Ian_Gere

During a day's play at Skirmish Mansfield some arse dug up a piece of camo net which had been partly trodden into the dirt and insisted that it was now his. I tried my best to make him understand the concept of "not yours; not your land: thieving bastard" but he wasn't having any of it. His brain just didn't seem able to compute that simply digging half of something out of the ground did not somehow convey ownership of said item - he's probably a frustrated metal detectorist. When the site isn't in use they have multiple motion sensors as well as fixed alarms, all of which text staff, and video surveillance, so problems have been few and far between. However their is another site a few miles away whose owners used to do business with Skirmish's people and are now disgruntled after they went off in a huff and subsequently died on their arse business-wise... they are believed to be behind the theft of signs on the main road away from the security zone. TBH, as others have said, by their very nature sites are easy targets, so the way forward is either to build fixtures out of non-flammable materials and/or use proper modern security, which is a shame for small time operators just starting up. There are enough things to worry about without the prospect of people deliberately fucking you over...

Big Dragon Tracer Unit 14mm CCW - $42.69 Forest Green Padded Strap - $9.99 Water Pipe Molle Retainer - $0.01 prices include free shipping + $3.00 for Tracking & Insurance - $15.00 with Coupon Code "1YEARSALE" (on non-discounted items only orders of $49.00+) from tinywind.com = $40.69 ~ £27.57 after PayPal have done their currency conversion / Note: there are a number of little whojimaflibbets which they sell for $0.01 but you can only add 1 to any given order. Here's the full list of discount codes (click to go there): Edit to add: holy fuck, i've got to get offline, i can't control myself! KWA Umarex H&K USP .45 Match System 7 Pistol + 2 additional mags = £229.50 posted from firesupport.co.uk

FSB Captain's Parade Overcoat - old style, ie same as Soviet era KGB. I have most of the insignia to convert it to KGB 3rd Chief Directorate to match my Afganka field uniform, just need to order some collar tabs with gold braid edging. It is sized too small for me (size 50-4), but the actual dimensions are big enough for a smaller bloke to wear a full parade uniform consisting of a base layer under a shirt and jacket while lurking outside The Kremlin for hours on end in the Russian winter, so over a couple of thin layers it ought to do me just fine in the UK... £70 posted from the Russian Federation by my old e-mucker platinum_2011 on fleabay - urrrrrra! Edit: weyhey! $17.50 posted

CO2 upgrade set for A&K SVD -2nd Generation () = 1299,- Kč inc. shipping approx £40 - yes, it'll make my SVD raging hot, but i plan to block the flow of CO2 with silver solder and see if I cannot in fact have my cake and fucking eat it...

I got mine from gunfire.pl - inc. free shipping & of course no VAT/import duty coming from Poland as it's in the EU.

I've got one too - heavy but 'kin lovely! Only thing is, if you're thinking of changing the furniture, zenitco/replica stuff doesn't go straight on without modification. I'm not 100% certain, but i suspect real 'steel' AK wooden furniture may not fit also - there is a bulge in the barrel which prevents the lower handguard from sliding straight on - the handguard would need to be filed out inside (still real steel RPK furniture, as opposed to AK, may have space for the bulge, but you don't tend to see it for sale so could be expensive).

OMGonads, too sexy!

Definitely - there's not much benefit from a MOSFET unless you do hardwire it.

Good man yourself! Next is SS Leto pattern camo, or for pure ally berezka "Sun Bunnies" I had seen MC Tropical, but i spose once the decision was made to add tints to it, black was an obvious choice. Reminds me of an experimental "Soldier 95 pattern" style jacket I have (the physical pattern is sometimes erroneously called "Soldier 96" - it has a similar pocket layout to the 2000 variant but is made from heavy gauge cotton, not rip-stop, and has better quality zips / the reason i mention it though is...) which is DPM dyed black - it also has the old style "poachers' pocket" which i at first confused with a parachutist's flap and is marked with a label saying "RAF Honington" - took me bloody ages to find out about it! Turns out it is one of a 'limited edition' evaluation run which somebody dyed themselves, no doubt for night ops* It is more effective than black for night camo, so i expect MC Black to work well at night. If it carries on like this, soon it'll be as difficult to keep track of all the variants of NATO camo as it is Russian gear! * way cool operator gear, man... probably RAF Regiment guard duty

TBH when they 1st came out i was sceptical - not that i didn't love the look straight away, but I have an Ares so I was more than 1/2 expecting them to be pigs internally. With the state of me I can't really justify getting one, but I can see it happening anyway!

