Ian_Gere

Yeah, Bonnington Sq. Vauxhall was the centre of the universe back in the day, but as with all things uber, the word gets out eventually and then someone gets the idea that there's money to be made, the nuts become persona non grata, the vibe departs, and it's off to pastures new and home decors afresh... I know that wasn't what the wub was for, i was just being a nut for the sake of the vibe...

I used to have a green one hanging from the ceiling like an indoor tent when I was living in Vauxhall years ago - tbh it was a bloody nuisance, but it looked majorly cool.

CYMA CM.048 from taiwangun.com - can't go wrong. Unless you're minted, in which case have a look on fire-support.co.uk for some LCT goodness, in particular the G-03 NV and TX-63.

^^You make some good points, Halfsack - unless people have the patience to sit still and wait for the perfect shot, there definitely is no point in wearing enhanced camouflage. That also includes movement after the shot. My main objection to buying ghillie suits is that they are not that good. The trouble is that, although they do make an immediately identifiable human shape less so, the colour distribution of whatever they are made from is pretty homogeneous, so unless the colours miraculously perfectly match the terrain, they still form a shape which, at best, does not quite fit with the background. To take Halfsack's analogy, it's not the moving bush I'm on about, it's the bush of the wrong species, and you don't need binoculars to notice wrong colour. Having spotted the wrong colour, you then notice that the size of the anomaly is about right for what you'd expect to be able to see of a person, given the hard terrain. They'd be much better if instead of the whole thing being an even distribution of whatever 4, perhaps 5, different fibres, the suit was randomly patchy - some small areas of all the fibres and big patches of the various combinations you could get from 2 or 3 of them. That still doesn't address the biggest issue however which is symmetry. If the suit is basically a woodland wookie suit, it is still a bipedal humanoid shape - but people don't like to wear stuff which wildly alters the symmetry of their shape: it doesn't look cool. The reason for this is that we are hardwired to find symmetry attractive and when we look at ourselves in the mirror, regardless of what me may be thinking about, subconsciously we want to appear attractive. Rather than buy a ghillie suit then, if you want to be able to sit still and wait for "the shot", if you want your camouflage to work so that somebody 10m away can look right at you while actively looking for hidden opposition and not see you, you should make your own and make it heterogeneous and unsymmetrical. The veil I have thrown over me in this pic has proved pretty successful: ...it is patchy.

With a drop bag, or just the chute? Cos folding 1 up to get it in a bag needs a lot of indoor space and is not quite as simple as it may seem.

Details, details... I lie down corrected Seriously though - watch it on Netflix if you haven't got it on deev - that scene there's a paratrooper almost as the scene ends descending without a digital parachute. Not even a jetpack

Now that she's got her eyepro... ...so she's allowed out of the safe zone, Maiya just needs a jump harness to attach her to my webbing and she'll be ready to rock!

If you watch Band Of Brothers, yeah? The episode where they drop on Arnhem. Far left of screen, at the very end of the daylight drop sequence - there's our Russe11 acting as liaison to our trigger happy former colonials and showing them how it's done - gently decending to earth in the approved position... hanging from bugger all!

And also be aware that glasses have been proven to be unsafe when wearing a half face mask, because BB's can deflect off the mask under the lower edge of the glasses and hit you in the eye. Regardless of whether or not you wear a mask with glasses however, the fact that they have gaps wider than 6mm from any direction at all is potentially extremely dangerous. Consider all the directions from which a ricochet can hit you, bouncing up off your gun, your pouches, etc. How about friendly fire hitting you from behind your temple, passing inside the glasses and bouncing off the interior into your eye. How about if you are lying down, so that the gap between the rim and your forehead is facing forward...? Shooting glasses are not designed for airsoft. Eyepro which does not seal against your skin is a hazard which is proven to allow full BB's to hit the eyes. Do not use them.

I've explained this so many times that I've reached a stage where "blue in the face" hardly even dents it, let alone covers it. The force which a fragment of BB can impart to your eye is a function of mass x acceleration (in this case actually deceleration) but for all intents and purposes we can work with mass x velocity. The exact velocity of any given fragment would be very difficult to predict, so we can work with known maximums so that any conclusions we draw must cover all potentialities. Where it gets interesting is mass. The largest holes in commercially available goggles are 0.297mm circles, however when BB's shatter they do not do so leaving a spheroid from the centre with half the original diameter. In fact they shatter into angular segments and we are interested in a shape in which the largest dimension cannot exceed 0.297mm: It works out that the largest fragment which can tessellate into a sphere is 1/18th the volume and, since the density is designed to be very consistent, that is also 1/18th the mass. The shape is something like this: ...but with 1 surface curved and the others may also be a little irregular. 2.3J is the maximum allowed (0.2g BB @500FPS) so let's assume the worst case scenario* where, being the cock you know we can all be, you step right in front of a sniper as he pulls the trigger... the maximum energy a fragment can carry through the largest holes in commercially available goggles is 0.128 Joules, otherwise known as fuck all. I know it's counterintuitive. It's a thing that can pop your eye smashed to bits still flying into your eye - it must be far too dangerous... It's a lump of metal that you get inside, how can it fly - it must be far too dangerous... It's steel: it doesn't float - it must be far too dangerous... What, travelling a hundred times faster than you can run - it must be far too dangerous... I'd like to assume the point is made. * Let's just ignore that it must lose a lot of momentum in the process of breaking apart and that the chances of a fragment making it through a whole without touching the sides at all must be astronomical, because although we know that these things lessen the force of any impact considerably, the amount by which they do so is not an easy figure to arrive at. Besides, in this instance we are better off arriving at a conservative solution.

