Ian_Gere

As far as I remember that seller deals with a variety of materials, but I hosed my PBF once i'd swapped the lenses out from 25mm with 0.25g BB's at about 400FPS and it left just the merest scuff mark. I also tested one with my SVD which was firing at 494FPS on 0.2s and that didn't leave a mark - those lenses are just bog standard acrylic.

^^Yeah but that'll be £34.80 inc. VAT + £9-ish bumrapage from the courier. Still, you can't beat PDI so it's gotta be worth it.

There... fixed that for ya

This is the place. You'll have to message them to ask for a price for what you need. 3mm of acrylic is sufficient for BB proof, but you may want thicker to make it fit into the rubber better - off the top of my head i can't remember the dimensions you need for S10 lenses, but i put 5mm into my PBF/EO-19.

^^No no! The original S10 lenses are not safe for airsoft - you have to replace them with Lexan. There's a geezer on fleabay does the lenses who is also a member here, but he's not written anything for quite a long time - blueangelical is his username IIRC and also his eBay tag. I recently-ish had lenses made for a Russian PBF gas mask by someone else on fleabay though, who was much cheaper than t'other geezer. I'll look it up now, but it could take some time, but i thought i'd best let you know while you're likely still online...

^^The software that came with my Baofeng UV-5R programming cable does not work - i'm currently in the process of sorting it out with the aliexpress seller. If yours turns out to be problematic, shortman, don't hesitate to pm me.

x-fire.org are having another Free Shipping Event, which for small parcels saves ¥1600-ish (£8.55) but that also saves that much off the VAT calculation since UK Customs do love to rip us off by misapplying VAT to the shipping as well as the actual goods.

PDI 100% spring from x-fire.org who are having another Free Shipping Event WOOHOO! ¥1176 = £6.29 (but x-fire only take PayPal so who knows what the final price will be after they've had the Yen price through their ripoffgorythm)

My concern with those replicas is not so much ballistic, as although we heard a few stories a while back about the M04 lenses being less than secure, I feel pretty sure that the manufacturers would have addressed that issue, and surely we would have heard a lot more if they had not, eh? Besides I seem to remember people saying it was an easy fix to glue the lenses. No, it's about our age old nemesis, fogging. The thing with the S10 is that the way the internal mask works is to draw the incoming fresh air from the filter across the eye space first so, as long as it is fitted correctly, it will not fog much. You know I have real problems with polycarbonate lenses fogging, so if an S10 works on me well enough to skirmish, it should work for pretty much anyone. That was with an unmodified filter too - I expect that a filter with the guts removed would make them even more usable. As you say though, there are issues - I didn't find visibility too bad in the S10, but you do have to keep your neck on a swivel more because they do restrict your periphery a bit. Simply breathing through the filter is not straightforward - i was told by ex-military blokes that the trick is to breath in long slow breaths, regardless of what you're doing. Obviously that means ignoring your desire to breath more deeply and quickly the more you exert yourself, but actually thinking about each breath is very unnatural - i imagine that if a person had a tendency to claustrophobia they would find it really quite disturbing. Personally I only wore it for an afternoon, 4 games IIRC, and took it off in the safe zone between times, so I can't say if you can get used to that way of breathing enough to do it without 2nd thought. My main problem however was sweating - wearing the mask on a warm-ish day probably didn't help but i expect that the ambient temperature really didn't make that much difference, I'm sure I'd have sweated that much anyway. Upshot = it gave me a slight rash along my lower jaw. TBH i'm pretty sure that would happen whether it was a converted real gas mask or a replica. Looking at the M04's lens shape, it seems as if the peripheral vision issue has been addressed by the lens shape, but I suspect it only seems that way, because actually the position of the lens is far enough off the face that the curve really doesn't make any difference - the opening is not actually any further round to the side of the head than the angled circular opening of an S10. I think the M50 is a little bit better, however even though the lens wraps right round onto the side of the head, the inner opening does not go as far, but worse the lower edge of the opening on the side is actually quite high, so i doubt you could see someone crouching to your side or, for eg, someone lying in cover off to either side. So actually in use you'd have to keep your head on a swivel anyway...

Check these out too - seems firesupport have seen the light.

Yeah, Nicky Stitch Me Up

Where did you get yours from, James? tactical-kit.co.uk are OOS and polimil only have them in black - i looked on esseyepro.com and they quote $180 + $26.46 shipping, so when you add 20% VAT and the courier bumrapage, it'll be over £170

^^Yeah, it's all about stillness. And asymmetry...

