Ian_Gere

Well people, make sure to let Pete know of your interest.

There's a simple answer to that - get an AK... you know you want one!

So the polycarbonate lenses I ordered to replace the double glazed glass ones in my PBF respirator turned up. They are 51x5mm and arrived cut perfectly with no surface defects, so I'm very pleased (and at £14.95 posted for the pair I have to say that had i not been, i'd have been distinctly miffed). My hat off to whomever it was who spotted the ebay store which sells the stuff and wrote about it in their status update: I'm sorry but I can't remember. Anyhoo, here is the place. The thickness I chose was just to make them a perfect swap for the originals; I'm certain that even 2mm of this Lexan stylee PC is BB proof. The mask itself is much easier to breath through with filters fitted than a GP-7, or an S10 for that matter, but I decided that since I'm not actually going to be wearing it in a war zone, and even if i were the filters would have run out of effectiveness by the time I got there since they've been unsealed for a few months, that I may as well cut the filter part out leaving just the frame. I did this because the baboon cheeks deflate when you inhale without filters fitted internally. I also sealed the edges of the cut filters with liquid latex to prevent charcoal powder, fibres, and whatever else is in there getting down me throat. So now it's good to go for a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game, woohoo!

OMGonads, we'll have to think of a home/away strip if we ever play the same venue... Edit: oops, i didn't notice the tape on the top of yours - i'm planning to add a key finder fob to mine too.

Yeah, of the ones i found it looks the most used and cared for, rather than just some tat left in a damp box somewhere or NOS. At some point I'm going to have to get round to distressing my Afganka uniform... before i'm too fat to wear it For a sec I thought you were serious about that pistol - I copied the price intending to post something like "Gulp, really? For a fucking pistol!?!" Fuck it - I was going to wait a couple of weeks, but it's all on the Visa anyway so i'll actually cough it up at the same time in the end, so I bought... 1 x KWA TT-33 Magazine - €34.34 posted ~ aegcartasia.com

You often see sets of Chinese 18:1 normal ratio gears on fleabay - JG & CYMA are both bomb proof. Edit: oops posted that other stuff in the wrong place.

Tokarev TT-33 Holster - £13.99CHF Soviet/RF Officer's Belt - 14.99CHF +11CHF Shipping = £27.41 total ~ etsy.com

