Ian_Gere

Yeah, it will be bullshit, but a single XML T6 LED lights up 100m of field in the dark well enough to distinguish camouflage from foliage, so 7 should be pretty heavy duty!

Yeah Simon, you should definitely put a frogman loadout together to go with that watch! For me: 4 x 6000mAh 18650 batteries - £3.21 - posted ~ toymodel55 fleabay 9500lm 7xCREE XM-L T6 LED Skyray Torch (muahahahaaaa) - £23 posted ~ combine-m fleabay 4 x 18650 battery tray with 6" leads - 99p posted ~ fleabay (which reminds me, i need to get a LiPo charge monitor plug+leads) Battery Charge Tester - £1.28 posted ~ fleabay Pressure Pad Switch f/ TrustFire Torches (hopefully will fit XML T6 zoomable type) - £1.79 posted ~ fleabay Soviet Officer Short Sleeved Shirt - £14.95 posted - ironfields-com on fleabay KGB Badge 8oz Stainless Steel Vodka Flask - £12.75 posted ~ ironfields 4 Blocks of FIMO (Sahara, Cognac, Caramel, Dolphin Grey) to make a funky ergonomic grip for my Vz61 - £5.88 ~ fleabay 1:6 Scale Metal Dragunov SVD Model - £13.50 posted ~ dualdealshop fleabay (for Mia Meerkat) Spartan Doctrine 200rnd Speedloader - £8.75 posted ~ dualdealshop Element Ultra Cylinder Head f/ V3 GB - £8.00 posted ~ dualdealshop 4S LiPo Balance Charger Extension Lead - £2.20 posted ~ fleabay (who'd a thunk you can't find less than 10 of the plain leads as a single lot? grrrrrr)

That is pretty interesting, James. I've added the yellow line here... ...to highlight the results at 50 yards. Nevermind the difference between 0.2's and the rest - we knew that, but the difference between 0.3's and 0.25's at only 1.14J surprises me - approx. 0.0625s / the maths is pretty simple - a person can sprint for short bursts at about 10m/s which means that... @50yds in the time it takes for a shot to reach them a person can move 62.5cm further if the shot is a .25g BB compared to .3g That's significant - it's just over the width of a man sized target! That has me thinking I'm going to have to see how my own guns compare because, of course, the results are dependant on the hop set up performing well, ie lifting the BB without pressing on it so much that it reduces the velocity more than the benefits. As a general rule however I would still say that if a gun gets less than 335FPS with 0.2's you're probably best sticking with 0.2's, especially if it is a stock gun. If you've upgraded the hop rubber, based on those^^ figures, it's got to be worth seeing how well it performs with 0.25's. I've tried 0.23's in Sabine, my tac AK, which has had a few different rubbers and, as is not surprising for me, I can't remember which was in her at the time - I didn't notice much difference: about 1.5-2m further effective range / now I am all about screwing as much range as possible out of my guns and i do, for eg, think it's worth trying to get as close to 350FPS as poss, so long as it's consistent, rather than accepting the 330-ish you get on average from an M100 spring, but you have to draw a line somewhere and i draw it at approx 5m improvement. I don't remember thinking the accuracy was better, but she's always been pretty good anyway, even right out of the box. The clincher though is price - they're just not common enough for anyone to be buying in sufficient bulk in the UK for the price to come down. That said taiwangun.com (based in Poland so EU = no import tax) sell P&J 0.23g BB's & they're on -15% sale right now = €2.93 for 3000 I have only tried P&J 0.32's and they are ok, although I prefer Blaster Devils 0.3's for sniping accuracy / i did buy a bag of white 0.4's from ASPUK a while ago and i think they are P&J, but i can't remember for sure and i can't be arsed to go find them, but i haven't actually tried them yet anyway; as a rule of thumb though ASPUK don't sell shit. Taiwangun do bulk prices too so 25Kg on -8% sale is €138.55, but they also do free shipping on orders over approx €69 so you could get 72,000 for €70.16 all in. Dunno how long the sale will last - their discounts don't seem to be for set times, but it may be worth trying out 3000 and, if they're ok, maybe go halves with someone. Blaster are a good brand, but that doesn't mean that mistakes don't happen - you're right that your problems sound like it must be the shape. The tip about not stuffing midcaps completely full is a good one in my experience, but something you said above is also important - that when you get a jam it sounds like dry firing. That tells us there is no BB in the hop unit, or it would sound duller. For some reason they are not feeding. What I think whomever you spoke to was trying to explain about strong tappet plate springs causing misfeeds is that, with high rates of fire, the air nozzle can spring back into place before the next BB has been able to pop up ready to be pushed into the barrel. The way to prevent this is what is called a tappet plate delayer, or 'delayer chip', which is a little circle of brass or piece of plastic which clamps onto the peg on the sector gear to keep the tappet plate in its withdrawn position for a few milliseconds longer. The thing is that the weight of the BB should make no difference to this effect and whether they are coming out of a hicap or midcap shouldn't make much difference either (although there is a small difference in the strength of spring pressure pushing the BB's up).

