TacMaster

I'm in love with that RS SVD. Seriously. I want one now..... Curse you 2-0, my wallet will be anally raped if I can ever afford one.......

Let me know how you get on with the S-Thunder launcher, I've been debating buying it as a backup weapon for a while now

I like the design a little, but hate the feel from handling it- you need tiny arms to shoulder it comfortably

Rubber knives are great fun for skirmishing. I once 'killed' a guy in a tower by poking the knife through its gappy floorboards.

For Call of Duty- Modern Warfare 2 was the turning point for the series- everything was downhill afterwards. I don't think there's any servers still up. Battlefield- Bad Company 2 was and still is my favourite. Despite 2 successive BF games coming out since BC2's release, there's still a large player base. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas is one of the ultimates in tactical console-based first/3rd person shooters. Very fun albeit a little dated. Still a lot of players online. On PC, Red Orchestra is the winner hands down for me- the original has mods for Europe '44-'45 (called Darkest Hour), North Africa '42-'45 (Mare Nostrum) and the original- Eastern Front '41-'44 (Ostfront). Darkest hour still has populated servers and update support is being revived after a few years of developer dormancy- some improvements and changes of game features and mechanics will be coming in the next few months or so. And the best part about Red Orchestra? It's so old even my MacBook can run it quite quickly on the highest settings. It takes literally no time to load it up either.

​I'm looking for a half decent PMR446 radio and I have a budget of up to £100. What can you guys suggest? One bit of criteria- the radio has to look a little military-ish, i.e. not like a Motorola TLKR

Do they have an actual shop where you can go and test them before buying? If so then you could look for an E&L AK again, have their technician strip it down and check it functions correctly with you present and then if there are any problems the tech will probably be able to fix it/grab a new gun. You'd get flexibility and you wouldn't have to commit money before finding out the gun you paid for was a lemon.

Not all hope is lost- there's the refillable CO2 cartridges you can fill with a mix of green gas with a little CO2 for some more punch- if Ian_Gere gets on with the one he's bought, using the refillable cartridge could be a viable option.

I'm not entirely convinced lack of education on the political system is entirely to blame- have you considered that the public may feel the leaders of each party to be either out of touch or a little odd? (Personally I consider Nigel Farage to be a little unsettling) there's been a huge lack of faith in the Conservative and Labour parties, and the support for the Lib Dems has reduced drastically since Clegg took charge of the party. I believe support was at 25% when Clegg was put in charge, and now it's at 6%? Don't quote me on that though. I'd like to see a no vote, so the amount of people not prepared to vote for any of the major parties can be measured. This could lead to said parties changing their policy on issues or changing leadership , which could result in more votes and support for them next election. Back on topic- the most political education I got at school was in GCSE history, specifically in the Cold War unit and having to know the ideological differences between Left wing and Right wing constitutions/parties as part of the syllabus. I think the educational authorities prefer to tiptoe around the subject of politics as some pupils may come from a home where political beliefs are strongly Labour/Conservative/UKIP/BNP etc. Class discussions on the matter of politics which involve pupils with strong beliefs could result in falling outs and punch ups in the playground. I wouldn't want to be the teacher of that particular class. As for the teachers themselves- they prefer not to share their views with students, which is entirely understandable. A political education/discussion class could result in some awkward questions being asked of the teacher.

Good call, they're a nice bit of kit for Kombat.

Not to mention the drill........ I've seen CCF cadets come up to receive awards from senior officers on parades, 3 times I've seen CCF cadets mince up, take the award and bimble off without shaking the officers' hand or saluting them...

All my extra kit and bits & pieces have been bought from Cadet Direct. I've also bought stuff from Military1st if it's cheaper there. For night ops- red light torch is the only night specific piece of kit. Red light doesn't ruin the human eye's natural night vision when the light's shone at it. As well as this you might want to get a field hat (or 'crap hat') so you don't have to worry about getting your beret dirty/losing the cap badge when you take it out for fieldcraft. The ATC berets are quite light in colour so won't be good for night. Once you've fully committed and are more experienced and senior within the flight you may want to buy a set of your own webbing. The Osprey MOLLE battle belt set sold on the aforementioned Cadet retailer is perfect in both price and utility.

Exactly. Stereotypes are created when somebody meets another person of a particular faith, gender, political persuasion, cadet force etc, doesn't like them, and blabs to their mates about it- and these stereotypes are perpetuated. I know for a fact there are a lot of ATC personnel who aren't snobby little shits but I have met some who were and didn't help to stop this stereotype's perpetuation. I've also had the misfortune of meeting ACF cadets who were complete dipsticks and couldn't tell the difference between a safety catch and sight adjustment tool, and didn't have the best track with the law- we had one who was done for GBH after he assaulted a pupil at his school with a saw in their DT class. I knew him for a while- he was a class A prick. He got chucked out after his conviction.