It really depends how far you want to go, but for a DMR you need to achieve 3 things: 1) consistency of power, 2) range, 3) accuracy. Consistency because to get the most range you can, you need to push your FPS to close to your site's limit, so you need to ensure that when you chrono you don't have every 3rd shot going over the limit, or whatever. Plus consistency guarantees accuracy in elevation, which is particularly important when you are firing at crouching targets closer than your sight is zeroed for (because you need to know exactly how much to aim down or the BB will sail over your target's head) and also at whatever becomes extreme range for your gun, where hits become a bit doubtful anyway, but people often stand out of cover assuming they are out of range - you have to get 'em with 1 shot, because if you miss they will take cover and you'll not get a hit on half a head. Range and accuracy speak for themselves, but there are a few things worth noting - ultimately both range and accuracy are a function of how stable the backspin of the BB is in flight, because if the BB yaws wildly then even with a lot of power behind it the lift available from backspin is squandered by not acting directly against gravity, but conversely if the backspin is very stable then more FPS will translate into even more range than it does from a worse set up with a stiffer spring. So let's assume a perfect hop unit, as the BB travels down the barrel the spin around a perfectly horizontal axis can only get knocked off axis, it can't get improved, and how much imperfection is introduced is down to how well polished the interior surface of the inner barrel is - thus the better the barrel you can afford, the better results you will get from your hop. PDI is the Rolls Royce, or their Raven next best, from x-fire.org - they often have free postage events which will save you about 1600 Yen, but Prometheus also have a good reputation. Madbull Black Python are initially probably better than the likes of Lonex and Deep Fire stainless steel, but you will also need to keep the inside very clean and the Madbull has a surface coating which is not as resilient as steel. I've had good results from a Guarder chromed brass 6.02mm barrel too, but this is in an AKS-74U and I don't clean it that often... still chrome is very hard, so gentle cleaning ought not to damage the layer of it. I also have a chromed 6.03x455mm Falcon barrel and that is pretty impressive too, although the rubber it comes with struggles to lift 0.25g BB's a little so I get better range from 0.2's, which makes accuracy at extreme range suffer. To get max stability in applied spin you need either a rubber with a split bump, such as a stock CYMA, a PDI W-hold, or a Falcon Dual Point (see above); or a shaped nub such as a RATech hourglass shaped hop cushion (also available from ASPUK), Element H-nub (fleabay), or Madbull Fishbone Spacer (in that order of effectiveness); you can't combine split bump and shaped nub, it's one or the other. You also want a sticky rubber, because although the softer the rubber the faster it will wear out, especially at higher FPS, the less the rubber is applied to the BB to get the same amount of backspin, the less FPS is lost to its breaking effect, which makes power consistency less temperature dependent. Also it is likely that the harder the BB is squeezed through the hop unit, the more any tiny imperfections in the design will translate into off axis spin. Prometheus Purple (soft) is my fav so far, but Maple Leaf 60 degree has a good rep also. When you fit a TBB you will instantly get a boost in FPS because less air will escape around the BB in the barrel, so you may well have to change spring, but before that you can do other things to maximise compression, which also increase consistency, and will affect your choice of spring. If you fit the hop rubber so that the bump fits as close to the rear of the barrel as you can get it, the lips of the rubber will make better contact with the air seal nozzle. If you then wrap a few turns of PTFE tape around the forward end of the rubber, so it doesn't cover the bump/barrel window end and use some grease on the outside to make this fatter assembly slide into the hop chamber, you will minimise the amount of air which can escape between the rubber and barrel. Make sure that your air seal nozzle has an O-ring inside it at the base. There are some with 2 O-rings but i'm not convinced they do actually do anything which a smear of grease around the base of the cylinder head spout wouldn't do better. This grease should be applied carefully so that there is enough to make a good seal against the nozzle O-ring but not enough so that it is forward enough to get blasted down the barrel off the interior of the nozzle (check the travel of your tappet plate to determine how far up the cylinder head spout the grease can go). SHS make good aluminium air seal nozzles with O-rings (Bullseye Country Sport). If you replace your piston head with a Double O-Ring design you will get 20-30 more FPS from your spring and more consistency. To get maximum benefit also thoroughly grease it and the inside of the cylinder with CT-2 Teflon grease (fleabay). Magic Box make the piston head, but they seem to be rare - there are other manufacturers such as Dream Army (khmountain_uk fleabay). Also coat the rails of the piston and spring in CT-2 so that their travel is consistent. A shiny steel spring guide may also help consistency and it can't hurt (SHS - Bullseye CS). Lastly choose your spring. Predicting what power you need is something of a black art, because the more powerful the compression inside the cylinder, the more any failures of air seal will affect power (and this is not necessarily so simple as more pressure = more leaks because there will be a point at which each component gives way and that will be affected by temperature and humidity, thus it is best to try to achieve whatever FPS is your target with the least powerful spring and best compression, hence O-rings, Teflon grease and the tightest TBB you feel comfortable with for your ammo / or choose your ammo to work with the best 6.01mm TBB you can afford). Guarder springs have a good rep for consistency over time, but SHS are also good. Element springs are not as hard wearing over time, but they do make many half sizes, like M115 rather than 110 or 120 which is the usual convention for manufacturers. Obviously you will have the spring the gun came with, so if you chrono your set up with that, you will know how much more or less you need. 10 on the spring scale is meant to be 10m/s or approx 30FPS, but bear in mind that those figures are based on averagely decent compression with normal diameter barrels. The longer a TBB is, the more extra FPS you will get from any given spring power increase and also, the better compression, the more that will make the TBB increase power. So basically if you followed all my advice above and are chronoing at say 450FPS and your site limit for semi-auto locked DMR's is 420, then dropping spring power by 10 is not likely to be enough, you would be better to drop by 15. If this then proves a smidge too low, you could use something like a stack of washers slotted over the spring guide to pre-tension the spring a little - this will give a small boost in power. You could also clip a few turns off a spring of 10 less power, but this can be dodgy because the spring needs to be under enough tension when as fully extended as it gets to prevent the piston bouncing off the cylinder head and causing problems with your sector gear engaging it. If you did do that, be sure to bend the end to make it as flat as possible, like the end as supplied, otherwise the power will be off axis making the spring rub against the spring guide and inside of the piston. Hope that helps

