Ian_Gere

A neoprene mask is the difference between broken skin and red marks. It's also much less likely to allow a broken tooth. In either case mesh is superior and I'm certain it's either/or not both...

I think about 710FPS, Liam - just for range experiments. It will also be interesting to see how well the air seal and barrel width guestimates hold up at much higher pressure. The steel barrel base is an SVD only part - it replaces the aluminium stock part to allow more points of contact with the internal barrel for stability, but also it's stiffer and heavier so it ought to be more difficult for the spring shock to move. TBH, I doubt it can do anything noticeable that LX tape around the inner barrel can't, but for €16 it's worth a punt. I think I'll be going with a new quad stack 1000rnd AK mag again. My old one died at Skirmish - the lip snapped clean off as it was locking dboys... what can you say!?! Nobody else makes 'em though.

I can hardly believe I've just done this, but... King Arms Enhanced Selector Lever for AK - £31.54 delivered from HK :gulp: But good old airsoft.tiger111hk.com came through for the internal plate, including a $0.13 discount which under the circumstances could not be sniffed at... so £2.90-odd delivered also from HK. I feel slightly nauseous.

I recently got a PSO-1 replica scope, Liam, but other than that, no she's the same. I'm planning on a reinforced piston soon, because the steel sear is taking shavings of aluminium off stock one. I'll probably get the steel barrel base as well, just because it may prove useful and may as well save the postage from the Czech Republic by buying them together. And an M200 linear spring, which is the most powerful spring which will fit that I can find, to do some experiments on FPS and range. I got what I quietly felt was a pretty spectacular hit with Svetlana at Humber Airsoft a few weeks ago - under fire from 2 directions, poor bushy cover no higher than 0.5m high, trying to get steady on a difficult bit of rocky slope, bloody uncomfortable and steep enough to fall down; target approx 75m away, on the opposite side of the central valley, moving down and left; wind was gusty around both me and the target, but with an inconsistent prevailing wind right to left and towards me, so from about 2 on a clock, blowing down the valley between us. I overcompensated for his speed of movement and hit him at belt height slightly left of centre => result!

Yeah, to test accuracy improvements you need a stabilised shooting position and something to fire at about 30-35m away. Crucially it must be a situation you can reproduce again, so that you can compare the effect of any new modifications later; a gun without a bipod can be stabilised well enough by just resting it on something which remains still. It also helps if there is no wind... but not many of us have that length of enclosed space at home. Personally, the building I live in is part way up a hill, so I can aim out of my back room window over the rooftops of neighbours houses (without any chance that the BB is going to hit anybody, since no windows or skylights face my way... but I shoot from well inside the room sniper stylee anyway, just in case there is anybody nearby whose mindset is incompatible with facts when assessing risks); there is a 40mm aluminium pole supporting TV aerials at the right distance but, obviously, I can't attach targets to it, so analysis wise I'm reduced to "ding" hit, or "..." miss and air movement is a real pain in the hole. What I meant above about "Can you... bla...?" is that until you can shoot competently during a skirmish, accuracy mods will not translate into as much improvement in hitting opponents as they may produce during range tests. Also, the more OCD you get about it, hand modifying each component to fit exactly how you want it, etc. the less return, in terms of performance, you get for effort. Plus wind. So really there is only so much effort and/or cash that will prove to have been worthwhile.

It's a stupid design for a stupid looking gun... truly the P90 of its day and its an Ares

Others for me too. I'm hoping to be settled on my new meds soon so I can start doing something about cardiovascular fitness, in order to keep up with an AF-UK squad in the field, but even if I end up as a lone wol... er... wallaby, I'd rather snipe at Delta than for them!