And even if they did, no, I doubt that the fan would keep the glasses lenses fog free until the glasses had warmed up so that the lenses were at the same temp or warmer than the moisture laden air around them, which could take some considerable length of time because air is not known for its ability to pass on heat, quite the opposite in fact. If you could warm the glasses up prior to putting them inside the goggles it would probably work though - maybe keeping them in a pocket with 4 chemical hand warmers, 1 on each side of each lens...

That's a decent looking start there, Ronin, but I'd say you need a bit more density of shape-obscuring flage for it to work well in anything but already pretty dense cover foliage. You could also do with some blocks of colour put together asymetrically, because what you have there is after all a pretty man shaped cover which is fairly homogeneous in its colour distribution. Also I would go for a veil if I were you. A veil that covers your head, with a bit of a lump that sticks out one side or the other, and comes down over your scope - that will allow you to plot up in front of foliage and, with a few bits of the foliage that is behind you plonked on top, so long as you stay still you'll be unnoticeable, which will give you a lot more options for where to shoot from.

My Soviet VDV "Panama" hat just arrived - woohoo! ...geezer posted it with one of the strap buttons come unstitched So that was panic stations until i found it down the side of me bed. Not even a quick note to say he was posting it that way, let alone a safety pin, the bellend. I mean, for sure, if you don't want to sew it, for £17 posted I'm not going to argue, but a flaming heads up, ffs, eh?

I was just taking the piss - some DBoys exteriors are very good - their steel bodied AKS-47 for eg. In fact until Meister Arms came along with their AK's, which are gen 1 E&L's with a different badge, one of my next projects was going to be a DBoys AKS-74 and swap out the internals for a CYMA gearbox with SHS motor & gears, piston, nozzle, Magic Box double O-ring piston head, Prowin hop chamber, Prometheus hop rubber, PDI barrel and real bakelite AK mags with midcap internals, and probably a KK BW3 MOSFET although maybe a BTC Chimera. You missed "Bench" - big letters not quite fitting on the mags methinks. And obviously Burberry boxer shorts in the loadout! If you've got chance to cancel, deeb mate, do it... for the love of all that's perforated, cancel man! Edit to add: Bulgarian KGB belt - £18 posted from Sofia ~ fleabay (Unfortunately the Bulgarian frogskin camo onesie I bought a while back does not quite fit, but now that i've actually held it, i've really fallen in love with the pattern, so a Bulgarian loadout is on the horizon for sure!)