Evidently i have, mate...

Is that the Ares one? How is it? Looks tdb...

Multicam black? WTF? Is that black body panels and MC arms?

Retire to the safe zone and wipe with lint free cloth. AFAIK there's no technological solution.

It's a bit of an if, not really a when as things stand at the moment i'm sad to say.

I'm not going to go into the full mathematical proof & diagrams stylee an ting here (it is available in several of our threads devoted to eyepro) but you are entirely mistaken if you think that a fragment of BB which can fit through the gaps in any commercially available mesh used for eyepro can do you any harm. It basically comes down to the way BB's shatter and the way that the possible fragment shapes tessellate into a sphere. When you consider that fragments will be spinning (since Newton tells us that the angular momentum of the whole BB will be preserved in its fragments), then clearly no dimension of whatever shape of fragment can be longer than the largest hole available, which handily enough is just less than 1/2 the diameter of a BB, at 2.97mm (found in Hero Shark goggles). Since a BB cannot shatter leaving a sphere of diameter 2.97mm, the biggest shape possible is a tetrahedron and if the longest side can be 2.97mm then that takes 18 of them to make 1 BB. Each fragment therefore cannot carry more than 1/18th the energy of the whole BB, which is to ignore the energy loss absorbed by the elasticity of the mesh when hit, the same of any BB's hit by our theoretical shattering BB in a full auto stream, and the energy lost as heat and sound during the shatter - when you work out that a 500FPS 0.2g BB carries 2.32 Joules divided by 18 = 0.129 Joules you see it just doesn't matter about the complexities: the very maximum possible is so little that it can literally do bugger all to your eye. As i've said before elsewhere, I realise that this seems extremely counterintuitive... I mean sharp fragments, eyeball, must end in tears... but if you looked at the shapes of particles of dust, tiny fragments of plant material/insects, and for eg grains of builders' sharp sand, you would find equally sharp and sharper edges and points, yet the most these cause even when blown into your eye by strong wind is a mild itch which only becomes a problem if you rub your eye before rinsing said fragment/s out with clean water. From personal experience I can promise you that it is the same with shattered BB fragments - you just retire to the safe zone calling "Dead man walking!", while refraining from excessive blinking, and rinse your eye with several palmfuls of water. Obviously, just like with even the rounder, smoother grained, beach sand, if you rub your eye then you risk scratching the surface of your eyeball, which does itch/irritate like a bastard... If you're getting no problems with fogging then fine, but i've tried at least 30 different types of eyepro and i have yet to find any which do not hinder vision in some way or other, even if the lenses have exceptional optical properties, as at the very least on the biggest goggles going, the frames of which are the furthest out of potential sightlines, the point of view is narrowed, particularly down in front of you (which makes walking quietly through brush/rubble, while aiming in front of you, more difficult), but most polycarbonate lenses also cause occasional problems due to reflection and/or refraction. In my and apparently the majority of people's opinion however it is not a question of if a polycarbonate lens will either fog or rain out* but rather when. Certainly if you are very fit and do not exercise hard while wearing them, then the time it takes may be long enough to be irrelevant to most skirmish days, but even so may interfere with a full day's play during specialised days/weekenders. That said, my bet is that you have just not really sweated in them yet... (*Distortion caused by liquid sweat condensed out on anti-fog coated lenses.) In my opinion, if you can skirmish wearing a full face mesh mask without the limitations of the design, such as being unable to lift the lower half alone to eat sweets/gum and/or drink, problems when combined with helmets, visored caps, and/or comms equipment, or problems with cheek-weld/aiming over iron sights/low fitted