NickM

Ultimate wargames, Limpsfield and Fawkham, the sites were going down hill a little from lack of investment, numbers dropped, the regulars that were turning up weren't our cup of tea and we had a falling out with the old owner. New owner has taken over, they are maintaining the Saturday games, numbers appear to have increased and they are investing in the sites. It was always aiming at a younger clientele, expect some two tones and more speedball style of play. Last time I visited was almost 2 years ago. Good luck. There are always some of the Battlesim and Filmsim games at the Pit, many of those take place on a Saturday. If you don't mind a bit of a drive Gunman Eversly do Saturday and Sunday games twice a month. Same goes for their Tuddenham site but that is near thetford which would be a fair way for you to go regularly. They also give the option to camp over for free on these weekends, fri and sat nights, occasionally a night game is organised on the Saturday which can give a 3rd "days" play in your weekend

Or ........ and this might be a wild idea, actually approach a regular site owner with a venue idea. Gunman, did or possibly still are running an incentive to find new sites. If you suggest a site that they take up there was some kind of reward, £1000 pops into my head but I am probably wrong. UCAP have just taken on a lease for an ex prison near Bristol. They already have the knowhow, kit, experience and insurance contacts to get it up and running. You have no need to get involved other than enjoy the site. If you are after running it as a business for yourself I simply wish you good luck!

The limit at most sites as far as I am aware (and anyone else feel free to correct me) is 1J of energy at the muzzle for an automatic. Using 0.20g bb's which is the lowest mass and probably the most commonly used ammo for sites, some companies use this as a hard limit which calculates as 328fps, mostly CQB sites where people are being hit at very very close ranges. But many sites allow a variance of +/- 5% which gets rounded up to 350fps as a hard limit. There is a great website for calculating all of the energies etc www.1728.org/energy.htm

You'll find the FPS will drop with use, and for a while the fps may be inconsistent due to the hop bedding in. However they clearly state on the website that the fps is 330 manufacturer quoted and they have "tested" it to 350. Did you skirmish the IF that day or did the site say no to its use? If you haven't skirmished it:- I would seriously consider contacting them and informing them that the gun you have been sent fires well above the uk power limits for a full auto IF therefore you would like to send it back for a refund as it is not fit for purpose. You may be offered credit but I would push for a refund. They may also offer to take it and replace it, or "fix it". You could claim you have now lost faith in the gun's performance and would expect it to be fit for purpose from the box. Feel free to quote appropriate distance selling laws. Most companies will bend over backwards to sort it out as they don't like most things to be taken to trading standards. If you have skirmished it or put more than a few test rounds through it your position may be much harder to fight. Especially if there is wear to the gun. If nothing else it hasn't been a massively expensive mistake, over time you may find it is skirmishable as the spring weakens slightly. Use it for your 3 games to get a defence and buy something better when you have saved your pennies. Run potential purchases by people at your local site and/or on here, the more info you have the better.