VapexTech have their own ebay store now - their prices are cheaper than componentshop when you factor in P&P. You may have read that a 7.4V LiPo will equal a 9.6V NiMh in performance. This may be true of crap NiMh's but a Vapex 9.6V will outperform even a good quality (Turnigy) 7.4V LiPo. To get the best out of 7.4V LiPo's you have to upgrade the wiring loom to heavier gauge (16AWG) and fit a MOSFET, then their ability to ramp up from 0mA to peak current output can produce a faster initial trigger response, even than a Vapex 9.6V NiMh, although the higher voltage of the NiMh will still produce a faster full gearbox cycle when timed from the moment of trigger pull to the moment the piston is released to fire the BB. The lower voltage, higher current LiPo with a low resistance wiring loom and MOSFET does feel snappier though, because there's less of a 'lurch' in the first few milliseconds when the motor first begins to move... My advice is to get the Vapex 9.6V and a smart charger from their ebay shop for now. If you get into tinkering with your guns, you can always go LiPo later. Just a word on insuring your skirmish days don't end up in disappointment though: having a spare fully charged battery is always a good idea - they can get damaged / you may forget to charge them / a mate's battery may go down / etc

Blaster .25's mainly, but also their .2's in some guns. Blaster Devil .3's in my SVD (although I am about to change the hop rubber because I want to use Welts .4's). If you are using a stock AEG then you can get slightly better accuracy at long range from heavier ammo, but air conditions will still be the biggest factor, so in truth volume of fire is still your best bet of getting a hit in moving air. In still air the difference isn't relevant since it is not bigger than a man sized target. You have to weigh up the cost/benefit. Try a few weights and brands in your gun/s and see what works best for you. TBH though, unless you upgrade your hop rubber, hop nub, and inner barrel, there really isn't much point spending a lot on BB's. You're likely to settle into firing in groups of 2-3 shots (and the 2nd /+ 3rd before the 1st has reached/missed the target), for all sorts of reasons, and whether only 1, or 2, or all 3 hit doesn't matter - you've fired 2-3 BB's to get 1 hit - at average skirmishing ranges BB King or P&J will hit a man sized target just as well as Blaster, but they can be just over half the price. The main reason I've stopped buying BB King is because I want to support my local site and buying BB's from them is a way to do it. Patrol Base are worth looking at for bundle prices on 3 bottles of Blasters/Blaster Devils, as well as stocking a few more exotic brands - Bastards for eg, which have a very good reputation.

It'll be a treck for me too, but not as far a GZ! But camping the night before would mean that I'd at least be in reasonable condition in the morning - I'd hate to try to travel there on the train at 5am or whatever. But you see what I mean about a weekender? If you're going to make the treck, you want to get the most out of it, eh?

Oh I dunno - I'd always recommend the CYMA clone AK's over the TM originals - I've had the TM gearbox apart and the gears are made from cheese.

DPM Drop Leg Dump Pouch & Pair of Mesh Goggles from our own dear GSmithHD and KWA Tokarev TT-33 from our own dear webbo122.

There is still a question over the reliability of the MOSFETs in G&G guns. For that and the wiring you are paying top dosh for something which you could probably fit yourself cheaper and end up with a more reliable end result. But if you like the whole package, go for it - if the MOSFET does blow it'll be under warranty and rather than have Z1 replace it with another G&G, you could pay £20-30 for a better MOSFET and have them fit that instead, preserving your warranty... Or take pre-emptive action and buy a Pico SSR2 now while they are on sale from fire-support.com for £13.50 posted (ask Z1 for their address to post it to and to fit it for you - they shouldn't charge more than £20 and if you offer to let them keep the G&G one, they may do it for free / otherwise make sure they include it in the package because you should be able to get £5-10 for it in our Classifieds or on fleabay.