Turning your backs on me, muahahahaaaaa!

Oh, this time he has been quite conservative in his spending... check back through the annals of this thread if you don't believe me - he is single handedly funding R&D into airsoft M4's and western kit in general! Personally, everytime I think, "If I buy this [insert ordinary life object] I can't afford to buy, for eg, some Russian NV gear this month - sod it, NV gear is way more fun..." the knowledge somewhere deep in my subconscious that I'll never spank as much money on airsoft as Chris makes me feel sane.

The bumble ball has great possibilities. It already is a ball and it has LED's so I can just replace 'em with IR ones. I'll just have to get one and see how much/what type of noise it makes, but i suspect that I'll be able to muffle it inside if it's too much. There are loads of things which I could use in the role of a 'normal' distraction device, from the low tech string tied to something a distance away from me, right the way up to a miniature replica skirmisher with a tac light, remote control AEG, and a speaker system shouting, "Gummi puppen!?!" But think about it... you are part of a small 'fire team' advancing in the dark. An obvious sound and/or light catches your attention forward and left. In the initial split second you're not sure exactly what the range is, because unless a sound has an associated movement you see, you have to turn your head this way and that to localise it, and a light could be tiny and close by, or bigger and further away (Father Dougal). What do you do? Fire in the general direction, right? Raising your muzzle as you do to cover close by out to longer range... unless one of your team mates beats you to it, in which case you may just observe, dial your senses in. Chances are, if you were at all bunched up, you've split up and gone for cover, right? Or if you are good at it, you were already well dispersed, so all you need to do is go to ground. Nobody calls a hit. Not long after the initial contact at least one of the squad is likely to have a good idea where the bogey is. Further fire on target, especially full auto, should produce a hit, right? So if it doesn't then something is up, right? Maybe whoever it is has taken cover, or moved - maybe they're not taking their hits... or, maybe it is a trick. Whatever your thinking, you are not going to continue to advance as a group until you have sussed whatever is going on. Maybe just one of you advances. Maybe one or two go for an attempt to flank the position. Maybe you just hose the entire area on the grounds that whatever is going on, there is probably some opposition nearby whom you cannot see, but that doesn't mean you can't hit them. Maybe you do all of the above... None of that puts me, hiding in the dark, wanting to knock out your whole squad, in a very good position. Once I begin firing, I want to be able to hit you all before any of you can swing your guns towards me or effectively take cover. So subtlety has got to be the way forward. If you're not even sure that what you're hearing is the enemy, or where it is coming from, and no amount of head turning helps to localise it, what can you do? Fire away randomly for sure, but if i've chosen my position well for cover, I'm still good to go when you lot either attempt to just avoid the whole area, or continue to advance in your skirmish order. Either way I'll be able to wait for just the right moment, quite possibly to be able to shoot the lot of you in the back as you pass me, or turn left, right, or 180 degrees.

Always like your posts in this thread, Chris. Somehow they always make me feel better about how much I spend on this game of ours

Well yeah, but it's a wind up thing which i'd need to be able to get hold of with both hands, so putting it inside a ball would be a bit of a... you've guessed it... ballache.

My google-foo has failed me, mate. All i've come up with is this, which doesn't seem to be what you're on about. Help a nob out, please?

It should be a decent gun out of the box and if it isn't (ie if you have trouble hitting a man sized target at 45m in calm wind conditions) you should immediately invoke the warranty. There is no need to upgrade anything, but if you have the "fiddle-bug" an H-nub will improve accuracy a little. This is a tiny component of the hop unit, btw, and there are various types. The one made by Element is usually around £2 and works fine. You are best off asking Zero One for a battery, because then you know it will fit and you will save yourself the P&P that buying from componentshop.co.uk would incur (although componentshop are good if you cannot get a deal you like out of Z1). You are best going with a 7.4V LiPo battery, but these require a particular type of charger - the best bet for a cheap LiPo "balancing" charger is called iMax B3 and can be found new on ebay or amazon for about £7-12, even cheaper sometimes - a better bet, which will cover all your battery charging needs for the medium to long term is the iMax B6 which comes in 2 types, with the mains power supply built in, or separate (this is exactly the same machine as the Turnigy Accucell 6 which is often recommended, just in a different colour case). Without a MOSFET to replace the stock trigger switch power handling however, a good quality 9.6V NiMh battery (VP Racing/Vapex) will do the trick just as well and these can be charged from £5 trickle chargers. In either case I'm pretty sure the shape of battery you need is called a 'nunchuck' battery, which has the cells divided into 2 (or 3 sometimes) sticks which fit into the compartments in the stock. Although some CM16's take a battery in the handguard, hence why I said ask Z1.