I make up my own DIY packs. It means I get all the things I need and they are also the things I like. Realistically how much are you going to be carrying the whole pack (that's where the rat packs come in, they are small ish, light ish and contain most of the calories you will need). There are very few games I can think of where you would need to carry all your supplies with you the whole time. I carry snacks in a pocket or small pouch and leave the bigger main meals etc back at the team base with a small gas cooking set. Depending on what you are into there are some great bits and pieces out there, morrisons and tescos had/have wet packs of chilli or meatballs that I would boil in the bag, the hot water makes a big mug of tea and a portion of cous cous that could go into the bag just needed a long spoon to eat comfortably. John west have tuna pouches that make good lunches on the go or can be added to other dishes, they have a tomato and a lime one. Tescos have small snack bags I tend to have 3 in my pocket at one time, I like biltong and dried mango/mixed fruit and nuts and a salted roasted peanuts. I guess I would go with something like: Breakfast: Alpen, in a ziplock with milk powder and sugar already added then add water in the morning, cold or hot however you are feeling. Kids fromage fraise (yoghurt in a tube or pouch) Fruit leather (like fruit rollups) or fresh fruit if I'm not weight dependent. Snacks Tuna pouch Biltong Dried mango Salted nuts Poweraid/isotonic (I found these in effervescent tablet form so I carry a bottle dedicated to the isotonic to sip from throughout the day, normally 1 each half day) the hydration pouch is only ever water! Cereal bars Lunch (if I stop) Small wraps with pepperami or individually wrapped cheese portions I make these up at the time or perhaps a Ginsters style pasty or slice Cuppa soups (if its cold and I need something warm) Fruit leather, or fresh fruit Dinner Meatballs or chilli with cous cous ( cooks super quick, just add boiling water) Or Decent noodles (I prefer proper Chinese style noodles) minimal cooking but you can add lots of stuff. I dry veg in the lead up to use, things like finely sliced carrots, cabbage, ginger and sometimes garlic, add these with some biltong and you have something that approximates Pho, a Vietnamese noodle soup. Add in a lime and those sushi fish things that hold soy sauce ( one with tabasco, one soy and one with thai fish sauce) and it tastes great, almost like the real thing, very filling and warming. Simple and light weight options I would go with pasta and sauce, possibly add a tuna pouch or two. To save fuel and keep things hot I would suggest making a pot cozy if you haven't already, simple duct tape and ThermaWrap ( foil sided bubble wrap).

Ignoring the problem of safety and the requirement to have players in lids under it I can see it adding another layer of realism to the whole process and could be great. ( I don't see how a small drone like many already in use would be a problem) Weaponising it would probably be a bad idea. I can see the law/gov/military looking unfavourably on that one. Yes there are Dicks in every walk of life but I wouldn't say Airsofters are any more dickish than the average. Most sites have rules about shooting wildlife already and I would be fairly confident it wouldn't get shot at regularly if similar rules were put in place. Plus at the heights it would be operated to make it useful I would expect very few would be able to hit it. Unbalancing teams, yes well I guess if you give one team a drone you could give the other team the ability to "bring it down". Don't forget battery life while getting better isn't perfect, so you are realistically looking at short periods of time when it would be operational. How about having a set docking station ( this could possibly charge the drone as well), when hit the drone would return to automatically? Issue the other team a hand held surface to air rocket launcher (no projectile) that would work on a similar system to the IR targeting system the US used to use (MILES I believe). Give the site or operators the ability to decide the number of hits required to down the drone, and control the length of time between shots simulating a reloading. The drone being hit can trigger an additional scenario, recover the drone sim, a large drone sized and weighted lump placed on the field the team would have to recover it, possibly with a key type device that would have to be used to restart the drone. Or just have the drone out of action for a specified length of time simulating reequipping or retasking a neighbouring drone.

Cheers guys, still tinkering with the idea of a cyma MP5 but understand the risks could be high. Hmmmm I like the ICS but not the pricetag. will just have to see how things go with savings. Maybe I tell the wife it was the cyma I bought but actually pick up an ICS.......

Gunman are also a fantastic bunch as well, their milsim lite are a good mix of milsim rules and skirmish play. The sandpit also have their battlesim, which is slightly closer to milsim than Gunman's milsim lite. There are so many different styles of play you will find plenty on the spectrum that falls between the 4 day epic that is/was available in wintery Norway and the 10 day coldwar milim run in the states, down to the Teir1 and Stirling (that from what I have heard seem to focus on physical endurance) to the gunman/sandpit milsims, down to the gunman milsim lite and ucap battlesim with skirmishing languishing way down on the scale.