Just be careful if you wrap the hop rubber in PTFE tape. 1. use silicone grease on the outside once wrapped (or CT-2 Teflon(PTFE) Silicone grease for best results*) 2. if you have to press very hard to make the barrel with rubber fitted slide into the hop unit, you risk the rubber jamming and the barrel pushing through inside it, which can damage the rubber. Ideally the barrel would have been cleaned with a spotless soft cloth using soapy water, rinsed thoroughly with water, air dried, and finally cleaned again with an alcohol swab, to remove every last trace of oil, grease, or muck, both inside and where the rubber fits outside as well. Once the alcohol has evaporated, using freshly washed hands, when you carefully fit a new rubber onto the barrel, there will be the maximum amount of friction between the two, which means that when it comes to wrapping the PTFE tape around the rubber, you will be able to use a fraction more (which when greased with CT-2 will still fit), resulting in the tightest air seal and most stable breach-end. In practice, the only area that you need to keep relatively grease free is the bump inside the rubber and a good slap of grease will get you past a multitude of sins. You can always give the barrel and hop a clean from inside with alcohol swabs later. AEG accuracy itself is always going to be more at the mercy of air movement than almost anything you can do anything about, but also, due to the way that AEG's are usually fired in skirmish, body movement. Are you sufficiently well practiced that, while moving under fire, you can bring your AEG up from a muzzle down carry position to your shoulder in a fluid movement which ends simultaneously with your dominant eye aiming over iron sights to a man sized target 35m away and with a trigger pull which puts a hit on that man sized target first time and pretty much every time (ie with no need to correct your aim before pulling the trigger, and no need to correct for wind unless conditions are blustery)? If you can then there may be something to be gained by homemade improvements, but first try an H-nub, a sticky hop rubber combined with heavier BB's, and a TBB. I would suggest that, unless your inner barrel is so loose that you can hear or see it wobble, there is so little to be potentially gained by fucking about with tape that dismantling your gun just to do it is asking for trouble. In some ways AEG's are pretty simple mechanisms, but the trouble is that the parts are manufactured within varying degrees of tolerance, which means that any particular gun which works, as it is, can go back together seemingly just as it was and not work, apparently for no earthly reason. Naturally you can just re-dismantle it and re-reassemble and often that will do the trick, but trust me, the more you fuck with it, the more likely it is that you will fuck something up... *CT-2 is brilliant grease for every part of any airsoft gun - it is without question the way forward.

Neither can I - the psychological damage would run into the millions to repair.

She left them on my bedroom floor. Well, I say 'floor'... they were actually caught on the lampshade, but they ended up on the floor eventually!

Hmmm... I could actually get to Gunman fairly easily - there's an East Midlands Trains service between Liverpool Lime St and Norwich which stops at Notnum (so the cost isn't prohibitive) and busses could get me within 10mins walk of the Strawless site. I could do the kit too. I dunno. I was so depressed about OP: Shi'ght going down the pan that I've really only just emerged from under my emotional stone re: doing something else instead (actually i'm exaggerating, just in case that isn't clear - i've actually been struggling to stay positive about simply bothering to draw breath, let alone skirmish, but i think i'm now just about winning). It's pretty much finger pulling out time though but, as much as i'd like to meet up, the WW2 thing sounds like the organisers imagine that a large part of the fun on offer is the immersion in a WW2 scenario, which it may be for an enthusiast, and perhaps would be for me too, if i'd spent a few months honing a loadout of original gear and getting a gun nicely fettled, but since i haven't and it's too late to do it even if i had the money and inclination, i'm worried that my main focus, skirmishing, may be insufficiently catered for. See, to me a bunch of people sitting around eating Spam out of tins and drinking Bovril is A. a brilliant sniping opportunity and B. something I wouldn't do unless the only alternative was actual lasting damage due to malnutrition (although smoked cheese and rye bread would work).

Nah, none of it will go with any of my loadouts

I think pics are in order, Russ. Before skirmish & after.

I'll wait for the after action report before I say 'good job', Russ. Duct/Gaffer Tape on knee pads works well, definitely, but I have my doubts about the glue/bandage interface and also about how well the bandage will stay in place with the pad attached. I have worn tubular bandage under kecks to prevent the straps for crap knee pads, which bunch up in the crook of the knee when they slip, from giving me the dreaded chafe - it isn't as immobile as you'd want TBH and that's without any added weight. I think the best solution may be to add pockets to the inside of the kecks and fit sleeping mat foam faced with a layer of plastic washing up bowl inside. Although the bagginess of the kecks will work against this as a plan. Maybe some plastic with a preformed curve, so that even if the pad isn't central when you kneel, the shape will make your knee slide into the pad. Couple of layers of 2L pop bottle may do it

It's an iPhone with a noob tube on it.

