Ian_Gere

I'm not sure what you mean when you say "may be worth looking at them if any good?" When you were first talking about fitting a mask to a fast helmet, iirc, we had a short discussion about stuff attached to helmets being potentially wobbly on the face... Have you skirmished them yet and, if so, how are they doing? Not just the sides, the underside too if a ricochet bounces up off your own gear or your gun, or if you are lying down feet towards the enemy looking towards them down the length of your body (if, say, you had just run forward, come under fire and, instead of trying to outrun BB's like a helmet, slid to the ground firing back like a legend) then the angle of your head makes the gap under the lenses face straight toward the enemy. Plus, depending on the shape of your face, maybe also the top out towards the edges, if for eg you were looking down taking fire from the front, or ricochets off branches, light fittings, etc. above you...

This hit was the closest i've had to one in the eye: exactly the same as yours - between eyepro and 1/2 face mask: ...even though it bled like a bastard, it didn't really sink in just how dangerous this was at the time. I mean, I learned 2.5 lessons straight away: 1) those 1/2 face masks need 2 straps to hold them stable on my face (and it was easy enough to add a 2nd to this mask), not just 1, to stop them bouncing up and down when i run, opening up the gap between eyepro and mask, and 2) the straps need to be done up tightly to make the mask immobile, which then required extra foam padding inside for comfort. The half lesson was that those mini-goggles do not cover enough of the soft skin around my eyes for my peace of mind - not that I was concerned about my eyesight, just a bit scared of the pain i spose. However something which didn't really sink in, until i'd seen photo's/IRL of BB's sunk in people's faces, was that a BB could go through the soft skin just at the top of either of my cheekbones as i have about the width of my index finger where there's no muscle underneath, just skin over the bone of the eye socket, and hit me in the eyeball under the skin... So that was that - goggles which not only seal to my face all round, but also cover those bits of skin between the top of my cheek muscles and my eye sockets. All the time.

This is the aftermath of a ricochet off a wall passing between the edge of a lens of a pair of ESS Crossbow shooting glasses and his cheekbone. It happened this last Sunday at Zed Adventures: The Mall, Reading. Thankfully it seems that there has been no damage which will turn out to be permanent, but look how close that is to his iris - who knows what kind of damage would have been caused to the tiny muscles and/or nerves which control the iris? A couple or three millimetres over and it would have been on his cornea, also squashing the lens underneath. Very likely that he would have been partially blinded in that eye for a while; perhaps forever. We all know that looking cool is a big part of airsoft and hey, there's nothing wrong with that IMO, but not being able to properly see yourself looking 'operator' is surely too high a price to pay for it. This is not the first time I've written that shooting glasses are not appropriate eye protection for airsoft and almost always some person/s has/ve a reason why they 'cannot' wear goggles and only lenses with a gap, in some cases as wide as 2 BB's side by side (ffs!), will do. IMO those people need to take a good hard look at those reasons and have another think about all the various types and shapes of goggle on the market. Don't be afraid to improvise either: I'm certain that whatever anyone's problem with goggles may be*, between us we are capable of coming up with a solution. Someone is going to get blinded due to wearing shooting glasses to airsoft one day: it's just a matter of time. Don't let it be you. *except when their problem is an inability to not type googles: that appears to be an intractable neuro-muscular issue brought on by a low level of microgorms/s²

It's a Franken-M60, believe it or not!

That's what i was going to say. The foam on real ones doesn't look anywhere near as scruffy.

It's an urban myth, mate.

Freaky Looking Russian NV Sight - £65.65 posted ~ fleabay

No goofbid.com sniper works on eBay. I use it myself, but somebody else did it to me 1 better on the beret

^^Yeah, I got sniped on a KGB 2nd Directorate beret from the same collection as the 45th patch.