This is a guide to what to buy for noobs on a tight budget, but much of it applies to anyone just starting out. As has been said, your eye protection (eyepro) is the most important thing you'll need and yeah, it can be very difficult to find just the right thing that fits your face, style of play, and level of fitness, so be prepared to go through several types before you find something which you're happy with. My advice is that regardless of what you end up with, a comfy set of mesh eyepro will mean that you always have some which will not fog and, if you later choose something else, they will be good to keep as back up for times when it is very hot/humid, you are exerting yourself more than usual, or you want to lend them to a mate without their own gear. These may not look cool but trust me, the mesh in them provides the best see-through-ability of any of the commercially available types. The same goggles can come with an eyeshade brim like this, or as part of a modular mask like this. The same mesh can be found in smaller goggles like this, however IMO the smaller goggles cannot be trusted 100% to withstand full auto fire from anything less than 10m, since at that range it is just possible that enough BB's could hit the exact same spot and since the smaller amount of mesh means that there are fewer points where the wires cross each other (and it is the friction between the woven wires which provides its strength), it is just possible that 4 wires could be deformed enough to allow a BB to penetrate. Now, there is a considerable body of opinion which states that you get what you pay for and thus anything cheap is crap - well, perhaps it is true in some areas of business, but take the horror with which we on AF-UK view the websites justbbguns.co.uk and onlybbguns.co.uk as an example - both of them do sell some cheap crap, but they also sell some pretty expensive items, which are nonetheless crap (although the main reason for our horror is their track record on customer service, particularly when something they've sold breaks 1st or 2nd time out and the victim wants a refund) - there is a whole sector of business devoted to scamming noob airsofters by lying about the performance and/or usefulness of guns and gear, but there are also a lot of companies whose products are made in China who then add a premium to the price simply for their company name and the generic products, known by the acronym ACM (All Chinese Manufacture / All China Made) often made in exactly the same factory, by the same people, are just as good. Here is a pic of most of my eye and face protection: ...as you can see, despite plenty of choice, I still have 2 examples of that mesh in use (I also have 1 of those ski-mask type goggles somewhere - probably still in my bag) If you combine one of those ski-mask goggles with a mask like this with 2 straps to hold it stable on your head as opposed to the type with a single strap, you will have a winning combination. The best way of preventing the mesh from irritating your skin is to make it sit mostly off your skin and the best way of doing that is to add pads to the cheekbone areas. You can glue and stitch foam to them like this: ...but that makes them difficult to clean. On these I made the pads with covers and velcro hooks: ...then stitched the velcro loops to the mask so they come out for cleaning easily. Next thing is boots, even if you plan to/are play/ing in an urban setting, to run around confidently when there are trip hazards or even just loose BB's on a hard floor (which get stuck in the tread of your footwear and can cause you to slip), you need boots which support your ankles and obviously the tougher they are, the harder they can be on your feet, so you'd be best to try a few before you buy. I would suggest that boots which are completely waterproof rather than just water resistant are best, because cold wet feet makes for real misery! Bear in mind that military boots may well feel a bit uncomfy when you first try them on, but so long as they aren't too tight, you can add gel insoles and/or pads which prevent them from slipping about on your feet causing blisters and reduce the shock to your feet when you run in them, like these. You'll probably find that buying boots from military surplus shops is more expensive than buying them online, but you can always try them on at a shop and if you find some you like, take a note of the make and look for them online later... Even a good make of bolt action sniper rifle (BASR) is usually not very good compared to an AEG assault rifle when brand new - it is the upgrades which allow good accuracy at extended range and those upgrades can cost anything from £150-250 just to make it possible for you to compete on the field. Bear in mind that the max effective range of most AEG's is about 50m and a minimally upgraded BASR's is about 80m - so if you miss your 1st shot (which is quite common for noob snipers) then the target could approach you in order to get a shot - they could cover that 30m in just over 3 seconds: how many shots can you take in that time and how likely are you to hit a moving target? The answers are that anyone may well cock the BASR very quickly, less than a 10th of a sec, but doing it and then reacquiring the moving target could easily take 2 seconds, so that's only 1 shot before they are in range to put fire on you - it doesn't matter that their first shots are likely to miss, they will be able to fire full-auto - they'll get you with quantity not quality... As said above - get used to shooting, to the way cover and camouflage works at the ranges at which we engage each other, to the way different weights of BB fly and how they behave in various wind conditions (because ultimately air movement is the biggest hurdle to accuracy we face with BB guns), before you consider sniping. It'd only be natural if you imagine that what sniping involves is being completely hidden from your target, placing the cross hairs of your scope on him/her, pulling the trigger and watching them yelp then call "Hit!" without ever seeing you... the truth is very different. There are rules which most airsoft sites apply to eye and face protection depending on your age, so it'd help us to advise you if we know how old you are. It will also help if we know how much experience of airsofting you have, what town you live in so we can advise on where to play, what action/adventure sports you have done before and what, if any, outdoor gear and/or equipment you already have. It'd also be helpful for us to know if you have any idea what kind of gear you see yourself wearing...

^^Yeah, the anti-fog coating of the newer generation of Bollé goggles does work very well at preventing fog build up, but the moisture in the air behind them doesn't go away - my Bollé Rush rain out to the point of being unusable in between 25-35mins, but the problem of distorted vision begins much sooner: 10-15mins. It's a real ball ache because they would be exceptionally good otherwise - they fit my head shape almost perfectly; the seal between the lens edges and my face is very good; the shape combines well with lower face masks; they are very light and comfortable; although the polycarbonate they are made from is particularly shiny, the lens shape produces very few internal reflections; and they're very cheap too - if only they made something very similar with a fan!