You may have a point re the tappet plate spring, Candle, but it feels like a clutched straw of a reason, because the spring would have to be really weak for 0.05g to be the difference between it pushing the BB into the barrel and not. All the ones I've seen have been overengineered if anything. I've never bothered trying to maintain the warranty on any of my new guns, but if that was important to me and the flaming thing would not work properly then i would send it back - the warranty has to be worth invoking if it's worth preserving, right? BB weight choice depends on FPS and game style - if you're playing CQB then 0.2's are the way forward - they're cheap and improving max effective range and/or accuracy at long-extreme range isn't an issue. If you're going to a woodland site, or urban with plenty of outdoor action, then based on the FPS you get firing 0.2g BB's, <315, stick with 0.2's / 315-35 you may gain something from 0.23's, especially if you have a very sticky hop rubber (like a Prometheus purple or Firefly or some of the newer Asian companies' 40 deg rubber), but unless you're getting them for not much more than 0.2's i wouldn't bother (Military 1st for eg take the living piss with their prices & they don't even do bulk discounts ffs!) / >335 then except under very specific circumstances* you would be losing some effective range and accuracy at range by sticking to 0.2's / >345 you should definitely be using 0.25's / >360 you'll benefit from 0.28's in terms of bench test performance, but whether this translates into more hits in the field will be subject to many variables which have little or nothing to do with hardware / >400 0.3's but after that it gets more complex because depending on your hop type, hop rubber, cleanliness, and the air temperature and humidity you can end up having to put so much hop on to lift a heavier BB that you lose more power by straightforward mechanical retardation than you could gain through momentum at long-extreme range. *For eg I have recently put a Falcon 6.03x455mm TBB in my AK-74 and the Dual Point hop rubber that comes with them - turns out that this rubber struggles to lift 0.25's, but the combination does so well with 0.2's that so far I haven't classed this as an active problem. I suspect that I will swap this barrel and rubber into my tactical AK-47 though, because that is the one which looks best with my all black CQB loadout and one thing which you will always get from heavier BB's is better resistance to being deflected by air movement (I don't say 'wind' there because anything which is strong enough to be called 'wind' will affect any BB's far more than even the most anal obsessive ridiculously priced upgrades can, which is a fact which needs to be born in mind whenever we consider upping our expenditure - is what we are going to get actually worth it when we forget the theory and try to get some hits with the blasted thing/s?).

I have a CYMA AK-74 Flash mag which was about £11 posted - must be shite, right? As with so much that CYMA make, not at all. TBH the plastic is a little more flexible than I'm used to in my mags, but it works fine and the one time I've dropped it, it bounced. You really need to take a step back though - I know that it's all shiny shiny, but the most important thing to get is eyepro. After that boots. Then 1/2 face mask. You may find that getting eyepro which suits you is not as simple as picking a product and buying it. There are a number of issues and what fits and works for 1 person may fail miserably for another. Worse than that though is the set that sorta works, but just doesn't quite ever feel like it's not there, or never quite tightens up and fits your face shape well enough that it doesn't move, or maybe it is working just fine but the gap at the edge near your temples is a bit too wide to be completely confident that you wont become the star of a horrible story... see, if something is bollocks, it's obvious, you just ditch it, but just how good can eyepro be? How much minor scale bollocks should you put up with? Very much the same can be said about boots, just without the same degree of dire should they fail... These are the discussions that will actually help you most right now.

Yeah, I seem to remember we've chewed this bone before, eh? Quite apart from the silliness, there's the practical considerations and people came up with all sorts of mad ideas for FET's and diodes and shite connecting the torch to the actual electrical system of the gun. I think we concluded that pressure pads were the way forward... Unsurprisingly lol!

The majority of UK shops will still require a UKARA number to sell you a RIF, although some will take other proofs these days, like BASA, or a site membership and of course Zero One will sell you a RIF at NAE since being there is proof enough. If you want to import a gun you will need a UKARA number for UK Customs - that is the only defence they recognise. But for everyday stuff, yeah a photo will do. If you read my noob guide there's a link in the chat to a YT tutorial on how to use Fairy Power Spray to take paint off plastic and it works just as well for getting it off metal.