WebTex British Army Assault Vest w/ Hydration Bladder - £21.99 posted ~ fleabay (Mine is pretty worn out, so when I saw this one in excellent condition I thought may as well replace it.) 3 x Tula Factory Real Steel Plum AK-74 Magazines - €51.60 posted from Germany ~ zib-militaria.de (which i plan to convert to airsoft midcaps by dremmeling off the feed lips and inserting the innards of some CYMA mags)

Honestly mate, it's so shit that it doesn't matter what you shoot through it, it'll be disappointing, and it wont give you any idea what actual airsoft guns are like. To get any kind of shot worth the name you'd best stick with 0.12g BB's and try to make sure that wherever you are shooting is completely sheltered from wind, because otherwise even a good fart will blow your shots all over the place. About the cheapest gun you can get which will give you an idea what airsoft guns are like is a Double Eagle pump action shotgun. If you are under 18 you'll have to get your parents or somebody 18+ to buy it for you, but if not you'll still need to buy a two-tone until such time as you go airsofting and can get a UKARA registration number, due to the Violent Crime Reduction Act (read our info on UK Law). This is the one time where I reluctantly have to recommend a "bbguns" site (onlybbguns.co.uk are probably the least worst of the bunch) because they do a DE M56B tri-shot for £45 here. The good thing is that if you do decide to get into airsoft, the DE will be useful to you as a close quarters battle weapon, or as a back-up to an assault rifle. The best thing I can advise though is that if you think you may be interested in airsoft, go along to your local site for a skirmish day and rent a gun and eye protection. You can find the nearest site to you on here.

What Zak means, mate, is that the 'rifle' you mentioned is not good enough to be competitive on an airsoft field, plus chances are it'd get broken if you tried to use it in a skirmish. The problem with websites like bbguns4less, or any of the sites with "bbguns" in their name such as justbbguns and onlybbguns, is that they are full of misleading information - Compared to a Nerf gun, yeah maybe... but if you were to put the kind of spring a proper airsoft sniper rifle uses into that, the trigger sear would snap first time you tried to fire it. You can get proper airsoft Bolt Action Sniper Rifles for as little as £130, but they are not competitive unless you upgrade the internals, which costs a minimum of about £150 but easily up to £250. Plus airsoft sniping is an art which takes a lot of practice to get good at - if you imagine that, even with the best BASR, you will lie up invisible to your target under camouflage to place your crosshairs on him and pull the trigger then watch him yelp, "Hit!", you could hardly be farther from the truth. The best advice any of us can give new players who are considering starting as a sniper is DON'T! The classified ads of this and every other airsoft forum or FB Group are full of BASR's which noobs have given up on. Much better to get an assault rifle and enjoy the game for a while, learn how to shoot BB's, I mean how the various weights of them behave in the air and what differences in performance various modifications to guns produce. Learn a bit about camouflage at the ranges we engage each other, usually about 50m or less - unless the foliage you are in is very dense, often a ghillie suit is visible that close, and if the foliage is that dense, wearing bog standard DPM camouflage (old skool British Army clothing) and keeping still will be just as effective. Develop a feel for tactics, so that if you do eventually decide to give sniping a go, you'll be able to position yourself in a spot where your ability to outrange assault rifles will actually prove an asset to the side you are on, rather than just get you outflanked and either ignored or picked off by the opposition's snipers/counter-sniper. This is a guide for newcomers on a tight budget.

^^Yeah, i'm sure there's something to be learned...

Ah, well that's where my ignorance is demonstrated then. We're talking about the ability to dial in very exact muzzle velocities, I see. Yeah, potentially very useful for accuracy, but still, the Jack's consistency is still very much dependent on the interface between nozzle and rubber and the seal between rubber, barrel, and hop chamber, which makes me wonder if the Jack is the best use of funds, when in fact a double O-Ring Piston Head costs no more than £15 posted, a good quality Main Piston Head O-Ring such as Lees Precision Engineering costs £5.10 for 6, and CT-2 Teflon Suspension Silicone Grease costs £3.99 for 50g (and depending on how bad the stock parts they replace were, they can easily produce +30FPS and, when combined with an Aluminium Nozzle with O-Ring and a well set up hop rubber, reduce inconsistency between shots to less than +/-4FPS (2 either side of a figure) / the Nozzle + PTFE taped Prometheus Purple rubber or Maple Leaf 50° rubber themselves produce around +10FPS). So to get 347FPS you just need an 90m/s Main Spring with a reputation for consistency, such as a Guarder SP90, which should be pre-tensioned with washers over the Spring Guide to dial in the exact figure you want. Back to our earlier point however - is it worth pursuing such a degree of accuracy from consistency in an assault rifle? Only if the player sees their role as combining marksmanship with the ability to go full-auto... so someone like me whose health makes it very difficult to run up front where volume of reasonably accurate fire is more use than the ability to snap shoot a head shot at 55m, but who nevertheless occasionally has to go first to lead recalcitrant team members by example, despite moving so slowly that making such a run is almost certainly futile But even then, you have to draw lines somewhere between upgrades which do something noticeable for the cost, those which make no sense outside a DMR build or sniper rifle, and those which produce such tiny differences that the expense is not worthwhile or are all hype... I would say that a P* Jack falls into the 2nd category.