optics, irritating you significantly, then you should stick with that alone. After considerable research into the various types of interwoven wire mesh and perforated sheet type 'mesh' it is my opinion that the type used in those fencing mask stylee full face masks provides the best tradeoff between safety, useability, optical properties, and durability: obviously they never fog/rain-out; the shadows created across your vision by the crossed wires being much closer than the focal length of typical points of view are smaller than those generated by the offset holes in any perforated sheet offerings, which translates into fewer instances of involuntary refocussing of your eyes close up, which instances ruin the optical illusion of there being nothing between your eye and your POV, plus they also 'reset the clock' on however long it takes before your brain regenerates said optical illusion again in any given environment; interwoven wire creates a higher ratio of space to metal than perforated sheet of similar strength, so there is less of a 'shades effect', which could be considered a con rather than a pro, however when you consider that said effect is caused by a physical barrier between your eye and what you are looking at, which means that more of what you are seeing is actually your brain's interpolation of what should be there compared to transparent but darkened polycarbonate lenses, and then realise that spotting well camouflaged people in foliage is all about recognising a known shape from very little, and some of it conflicting, information, then it becomes obvious that if being blinded by bright sunlight is a problem, then a visor of some sort is the answer, not reducing what you can actually see; there are meshes which provide an even greater ratio of space to metal, however the only commercially available eyepro which uses one (304 Stainless Steel 0.71mm wire #8 mesh) (made by Begadi) cannot be considered truly appropriate for airsoft since 1 burst of full auto would render them unsafe for continued use (it takes 17 hits into exactly the same spot on full auto at around 330FPS from 25mm range to get a BB through the mesh, so it is perfectly safe for any possible skirmishing hit since, even if you tried, you'd be bloody hard pressed to keep your head perfectly still while so many hits bounced off your eyepro) because they deform - this deformation rather than catastrophic failure improves the performance vs full auto BB fire since it causes BB's to get trapped in the growing dent which means that subsequent shots hit BB's not mesh, causing some to shatter, and absorbing some of their energy, however it also means that after a good burst it may only take a few, ie a likely number, of hits to cause sufficient deformation to allow penetration - that said, they are built into those ubiquitous £3-15 shades stylee frames** which are inappropriate anyway since they do not provide a seal around the eye hence a ricochet could hit the eye from behind, above, and especially below; the SS304 0.91mm wire #8 mesh these masks are made from is very durable - it takes sniper hits to cause deformation and even then it is only the likes of a single wire moved 0.3-4mm across 2 holes / 3 cross-wires ie something which could be easily repaired with needle nose pliers but would make no real difference if you just left it, because the friction between the crossed wires will prevent them moving further no matter how many site-legal hits are sustained on that exact spot subsequently. **There used to be some ACM ski mask style goggles fitted with this lighter weight mesh, but I haven't seen any for sale for about a year. I'd guess that these are marginally safer than the Begadi shades type, simply because there is more mesh so any point deformation is resisted by more wires crossed over each other around the hit area, thus providing greater friction - they also provide a seal between the frames and your face. I've skirmished a set many times and not felt the need to junk them yet despite several bursts to the face while wearing them, however I would not wear them to CQB where hits to the face are more frequent. Lol that turned into a longer waffle than i had intended, but hey ho, it's all pertinent info for noobs and also lurkers.