0.28g is too heavy for a standard AEG, unless your site allows 368 (or 370)FPS (ie 350 + 5%) - even then there'd be very little point. If you're shooting 0.2's below 350FPS then you just don't have the power for that to translate into increased range with 0.28's due to mass overcoming air resistance. You will gain some accuracy, but at 50m that is actually only going to reduce your grouping size by maybe 125-50mm, which is great for target shooting and may be occasionally useful for snap shooting someone's head, but generally you will be aiming at man sized targets, often moving, wearing equipment, so effectively, like the man shaped target, 600mm wide. Bear in mind that when people stick their head out for a looksee, they don't leave it there unless they're noobs, so snap shooting is more about knowing your gun, being able to gauge wind conditions, elevation and the effects of foliage, etc without thinking about it - basically practice - and slowing shots down will not help you get peekaboo hits. The other thing to bear in mind with AEG's is that you don't need to make every shot count, you can correct your aim 300ms later just seeing the 1st BB in flight, before it gets near the target, but then much better when you see where any misses go. Trust me, as someone who has had to change game style due to ill health, trying to get single shots to hit first time is a whole different style of play and not one which an ordinary AEG is suited to. If you have a burning desire to see what more expensive BB's can do for your gun, buy some 0.25 Bastards from Patrol Base.

Taking the plastic head, or mag follower as it's known, off the top of the spring ought not to do anything - there is not enough space in the feed tube for the BB's to go anywhere but up, but there is just the possibility that the spring could poke out of the feed tube and get jammed there - they don't put extra bits of plastic in places where you can't see 'em just for show. You could try putting a single drop of silicone oil down the feed tube: let them stand upright for a few mins to let the oil run down inside a bit then fill one with BB's - release the catch and let them spray out into a bag, then use the same BB's to fill each mag. Don't fire them though or you'll be putting oil onto your hop rubber. When you've done them all, either keep those oiled BB's in a labelled bag for next time you need to oil mags or throw them away. It may be that the surface of the .23's is not as smooth as the .2's. I don't honestly think so, but you never know... that is what I do with new midcaps anyway and I can always get more BB's in them after doing so.

I decided that it was worth £25 to find out what truly over the top looks like and got this. Was fortunate, the bids only went up to £23 I'll pay for it Tuesday Can't wait to see how many epi's I can set off a couple of miles away

Legend! Thanks

Mate, I have a vernier callipers so I know that the pitch is 1mm, but what i need to know is what this is called so that I can buy the correct die to cut it. Because none of the standard Course, Fine, & Extra Fine for M14 threads are 1.0 - well just get an M14 x 1.0 die, right? Well, not necessarily. What if it's a 2 Start thread? Do you know whether CCW threads can only be cut by a CCW die, or can you get dies which cut both ways?

Yeah, you don't necessarily need to stick to the original manufacturer, but when you mix parts from various manufacturers, as you've discovered, you can run into this kind of problem - if you replace the trigger mech with company X's product, you probably should replace the cutoff lever with company X's version also. The problem is that it can be difficult to find all the parts you want from 1 supplier, which may not be much of an issue, but it will end up costing you more for shipping. However the supply of parts seems to ebb and flow - if it's OOS somewhere it will often disappear from everywhere for a few months. TBH I find sourcing upgrade parts, discovering their quirks, and finding bodges to make them work to be part and parcel of the hobby/sport and while i do swear vociferously and whinge when something which ostensibly should work doesn't, in truth I have more fun using guns which I have sweated blood over than off the shelf guns. Just a heads up: you may find that some gears do not gel well with some anti-reversal latches. To the original question about how can you tell when it's working - during your shimming process you'll have time when you close the gb without the spring to spin the gears and see whether your estimate is good or needs more/less shims - well you can tell if the cutoff lever is engaged because it puts drag on the sector gear and makes it stop spinning at a point where the cam is off. If you do get a problem where you have had to shim the sector gear high (for eg if you have had to shim the spur gear high to stop it rubbing against a moulding on the gb shell), then it can make very little contact with the cutoff lever, which is a recipe for a fragment of metal to shear off. You can use one of the tiny diameter shims which often come as stock on factory gear sets to lift the cutoff lever up a little.

Ahhh, well that is heading towards making sense, but the standard "Fine" pitch is 1.5, not 1. And typically now that i want to put the table i'm quoting into this thread i can't find the fucker

That is very weird. There should be no difference in their behaviour in the mag whatsoever as they should be the same 5.95 +/-0.01mm spheroid as 0.2's. The only thing that makes any sense to me is that you have got a bottle of rejects somehow... Can you try them in a different gun?

This bloke sells parts from real steel PSO's and the clones are pretty spot on so if he has what you need it will probably fit, or need very little modification.

OK so what I want to know is the tech specs of the common or garden 14mm CCW thread so that I can, at some point, cut them myself. I looked up the standard pitches of threads and my research turned up Coarse 2.0 / Fine 1.5 / Extra Fine 1.25, but looking at a muzzle thread it looks like 1mm between thread crests and measuring it bears this out: 10mm = 10 gaps. Does that mean that they have 2 Starts so 2.0 is correct, or are they a special 'super-dooper-fine' 1.0? Also I'm guessing that you need a left-hand die to cut a CCW thread, right? Or can you cut either way just by turning a die that way? If I am right, how difficult/expensive is it to get a left-hand die? May as well turn this thread (fnah fnah) open to general discussion of flash hiders, suppressors, compensators, adapters and their various sized threads...