Well, if you want a very accurate AEG, then tailor a build for that. A P* engine is probably not the best use of money for upgrades with accuracy in mind though - about the only reason to use one is the trigger response, but you can get instant trigger response like a BASR in an AEG from programmable MOSFET's with Pre-Cocking - BTC Chimera and the cheaper King Kong BW3: even the BTC is cheaper than a P* engine. Yeah, high expectations are one thing, but selecting the right parts for the job is necessary to make your expectations possibilities: there is no point using sniper upgrades in a gun firing at around 1J because 1) you will not have the range for the tiny differences in grouping size to become noticeable: I mean something which may improve your grouping by an inch at 45m may well be the difference between a man sized target hit and miss @90m. And 2) you will not be firing heavy BB's which benefit from non standard hop set ups.

Something to consider when it comes to upgrading guns is that if you just replace all the internals with upgrades which have a better reputation than your stock parts, you're not really likely to get the best results possible for your money. The way forward is to decide on a strategy and choose parts which will work well together towards the intended purpose. For instance, Siegetek gears are very strong and therefore better than say, stock G&G, but let's say you also have a Madbull Black Python 6.03x363mm, a Maple Leaf 50° hop rubber, and an SHS Aluminium Air Seal Nozzle w/ O-Ring - so long as the piston head O-ring is sufficiently greased for 100% compression, from a stock G&G M100 spring the muzzle velocity with 0.2g BB's will be about but not less than 360FPS, ie at least 10 too many for many UK sites; so let's say you fit a Magic Box M95 spring to get 345FPS (which gives room for both temperature/humidity and chrono variance); at this stage, what is the point of the £110 Siegetek gears? Well, one use for them would be to fit a Prometheus MS120 spring and lock the gun off to semi-auto only for a DMR firing at approx 425FPS, choose Revolution Plus 10.44/1 ratio Siegetek's and fit a G&P M180S Satan motor, for a very rapid trigger response (which is essential for hitting targets who pop up for a look-see but will move into better cover if the 1st shot misses). For another e.g., the more i think about what I wrote above, the more i wonder whether it is actually good advice; a P* engine is best for high cycle rate builds, but what is the point of pinpoint accuracy if what you end up with is a stream of 30rnds/s all landing on exactly the same spot? It only takes 1 BB to hit and, while it's true that high cycle rates intimidate the opposition, if intimidation is the strategy, then support gunner is the role (regardless of whatever the actual gun is), so why not take a leaf out of the British Army's book? Their armourers fettled the GPMG to be deliberately less accurate than its capabilities because the enemy are likely to be suppressed much more by rounds/BB's clattering all over their cover rather than a load of hits all within a few inches of each other. The other role where intimidation comes into play is pointman, so when contact is initiated his job is to get as many rounds down as possible ASAP, so imagine firing at running targets: a series of short bursts @30rnds/s arriving like clouds into which the target will run is much better than using a gun accurate enough for groupings on an A5 page @50m trying to lead the target by the exact amount needed to hit , especially when if you do hit you will hit with several BB's anyway. So hey, maybe that wobbly hop arm and unstable hop chamber are blessings in disguise. Anyway, unless you are seeing a noticeable improved range with your flat hop, with your own eyes, compared to, for eg, the biro mod (which is very good for providing consistency of accuracy in elevation, because you don't want a wobbly hop arm with a soft nub leading to 1 in 5, or whatever, BB's falling short even if that means another 1/5 fly high and long), then I would definitely sack it...