Try EAG, elite action games, the guys down at Worthing are a really good bunch, keep an eye out for Jimbo (head marshal), Wolfie and Pants. The three run a very tight site with lots of very friendly regulars. My first steps into milsim were via them. The games were good but didn't require epic fitness which for me was important. Plus they work on the principle that most players aren't capable of or want to really play long games with no breaks, ie sleeping in game, 18-24 hour straight types. They often work on either night games or day games. Night games start early evening and play through til 10 or 11am. Day games timings wise were more like skirmishes but game play all day no lunch sometimes to midnight ish. They are also pretty good at getting interesting story lines going and a good level of realism. Plus there weren't lots of ordering about etc although there was an IC and 2IC who were mostly figureheads, trusted regulars who would guide teams in choosing and planning objectives.

It is doable! I know of a few people that have, it does mean no MED at most sites although I have heard of a few that will enforce the MED on Sub 350fps guns, citing " the rest of the players don't know you are sub 350 so will kick off if you use it within the MED" although they are few and far between. If you think of upgrading a sniper and getting accuracy, range and consistency on a 500fps build as a dark art, getting the same with 350fps is a darker than dark art, plan on spending a lot of time tinkering and fettling your setup. The guys I know of said they spend 6 months perfecting the 500fps setup and more like a year til they were happy with the sub 350. As for barrel spacers, the easiest method with the least chance of vibration in my eyes is to wrap the barrel in paper. I used a significant quantity of A4 wrapped tightly around the barrel. In my JG Bar10 Gspec the paper is landscape as you look down the barrel. It makes the gun more barrel heavy, but I then added a couple of old break pads to the inside of the stock which was also very tightly packed with foam, the foam deadens the vibrations from the hollow stock. It increased the weight, but in my hands it feels a lot more realistic.

Well, I have heard almost nothing but good things about the Cyma AK series, seems like other than a few lemons (like any other company) they are pretty universally regarded as having good range and accuracy out of the box. I'm looking for another primary to add to my current ICS L85A2 and ICS M4A1 armoury and due to wedding debt etc trying to do it on the cheap. I like AK's but I have to admit I've always had a thing for MP5's so does anyone have any experience of these? Cheers in advance.

Mysteriously the original blog post link has "broken"

I was 50-50 on playing this weekend but I now have 90 school books to mark so my weekend will mostly consist of marking exercise books followed by some lesson planning. If I'm good I will manage to do this with the rugby on in the background. Tudders is great fun with a good mix of buildings and woodland (when it isn't being used for shooting) and the Norwich site is a really nice woodland setup. Don't expect much in the way of structures, there is a lovely trench system, a few piles of barrels but the place is fairly overgrown, which I quite like. They haven't messed about with it just left it fairly natural. Both good sites, with friendly staff.

One of the biggest mistakes made by new players is not having their kit set up very well and/or understanding the limitations of their kit. By that I'm specifically talking about hop units being set properly, and in woodland this will improve your range. I see it with most rental guns, site operators don't set these often or ever in some cases. It's not practical in many cases for them to spend 5 minutes per gun, often 20 or 30 guns a day to do this. So if it's your own gun, learn to set the hop before you go next time. If it is the site rental guns either ask one of the marshals when they aren't looking busy or one of your team mates who seems to know their stuff with kit. This will improve your range. It only takes 10 or 15 rounds. In CQB setting hops isn't as important as the ranges you are shooting are much shorter so less likely gravity will have a big impact on your shots. The next is your bb weight. If renting you may be limited to the sites standard rental ammo which will likely be 0.20g. You might find that a site owner will allow you to use 0.25g if bought from them. If it is your own gun switching to 0.25g is advisable. It is heavier but counter intuitively actually gives better range, is less affected by wind and less likely to have its trajectory altered by grass or leaves, giving slightly better penetration.

Upshot of my discussions with the technicians, glass tubing comes in a variety of sizes but there are a few different types of glass and getting the right one is important, it seemed one is better with heat, one is better for impact and they didn't know which was which. They are sold with internal diameters but they tend to be dead on the mm, so 6mm or 7mm would be available. I guess with a set of digital callipers you might be able to pick one out of a batch that would work but there would be no guarantees that the diameter would stay consistent all the way through. The final issue would be cutting the hop window, with a diamond dremmel wheel might be a good idea but you could end up shattering the tube.