The law doesn't actually say how long you have to have been an airsofter. The issue is proving it, so a receipt from a site would do, but the best thing is a photo on your fb wall, because in the vanishingly unlikely event that you may be called upon to prove it, just getting your phone out and showing the penis your interlocutor would end the discussion there and then. Bear in mind that the police are not enforcing this law - ACPO stated it is unenforcible, but that is not to say that you should flout the law, just that you need not worry about being prosecuted.

A tactic which worked well the last night game i was at was to throw a silly bright strobing torch about 2m in front of some cover - my guess was that the enemy would not be able to see anything going on behind it and that proved to be the case because i was able to get out from the shed and into some bushes without being shot at and get a couple of meters further forward which gave me enough range with my SVD to hit even the furthest corner of the field (the area which they were congregating in, in prep for attempting to attack the opposite flank, since they were screwed on the flank i was crawling up).

Lol! That reminds me of a time we were playing a game where we had hostages whom the opposition had to recapture. The rules were that the hostages were immune to being hit until they had been grabbed by their team mates. So this one bloke, Charlie, had a reputation for hiding stuff down his pants etc, so i was keeping a close eye on him. At one point he was trying to sidle over towards the edge of the camp and kept ignoring people telling him to get back into the middle - so i told him he had 2 seconds to comply or else... and then rinsed him when he decided to call my bluff! I mean, so what if he couldn't be 'killed', 365FPS full auto from 15m hurts... He took it pretty well - we usually play on the same side whenever we're at a game together. Maybe he doesn't actually like me, maybe he just doesn't want to be on the opposite team again lol!

I've seen someone use a modern M14 with all the RAS, Crane stock etc and a combi torch and red laser unit... at a CQB venue! Bloke called Coldy - he did really well with it too. If you search fleabay for Ultrafire XML T6 you'll come across a range of excellent options. The type with 2 18650 batteries and the zoomable bevel are probably best as weapon mount torches, but they do not come with mouse tail pads; you can mount them so that you can press the switch with your thumb without moving your hand off a vertical foregrip. I've just ordered a pressure pad which may fit: this. The single battery one is also good, just not mental bright, but obviously lighter. There is also a torch model "C8" which uses the same Cree XML T6 LED and they come with a mouse tail; it uses 1 18650 but produces a bit more light due to a bigger reflector, but the glass may well break if shot - I have used one with a couple of layers of blister pack clear plastic covering the front of the bevel and although BB's went through that, they didnt break the glass. The C8 often comes bundled with one or more 20mm mounts and barrel mounts. These 3 types all come with 5 modes: full power, 1/2 power, low power, strobe & SOS. The prices of them go up and down but you should be able to get any of them for around £10 I'm planning to get an 9500lm Skyray soon, possibly on Tuesday, for around £25 - these come with 3 modes: Full power, Low power and Strobe (gulp!) but afaik there is no 50mm diameter circular mount that attaches to a 20mm rail so i will need to cable tie it on. The short stocky type uses 4 x 18650's and 7 XML T6 LED's, but there are some which use 2 or 3 18650's, utilising an extender tube and 3 LED's with 5 modes, and these fit into 30mm mounts with a spacer, so even though they put out around 1/3rd as much light, they may be more useful. I dunno... I mean really, an 9 1/2 thousand lumen torch is probably pointless overkill, but i just really fancy seeing how disorienting so much power in a strobe can be

Here is my opinion. The minute you can prove you are an airsofter is the minute the defence against prosecution under the VCRA applies to you. 1 photo of you airsofting. That is it. Take the paint off your 2-tone with Fairy Power Spray. You don't need to put orange back on to take your gun home, etc - you should not have your gun on show to the genpop no matter what colour it is. Nor does it matter what age you are. U-18's can't buy any airsoft guns, so it must be gifted to you. What colour it is once you own it is only an issue if you are not using it for airsoft. Hero Shark eyepro is pretty good, but his lower face masks are way over priced. These are the way forward. They do them in green, tan, black, and black with white skeleton jaw also, so pick one that goes with your general colour scheme. Obviously you can also respray them. They work best with some bits of foam or other padding on the inside against your cheekbones. That allows them to work with any shape of eyepro and also makes them more comfortable on your face, because you do need to wear them quite tightly so that they do not move when you run - without padding they can chafe your skin. Most people don't need so much padding, but i have a big nose...

Let us know how the ZCI barrel works out, Mack, please?