Flat hop/R-hop/XYZ-hop = not my area of expertise, mate. But P* is just propellant - I don't understand why you'd imagine that you didn't need to concern yourself with hop up - no matter what gun it is, the only way to get the kind of ranges we're used to as medium-long to extreme is backspin. One thing I will say about funky hop designs is that there is no need for any of 'em if you're shooting <0.3g BB's @approx 1Joule, so basically if you're running an assault rifle with full-auto capability, dial back the complicated, try a £2 Element H-nub (for accuracy) with your prommy purple rubber (for min FPS reduction due to mechanical braking during application of backspin, because it's very sticky) and wrap the muzzle end of the rubber with PTFE tape to improve the seal between inner barrel and rubber (to improve power consistency) and ask someone else how to go about preventing that arm wobble, because yeah, that sort of thing not only affects straightforward accuracy but also hop consistency, which is a huge part of snap-shooting accuracy. You're saying that your Prowin hop chamber has no way to attach it to something solid (but I dunno what gun you're talking about - a Prowin AK hop chamber has the standard 2 points which bolt to the barrel base assembly and an extra one which bolts to the forward end of the gearbox shell)? If that is the case then yeah, you need to make it immobile. If you cannot do that with a DIY solution, then yeah replace it.

Ah, i didn't see this before i edited my above post. But i got there in the end anyway and along the way did that most uncharacteristic of online behaviours - freely admitted that i was wrong

Yeah, when I found those and added them to my guide to noobism on a tight budget I was tempted to get some myself*, because that type of interwoven wire mesh is much better for seeing through than the perforated sheet most companies call mesh in their goggles. What stopped me is fire-supports' shipping charges IIRC their basic charge is £7.99, right? So I'm waiting until I want something else from them to order at the same time - I did vaguely consider buying an ASG AW.308 because they have them on offer for £135 but then sense filtered through the haze I'm pleased to call my consciousness - I mean £135 base gun and then fuck knows what in upgrades to make it a competitive BASR... all to save £4 overcharge on shipping... hmmmmm! Might get some Kanzen bearings, but again I dunno: I forget their name now (it's something like Roullements Monde) but IIRpricesC the French company I usually buy Kanzen bearings from are quite a bit cheaper than f-s even including shipping from France... although a quick look and i can't actually find a link to the company i'm on about so my days of dealing with them may be at an end anyway *Because even though I have some ACM ski mask type goggles with the same mesh, there is a slight warp to the plastic frame, and i like the look of the angular accents on these Kingrin Locusts. Aha! It's roulement-passion and their fleabay.fr shop is called univers du roulement so i just wasn't thinking big enough but I did remeber the price deets correctly €38.95 posted for Ceramic's as opposed to £34+shipping Ooooooooooooooooooooooooops! So I thought i'd just check fire-support's shipping price, because while i have no problem bad mouthing people who deserve it, i do like to know for as sure as possible that people DO actually deserve it and guess what? £3.50 for Royal Mail Signed For, so actually 40p cheaper than RM advertise on their webby - go Frank! Customer service beyond the call of duty, that is! So I got 1 in OD - £15.50 posted