You may get more help if you put a picture up, mate. Personally I haven't a clue about 1911's, but chances are it's an M4 or M5 thread so you should be able to get one with the right sort of head, or choose a head you prefer, from ebay.

^^The way to stop that is to make the regen far enough away that it takes a fair while to get back. I think briefings could be paired down and be at least as effective, if not more so, if the marshals were more serious about it - there's no need for any light heartedness or humour - it's for safety and the rules which allow the games to be fun: if people can't be serious for 5 mins listening to it, they should fuck off. IMO marshals should shush people who talk during briefings... with extreme prejudice. But many people do have a short attention span. Keeping anything specific to a particular game or zone out of the main safety/rules brief and only bringing it up before a game where it will become relevant is probably the best way to go - you'd probably have to repeat it anyway just to be sure that everyone had either remembered or actually listened. Something I've only seen sporadically, but which could be a good idea to do systematically, is for marshals to mention in the mini brief just before a game starts common instances of rule breaking/bending, poor sportsmanship, or whatever bad behaviour which have occurred there before. For eg "This is a rolling defence game. There are limited opportunities to take effective cover and it is supposed to be like that - we want you to shoot and move - avoid being hit by displacing. We've had defenders using dead men as cover before. Don't do that. It just makes the game needlessly difficult for the attackers and, when we turn it around, you wouldn't like it if they did it to you."

I've fired a DE tri shot and was impressed by the range and accuracy. The spread is very consistent too and doesn't get wider than a man sized target until about 40m. It was plastic but a lot more solid than I expected - I don't remember it being creaky when pumped.

Petes Owen of the recently desited Manor Airsoft is gauging interest in a game with a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. + various other Post Apocalyptic stylee Russian themes. If this is something you'd like to see happen, here is where to say so and now is the time. I've bought a couple of things from the man and he's been sound. He also has a good rep for games with various LARP elements, so I have no problem recommending this. Due to the need to travel, I would probably only be able to attend if there's camping nearby and since that is a bit of a ball ache, I'd be much more likely to go for it if it was a weekender so, at this planning stage, that is what I'm supporting. Due to poor health I was unable to attend the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game @MCG The Gaol earlier this year and I was gutted - I bought a few new toys just for that game, so now I'm much fitter it would be good to give them an outing...

Brubeck Balaclava (as worn by modern Spetsnaz) - 100PLN posted ~ motonet_team fleabay New Version Strike Mask in Multicam - £1 posted ~ fleabay Mag for Palco Firepower CO2 Raider USP (=3 i have now woohoo!) - £10.98 posted ~ fleabay + waiting on an invoice for a pair of Harpy boots from profarmy.ru - should be about $60 Edit to add: FSB Back Patch (no velcro) - £5.87 posted ~ fleabay Russian Flag Smiley Patch - £4.36 posted ~ fleabay

Yeah I read something like that a few months ago - don't remember the deets now though

There is rumour of a TWI copy of a Zenit product which replaces the handguards with a steel RIS with a hinged rail integrated top cover attached to it on two long arms. There is a picture on their fb page and i've asked how much, but so far no reply. It probably will be not much short of the real steel though, unfortunately, which will be fucking ridiculous...

Yeah, i should have bought one of those when they were in stock. I didn't have a clear idea of what i'd use it for, but i remember thinking i should get one anyway because if they go oos then i'd be kicking myself. And i am V^^VGrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Yeah, I had an Elcan 3.4x on my AK-74 and it was useful, but it was also high and not flip-to-side, so it did limit my peripheral vision - it's no longer on there but using her with a 25mm diameter red dot with both eyes open has been very good for fast target acquisition - although I do need to practice because although i know that is zeroed for L<>R and elevation at 35m, i still tend to watch the BB's trajectories as I fire rather than trusting the sight... I'm planning a tacticool RPK at some point, set up as a semi-auto only DMR, and I expect the Elcan will go on that.

Cordura™/clones

I donated $1 - the first donation woohoo! Sorry I can't afford more. Good luck. I also shared it on fb.