It's all stemmed from the ATC being snobby towards the ACF and treating the ACF like they're a bunch of oiks. This gave the ATC a reputation of snobbishness and idiocy for thinking one cadet force was better than the other.

Again, you'll meet people like that everywhere, even in the ATC. There are chavs everywhere. Plus the bullies probably joined the ACF because they didn't want to look like pansies in RAF blues and they didn't want to have to care for 4 sets of uniform and 2 pairs of footwear.

I've done so much in the ACF I would never have been able to do outside of it. And there's still a lot I haven't done after 3 years!

That also tends to be the case in the ACF. My Company's quite good for it, however we have a Platoon in Bordon who only do fieldcraft and drill- my Platoon shares the same parent regiment as them (REME) so I've had to teach some of their cadets the history of the regiment right before the test. The facilities also impact training. We have a Platoon right outside Aldershot in a TA training centre who keep about half the Company's rifles in the armouries there, so they can easily do hands-on Skill at Arms lessons. In contrast, we only have a secure safe which usually has some Drill Purpose L98A2s (deactivated A2s) and sometimes we'll have 2 or 3 No. 8 .22 rifles there. This means we can't do a great deal of SAA.

We still have a little fun in the real vehicles, albeit rarely. My company had the fortune to secure an RAF Merlin for use during an excersize on annual camp this year. Legendary fun, got a drop off and extraction after securing a 'Tornado pilot' who was 'captured' by local 'militia' in the scenario we were given.The training video for the Merlin we were shown was so early 2000s it made me cringe. As for adventurous training- we still do fairly risky activities. Last year we had some fun kayaking in a reservoir near Dartmoor, and we did some proper rock climbing on a cliff face too. All carefully controlled activities with helmets and umpteen First Aid kits, safety staff and minibuses ready for a trip to A&E

While some people leave the ACF because "It's boring and we don't do much" those people are the ones who don't commit, don't pass the subject tests and don't get to the next star level. In a nutshell, the amount of stuff you do depends on tests passed For example: If you are a Basic Training cadet, you cannot go on Annual camps until you are a 1 star You cannot handle or fire any weapon until you have done a Weapons Handling Test- the only exception is if you are handling the weapon while doing the test. WHTs have to be completed every 6 months, and it's the same in all the forces. You cannot go on exchange trips to other countries (we did one last year to Canada, we've also done them to Kentucky, USA, and to Lithuania) if you are a Basic. The longer you stay in, the more opportunities you will get. On a personnel note- the ATC training staff I have met have been absolute twats. Including one incident a few years ago- I had arrived at the detachment on a Wednesday night for our weekly parade. We share the detachment with the ATC, however they parade on Tuesday and Thursday nights. There were 3 unfamiliar people outside the detachment- 2 in RAF blues and one in civvies. I assumed the 2nd one in blues (a cadet) had come back from a camp as he had a bergen. I could see no visible rank on either adult. As said before, one was in civvies. I was walking past to the door and the male adult cleared his throat as if to gain my attention. I turned towards him and he had a go at me about not saluting officers when this kong is clearly not wearing a rank or uniform, and the other instructor was wearing a rank nobody outside the ATC and RAF should be expected to recognise. TL;DR- ATC staff can be a bunch of knobbers. As well as various other things like putting padlocks on the fridge door and one of the remaining cupboards in the detachment's kitchen.

I'm afraid no sniper rifle is good enough out of the box, they all need expensive and extensive upgrades/mods to get them to a high enough standard to be more effective than a normal AEG. The rifles which require the least work out of the box are the A&K M24 and the A&K SVD. These still need work OOB though.

Another little pointer; barrel range DOES NOT increase range- hop unit modifications do.

Got my own WW1 trench I made for a history project years ago. My grandfather is heavily into modelling (specifically in doing historically and location accurate 00 gauge train sets- he has written and published massive series of books about them too) and I got a lot of help from him. I used some old railway figurines of his and painted them khaki to look as realistic as possible. Enough waffling, here's the pics: Closeup of dugout Wire section- not completely accurate and was damaged in storage- however I think this makes it look nicely battle scarred Closeup of crater detail Edit: got some Warhammer 40K space marines incl. standard troop units, scouts, veterans and 2 tanks (Rhino and a Vindicator- the one with the Earthshaker cannon and bulldozer blade?) as well as 1 bike unit up for sale if anyone's interested?

There should be a hex bolt on one of the fire selectors, probably on the bottom of it. Undo that and you can take that one off, and pull the other (with the connecting bar) out. As for the gearbox removal: Remove the motor plate Disconnect the motor There should be 2 screws on the inside on the plastic dividing wall between the gearbox and the motor cavity. These need to be undone Lift the gearbox out There may be a couple of other screws you need to remove before taking the GB out and it could vary per model- I was used to my old CYMA MP5A5 and I haven't had that for a while.

Sliding stock is the best on the MP5. It's one of the main advantages of the MP5 for CQB, as well as looking damn good.