For me: t'other 1/2 dozen manly mag springs - £16.50 posted ~ RSOV another Turnigy Nano-Tech 11.1V 25C-50C 1.3Ah LiPo - $16 posted ~ hobbyking Cold War era Soviet Faux Leather belt, 2 Afghan Coins, & 9 Soviet Badges inc. Felix Dzerzhinsky portrait (woohoo) - 28.07 Swiss Francs (maybe my Russian geezer has wised up to the real value of the $US) = approx £20 1m length bundle of 0000 grade steel wool - £2.04 posted ~ fleabay 500ml Acetone & 250ml Dichloromethane - £11.28 couriered ~ fleabay (for taking varnish off gun furniture, but I may yet add some NaOH if the hideous gloop proves stubborn) 50g VAN DYKE CRYSTALS - £2.49 posted ~ fleabay (trad wood stain made from walnut husks) KGB Special Units Senior Lieutenant Shoulder Boards - £[redacted] ~ fleabay Multi Function Target - £9.49 delivered ~ fleabay

Right, in an attempt to keep my spending focussed and dispense with any lingering yearning to buy a sten and and go all, "Up the action, Bucks!", which can only lead to the growth of a tactical lip warmer, I'm going to make you lot aware of this linky which I've had secretly gnawing at me for longer than I care to admit. Ah, actually that's not going to work out too well or you'll think i'm worse than i actually am - I spotted it when Russ got his helmet together... here somebody buy it ffs!

Fitting the new 1, no. Shooting the shit out of the old 1... tempting but also no, because ricochets might damage other parts of my lappy and i'm suffering enough as it is :'(

Ha! Actually i've just sussed it while having a piss, as you do! It needs 3 tubes: 1 as a perforated barrel, 1 as a stabilising envelope and to attach the firing pin, and 1 to trigger a rotating sear. It'll have to wait until i get my new lappy screen before i draw it, but by next Monday we should have a plan for a safe projectile bang...

I have an idea forming for how to use a spring loaded tube inside a 2nd tube to fire the primer into a static pin, so that the flash and shock wave propagate backwards up through the tube, away from the target and loading involves pushing the rear part, with stabilising fins, into the forward blunt head, like a spring loaded bayonet fitting... but at the moment it's stubbornly refusing to coalesce into an actual design. Age. But if any plagiarising bastard brings this to market before i draw the thing, remember you heard it here 1st!

Assuming you built some interior structures for the internal barrel to lock against, because that's an important job of a BASR's external barrel: to combat wobble and flex of the inner. There's ne reason why you couldn't substitute a piece of carbon steel tube of the same-ish outside diameter as the No. 4 barrel though and just wrap the inner barrel in tape and paper, or as I read of an L1A1 build, lead sheet. Dunno whether that was flashing for roof sealing or thinner foil type stuff like on champaigne bottles.

^^Wait until the absence of wear on the contact face of an anti-reversal latch gives you wood! Just bought a Z-Tactical Wireless PTT - £20.54 posted ~ fleabay 2 x 16340 batteries and a double charger (which also fits 2 18650's ) - £3.99 posted ~ fleabay HP Pavilion G6 15.6" LED Screen to replace the one I accidentally shot - £37.69 posted ~ fleabay

That M14 looks sweet, Sam. I just varnished the furniture of my CM.048 - used cheap varnish thinking it would look authentic Soviet. Turns out communist varnish may have been all the same, but apparently was pretty good in comparison to the choice capitalism gave me gonna have to get some acetone and steel wool and start again! Anyhoo, recent purchases: 36 Thunder B shells for a blag price I feel would be dishonourable to reveal some DDPM nade pouches from our own dear Blacktor; a set of bright and set of subdued Soviet Motorised Rifle Troops insignia plus an orange Survival 1st Aid box. My Afganka turned up too, woohoo!

Might be a good idea if it was 40mm wide, blunt, and set off a shotgun primer...