Yeah, i'm still too ill. Gutted!

Yeah, me too. I'm not sure if it is down to battery failure or what but i was getting some very dodgy readings from my X3200 the last time i used it a few months ago... so much so that i just don't trust the thing anymore.

Well it's probably going to be a flying visit, if not quite a drive by: my health has been truly terrible. I swear, if i hadn't bought an Xbox1 to keep me distracted, the despair could well have been too much. Just looking out the window during daylight hours is enough to get me thinking of all the people I could be shooting... if it wasn't for the fact i can barely walk. But hey, there are possibilities on the horizon and i live in hope When you think of how you'd use a bayonet while attached, it's an upward thrust so having the cutting edge on top makes more sense, so long as it is actually sharp.

So back at the beginning of the year I ordered 1 of these: ...the only plastic AK-74 bayonet on offer, since the Toy Soldier one went out of production. Turned out it was OOS and they had no idea when/if they would be able to get them again. It was so long ago I'd given up hope... But this afternoon I got an email saying they had some and to pay within 3 days... woohoo! ¥1440 + ¥1290 shipping = £14.22 However don't get excited if you want one: they are showing as OOS on Hobby Link Japan's webby - but it may be worth emailing 'em...

BTW I'm aware that at this stage much of what I wrote above means bugger all, but eventually it will, and besides there are other people reading this forum than those who contribute.

Bear this in mind though: the argument that an expensive gun performs better than a cheap gun and so if you buy cheap you will end up buying expensive in the end is a nice, simple, logical sounding idea. As such it appeals. However life is rarely so simple in reality. For eg, no matter how much money you spend on a stock, or off the shelf, gun, be it £117 or £550, its performance, in terms of range and accuracy, will not be as good as a gun which has been upgraded and/or tweaked by an experienced gun tech. It can cost an absolute fortune in upgrade parts, but the difference in performance between merely good and absolutely excellent parts is actually not very much in terms of metres of range and centimetres of grouping size. It's a case of diminishing returns whereby, past a certain point, it costs so much to get any benefit and the benefit is so small that it's not cost effective. Not that that stops many of us, but then to some of us tinkering with our guns is as much a part of the hobby as shooting each other! So you could spend £50 on a very good (PDI) inner barrel, £9 on a Prometheus Soft (Purple) hop rubber, £3 on an Element hop up "H" nub, £5.50 on an SHS air seal nozzle, £10 on an ACM double O-ring piston head, £10 on a Guarder spring, and £4 on Teflon grease (£91.50 inc shipping) and drop that lot into an entry level AEG costing around £120, judiciously apply some 50p PTFE tape, and the resulting performance will not only be better than an off the shelf £212 gun, but also a Systema costing a grand. Note however that you could achieve almost the same amount of improved shooting from less expensive upgrade parts (although the PDI barrel really is money well spent - that £10 extra compared to the 'next best' price bracket TBB is worth at least 5 metres of effective range on its own). Of course you could go further and replace the entire compression chain, so in addition the spring guide, the piston, the cylinder and cylinder head, and the hop up chamber, but the performance benefits you would see, compared to just the parts listed in the prior paragraph, would be so small that it's unlikely they would be noticeable while skirmishing - minute during test shooting even, so unless you move on to sniping it's money pretty much wasted. That's not to say that if you were to just upgrade the hop up chamber of a stock gun that you would not see any benefits, just that the barrel, the rubber, and the overall air seal are the most important things, so if you get those right any variation in accuracy that a stock hop up chamber may introduce will be more than taken care of by a £3 H nub.* *Although it is also worth noting that some guns' design precludes using an H nub, in which case you can use a specially designed rubber such as PDI W-Hold, Falcon Dual Point, or Maple Leaf Monster and get results almost as good. Naturally the compression chain is not the only upgrade path, but outside of a MOSFET, which improves trigger response and protects the trigger switch from damage due to micro-arcing, messing with the rate of fire, the gears and other gearbox components really isn't necessary, especially if you're upgrading just for performance. As someone else said above though, TM guns do not do well if you increase the strength of the spring, nor can their gears withstand much of an increase in ROF for long because they are made of cheese light alloy not steel. Fear not though - the compression chain upgrades i suggested above would increase the muzzle velocity of a medium length AEG by 45-50FPS, so a standard TM spring and gearset would get you around 330-5FPS which is "site legal" and would improve range and accuracy. Of course you would then be paying TM prices + £92 and still getting less performance than an AEG is capable of and one thing i've noticed about people skirmishing with expensive guns is that their hits seem to sting more in inverse proportion the the cost of the gun with which they were shot...

^^It belong/s/ed to Stef, one of the Skirmish site organisers - they were short of G36's that day so he let me rent his personal gun to use for the day. IIRC this was my 4th day skirmishing so I didn't have a clue. It was comfortable to shoulder, but i found the ergonomics of the controls difficult to deal with compared to G36's. It started off with a red dot on top of the carry handle too, but it was cracked and i found it difficult to use, so I got him to take it off.

My 1st load out - the gun is a rental:

Active breaking doesn't explain carbon build up. To me that sounds like there's something wrong with the way the bushes are contacting inside the motor, causing arcing.