tdm_electronics purveyors of choice ex-military electronic tat and Polish, so they call this PNV-57A: ...PNW-57A As James rightly pointed out in my weird device thread, this belongs here also. It is supplied in the original wooden box containing spare parts, an IR lamp, connector cables, some solidified black stuff upon the purpose of which I have no clue, and 4 massive head lamp covers to convert tank head lights into IR illuminators: With the box unpacked a bit... The IR lamp pouch, showing additional lens covers with holes for use where incoming visible light may be a problem: ...and the destructions, plus the plug I removed from 1 of the leads to replace with spade connectors. £113 posted

They are very effective, James, but fishbowl-y. It's going to take some practice with focussing the eyepieces and walking around in them. Plus trying them out with different eyepro to see which fits best. But the focus should mean that they will work with a variety of eyepro. I'll put some selfies up over the next few days - you should see the IR lamp - i swear it looks like something from a 70's Dr. Who episode! The thing that people don't seem to be getting about "Device X" is subtlety. The louder, the worse. The point is not to make people think, "Aha! The enemy is over there!" It is to make him/her think, "WTF is that sound? Is it coming from my gear? Is my LiPo about to explode? Why does it sound different when I turn my head this way? Where TF is it coming from?" etc.

I don't know what the stuff that 3M safety goggles are made from is called, but discs of that is what I'm going to replace both the broken one and unshot one with. It is much thinner than the double glazing lens malarky so I will have to find something to wedge it into the space provided in the rubber and internal lock-ring-thingy - a length of stiff wire curled into a loop is top of my list of possibles. I'm also considering cutting some discs of thinner plastic, possibly blister pack, to fit into the internal slot provided for the original cellulose anti-fog lenses, to see how well they do, once Fog Tech'd, as anti foggers.

BTW, for those who do not know what a PNV-57A looks like, this is it: ...minus the ear flaps.

I read reviews of those kiddy spy goggle thingies a while back and one said you'd be better off turning them the opposite way around and using the screen as a torch because it's so bright inside that it fries your eyes looking at them! For some reason I just didn't even consider a motor - I believe i have a spare laptop fan lurking somewhere in my cupboards, so i think that will be the plan. I think i was fixated on an electronic solution because i was tired and coming to the end of a dose of pain meds, but yeah, i got what i wanted - some great creative solutions. I dunno whether the transformer sound is a fault, but it is present in both the units i have and about the same in both. For all i know they could also be making a very high frequency whine, above the range of my semi-destroyed hearing. I will open one of them up at some point to see what a gwaan inside, but i suspect that the transformers are mounted on rubber already - it is a very quiet sound after all and, as i said above, not a sharp sound. The problem with muffling the sound any more than the steel container the transformer is fitted inside does is that it is head mounted - it's a big ol' rig as it is, already at the edge of what is practical in the field. My immediate plan is to try to find a low cost practical solution, so a distraction device seemed like the way to go. I've used a few different light devices as distractors before, but the problem with all of them is that, as soon as you turn the light on, your position is compromised, no matter where you throw it, even if your position is behind cover, because the arc of throw is immediately seared on the light starved retinas of the opposition - like the predator back tracking a spear... The main idea then is subtlety - it only needs to make localising the tiny sound the transformer makes difficult and actually, although a more obvious device may be more distracting, it still tells the opposition that something is up. For most people, the sound i'm trying to disguise will not immediately register as "the enemy" anyway and "Device X", if successful, will simply confuse the issue - possibly make those who can hear the transformer doubt their senses... at least as to where the sound is coming from.

What is a wobbly ball?

Thanks lads, keep 'em coming! I've got to go out shortly then get some sleep, but as I said, all ideas gratefully appreciated.

OK then, a bit more empirical testing. The question: is the rumour that Russian gas mask lenses are good to go for airsoft true? ...at least for these PBF ones, no. This shot was taken from about 1 inch at approx 375FPS with a 0.25g BB (1.6J CO2 pistol), but the result is not quite as simple as it appears at first glance. Because, although the lens is obviously cracked... ...it is not a simple lens, but rather something like a mini double glazing unit. In this pic you can just about see that the interior layer is not broken at all... ...but who knows whether a 2.3J shot (0.2g @500FPS) would have made it through both layers. Something else I tested today was how easy it is to breath through with both the 'orangutan cheek' filters fitted - it is very easy, far easier than through an S10 or GP-7.