Well, it's true that past a certain point the returns you get from spending more money become much less noticeable. However exactly where that point is for any given part is not necessarily all that clear, because both stock parts and upgrade parts are manufactured to certain engineering tolerances, so while it may be the case that the more expensive the upgrade parts the tighter the tolerances, it does not necessarily follow that the individual part you buy, with its particular exact dimensions, actually works well with whatever stock/upgrade parts, with their exact dimensions, which you already have. Nonetheless, on average, particular parts by particular companies get a reputation and while people don't tend to write much about parts which just do their job as expected, if something costs a lot and doesn't provide any noticeable benefit, or vice versa, performs very well despite costing relatively little, people do tend to say so either in reviews or just in discussions like this. So if you read plenty of such discussions, not just search for reviews on parts you are considering, you'll get a feel for the consensus on what is worth spending a lot on and what jobs can be done perfectly well by stock parts/cheaper upgrades. Personally I would not spend £200 on a gearbox shell, but a £95 V2 shell is likely to not suffer from the cracks which cheap monkey metal ones develop radiating from the corners of the cavity which the cylinder fits into - it may very well also run cooler and more quietly, because the holes which accept the bushings/bearings are likely to be drilled on a jig with tighter tolerances (which naturally takes a worker with greater skill longer to set up) than a cheap one onto which the blank shell moulding can be slapped and drilled in moments without the worker having to pay all that much attention. Of course not all gearbox versions suffer from this cracking problem and, amongst those that do, obviously it is exacerbated by the shell being put under greater strain by strong springs and/or higher cycle speeds. Here in the UK we tend to use M100 springs but cheap Chinese Zamak alloy shells are often designed to carry M120-30 springs... As far as barrels go, I have found that Systema are no better than Guarder, neither of which are as good as Madbull, both for range and accuracy. However PDI barrels which are very expensive compared to almost any other brand are fully worth the money - comparing a PDI 595x6.01mm to a Madbull Ultimate 590x6.01mm in my SVD produced about 10m extra maximum range, but a degree of accuracy at extreme range that literally increased the effective range by at least 15m, more in completely still air.

Thanks mate I'll PM you if i get stuck. Yeah, them Forcecore's are the same as Meister Arms, ie E&L gen 1 with a standard motor - 'kin lovely! Got a text from one of my credit card companies basically wondering if i was dead, so I decided to put some swag touches on my modern Russian loadouts: SSO/SPOSN Sitting Mat - €9.48 (The one I made as soon as I started airsofting, before the Russians started issuing them to their armed forces mind, which so many people have quietly sniggered at and rolled their eyes at me over, many assuming that i was desperate to protect me arse from BB's, has finally been washed once to often, so a pro job is now the way forward.) SHN AK-74 Rubber Bayonet - €28.43 (This should be stiff enough to fit into a real steel AK bayonet frog, which will be a nice addition to my Smersh rig, and a massive improvement over the HobbyLink Japan airfix-stylee model one I have on there ATM.) SSO/SPOSN Molle Comms/GPS/Phone Pouch - €16.25 (This is almost identical to the Mil-Tec one I've been using for the last couple of years, but it has the ubiquitous SSO edge binding on the pouch rim and flap so it'll fit right in on my Smersh.) Splav Elbow Pads TAC in OD - €14.89 Splav Knee Pads DOT in OD - €18.96 -10% Discount for Bolsheviks Team Members +€36.34 Shipping from grey-shop.ru €114.99 exchanged by PayPal mind -> £85.20

Well, the filter I was looking at is rated at 720nm whereas the torch IR output is rated as 850nm and visible red light is from 620-750nm, so i was thinking there would be enough "pass" to let the IR through but greatly reduce the visible red. Was just checking that i had remembered the figure correctly and guess what i noticed though? 'Kin torch only has 1 mode what a bellend, moi! In the fullness of time i'll have to see if i can find a cheap XML-T6 5 moder that the IR head fits into... Thanks mate! The program from the disc I received installed correctly but does not load - the window it tries to open strobes at a frequency of about 40Hz for about 30 seconds and then disappears for about 10s before opening with all the bits which should contain text showing question marks and a dialogue box... in fact, fuck it, i have a screenshot i took to show the aliexpress geezer: ...sadly windows never did notify me of anything, let alone a solution Aliexpress-geezer has given me a link to a .RAR which I've unzipped but so far not understood what a gwaan. But truthfully i haven't really applied myself to it yet - i'm waiting for a crossover point where my meds have worn off to their least intoxicating, but the pain hasn't become too distracting, to have a proper go at it, but i missed the last window of gumption so i'm currently operating at reduced microgorms/s²

And you're hoping she's not secretly a member of this forum... The deceased was found with a laptop computer inserted into his anus...

Nah, x-fire will fill out the Customs Declaration form spot on, so if it's over the threshold you'll have to pay. That's one reason why i decided to just get a spring this time, rather than stock up on things which i'll need eventually kinda thing...

Looks pretty good as is, Sam. Just the accessories to match, I'd say. Still, when it comes to AR's, what the hell do I know?