And there is always the support group, DBoys Anonymous. 450x5cm Self Adhesive Gauze Bandage - 99p posted ~ fleabay (I'm hoping that the colour is actually duller than it appears on screen so that 1] i can use it if i sprain a wrist when i return to the field soon and 2] it'll be good for those poor sods who just cannot quite grab the bull by the balls and strip the paint from their 2-tones.) Surefire 502B Clone with 4x5W 850nm IR LED's - £3.24 posted from China via ~ fleabay.com not .co.uk (Things like torches, lasers, generic red dot sights, scopes, ring mounts & weaver/picatinny mount/rail accessories ordered direct from China are usually very much cheaper when you're bidding against yanks rather than brits - about 1/3rd in my experience.) Mouse Tail Pressure Pad for 502B Torch - £2.48 posted from China via ~ fleabay.com Dual Mode Pressure Pad & Latch Switch for C8 type Torch - £3.99 posted from fleabay (The plan is to fit this switch assembly in place of that on the 502B Mouse Tail above, because I can't find one ready made for a 502B and having a latch option is much more important on an IR torch: when you're in pitch blackness relying on NVG you really don't need to have to remember to keep your finger pressure on the pad whilst stressed, but having multiple options, for eg the ability to quickly blink through the presses needed to make the 502B strobe IR and really ruin the day of opposition using NVG is one time where multi-mode torches could prove disproportionately useful to their cost. If it works well and feels comfy I'll probably get another for my C8.) The trouble with these Oslon type IR emitter LED's is that they also give out a faint red visible light, so I may end up having to fit an IR pass filter to the torch, which in a way defeats the purpose of using an IR LED, since i could have just fitted the poxy filter to one of my existing visible light torches! But then again I expect that you get much better battery time out of an LED which mostly emits just the spectrum you want than using more power and filtering it. I dunno if the red glow is even sufficiently bright to need filtering IRL mind, has anyone got any relevant experience?

Yeah, a new rubber may well be necessary and considering the cost it may well be in your best interests to get one and sack the potential for future aggravation that simply cleaning may store up, in as much as there will always be a question mark hanging over it and therefore if/when you have any problems in future, that's one more thing that it could be. I disagree regarding the nub, barrel and hop chamber itself however - there is nothing about a nub which having been dirty makes questionable and barrels are meant to be cleaned - the only issue with any barrel is that you should clean it in such a way which minimises potential scratches to the surface / this is doubly important for Madbull barrels in as much as their surface is added after the initial manufacture, so it is more at risk than a stainless steel surface, as an example. They are not crap though. For sure they're not PDI or Prometheus, but the process of filling in the microscopic surface inconsistencies which result from the manufacture of any metal tubes produces a much better end result than the metal alone and this is reflected in the price from those manufacturers who approach the problem by polishing vs those who just don't bother and are cheaper than Madbull. Regarding the hop chamber, again having been dirty is no reason to throw it away - you'll be able to see if the powder is a result of a chemical reaction between the rain when it was wet and the plastic, however i expect that it is simply a residue left behind by evaporation, so any problem it may cause by jamming parts will be removed by cleaning. I clean my barrels after every use, so either the next day or sometimes the day before next use, so I couldn't be arsed to strip everything in front of the nozzle everytime i did so, nor do i think there is any need to do so - once in a blue moon for sure but usually i'll have the gun in bits for some other reason so a thorough clean will end up as part of that, or as in this case, when I know that a lot of some form of dirt has got inside. Something to bear in mind about any guns, but cheaper ones more so, is that stripping them often does unintended damage to screw heads and threads and small parts put together under spring pressure, so if there's no need for it, better not to bother. If you find yourself with the disease with which many of us become infected, the unstoppable desire to tinker, get more project guns! I'm not convinced by the Orga philosophy, although for sure i haven't had one so my opinion is speculative, nonetheless I do have a TK Twist barrel and was not impressed. I believe that those Orga test results which we can trust, as opposed to those which have been proved to be fake/heavily biased, represent circumstances which are entirely unrealistic to our needs - yes the whole air cushion idea may work very well when the gun is clamped to a bench in the still air of a workshop/lab, but in the field the barrel is subject to involuntary movement as well as the fact that even on a bipod using a spirit level to make sure that the gun is bang on horizontal when fired is somewhat unrealistic, plus any kind of headwind will interfere with the cone of air which exits the muzzle ahead of the BB...

I would not recommend using nail polish remover to clean airsoft barrels, especially the type with acetone in, as i expect it would denaturise the hop rubber. Isopropyl alcohol is a whole different kettle of fish however and is literally perfect in that it degreases very well without leaving a residue and also come prepacked on perfect sized swabs. That VSR 11 of your, ricefarmer, sounds very much like it has become the victim of some dodgy industrial/acid rain - i suspect that you'll have to disassemble the hop chamber and barrel to do a proper scrub clean - start with silicone oil on lint free cloth to remove the powder; move on to soapy water to get rid of the oil; allow to dry; then finish with alcohol swabs to get the last traces of soap out.

Nah mate... CYMA RPK-74 midcaps are 140rnds*, it's the hicaps that hold 800. *even then, from new, you have to oil the spring and stuff them to the gills a fair few times to get the springs working well enough to hold that many.

Speak to Jip McTavish on fb about AK/RPK/SVD/Saiga furniture, Tac.

Let's hope so, Loz, or somebody around here is going to be in tears...