing this a lot I have to say.

Yeah CETME was first, some Germans went to France after the war, then Spain, worked on a new gun based on the StG45. Eventually (after lots of iterations) the Spanish adopted the CETME in 762 NATO in the late 50s and the Germans got a few along the way. Those guns became the basis for the G3. That's the super compacted version. If you look at the metal base/sockets on stock of the Stg44, 45, CETME and G3, the single pin at the bottom that holds them and the rough shape of TMH/lower receiver on each you can follow the lineage along pretty nicely.

I dunno man.. that's a short barrelled AR coated in a Multicam Black type camo with a pistol brace, Magpul pistol grip, F1 Firearms style handguard, Radian style safety, can modelled after the SureFire RC2, SureFire Scout Pro with SR07 on the M-LOK mount, Strike bits and a Sig micro red dot.. and I only reiterate all that because it's ticking all the 'hotness on the gram in the past few years' kinda boxes with every parts choice there lol. Pretty cool little gat frankly, I definitely like it.

Ace Airsoft War Games is literally 5 minutes from where I am currently, but until recently I thought the site was just a place that did paintball/kids parties/axe throwing etc. If you look at the spot on google maps with a wider perspective you'll see Warped Sports which is the aforementioned type activity centre, but if you carry on zooming the marker for Ace appears. It is very much.. a woodland airsoft site. It's fine. I certainly wouldn't tell anyone to avoid by any means, but I don't think it needs to be on the top of any must-visit site lists. More on account of the physical size/shape of the game areas than anything, they're all fairly long but pretty narrow, which even with only around 25 per side just made most of the games very stalemate'y. In a way, if you just want to shoot all day it actually works out, because it's a short walk to regen then you're back at it and it wasn't massively overcrowded, there just wasn't much movement. Nothing to be done as the borders were set as wide as they can be within the land. Track from the road to the car park somewhat lengthy and a bit bumpy but they'd put a lot of work and material in to filling the holes so could've been far far worse. Decent amount of safe zone cover and table space, not a lot of chairs but equally there wasn't too much sitting around in there either. I didn't make use of the shop or food facilities myself, looked alright though. Staff were pretty good overall I'd say. Works out to about £26 for military, £24 for members or £29 for pre-booked walk-ons. No lunch included, but that seems about a fair price for woodland in the west mids. Definitely some 'chatty' characters but I guess every day has that, everyone seemed sound overall which combined with the basically perfect weather did work out nicely. The one event that kinda pissed on my morning's play was standing up from my cover spot after the staff all shouted game over etc and catching a full auto burst all across my head and torso; couldn't spot the culprit but oh well. ? 2 other issues I had. The first that really won't matter to most people is that one of the game areas is thick with some kind of plant (and I mean thick, it's a carpet of the stuff) which stinks to high heaven. Someone near me said wild onion. The entire area has a sort of dank smell to it an my boots stink now even after being scrubbed immaculately clean in the shower. Maybe I've just got a sensitive little nose but it was pungent to me personally and I'm worried as to whether it'll ever come out of my boots. Secondly, this pic was taken on the path that leads from the SZ to the afternoon game area. There's maybe 6m between it and the M54 with absolutely no screening for a portion. Now, I'm assuming it's been this way for years with nothing untoward happening so fair enough, but I certainly made sure my gun was held down below the waist when going by. To me, just the lightest bit of sparse visual screening would be fine here since it's a dual carriageway with the usual 70 limit, but I was surprised by this uncovered area tbh. I'm sure nobody would be stupid enough to ever just fire BBs at a car......

I'm not an anime fan but that's some great work on the paint. Also at this point I sometimes worry that nobody else has the same deep Masada/ACR love that I do, so any sighting is a relief.

That place had been on my list for a good few years.. but yeah, past tense for now lol. Cheers for the warning though, very valuable.

I only know slightly more than zero and mostly only about the replicas that PTS have done, which luckily includes this one. Like I've probably watched dozens of videos about cans on GunTube over the past decade, but end of the day the majority of them are just another black tube (at a glance) and they don't even vary greatly in size or shape and rarely have truly distinguishing features externally. You've got to deliberately go out of your way to get info and differentiate most of them, doubly so since some airsoft models aren't based on anything real but even the ones that are don't generally use the real name. There's a few standouts like the old KAC NT4 or the Osprey or some of the Q models but.. well I think this page makes my point fairly well - https://www.silencershop.com/silencers/5-56mm-rifle.html

Back on Arnies there were a few people who were legitimately militant about AK purity so I got a King Arms 74 and AR-15 adapters for both the front and rear ends specifically to offend them. There were a couple of iterations of this but this one is the most heinous. Was also loaned this long ago by a shop to publicise; WE GBB AK in an SRU 3D printed bullpup kit.