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Airsoft is banned in China, has been for years, along with anything remotely associated it seems. I've heard that banning of most gel blasters is on it's way as well. Aliexpress is just slow at making sure it complies. Companies like CYMA, E&C, JG, ZCI etc must have a special license. You can still ship Airsoft gear out of HK since it's running on a "special status", 1 country 2 systems they call it. That's due to stop in 2047, however every year Beijing seem to clamp down a little bit more. 2000 - 2010, HK stores were pretty dominate in the Airsoft world.

Can't beat Airsoft and Sex Toys 🙂

The real problem with our sport and shipping, in regards to China, is that the majority of Airsoft products can only be shipped out of HK. Some products can be flown out via FedEx or UPS but anything remotely gun shaped or gun related must be shipped via a boat. The smallest size you can get from HK port is a pallet (1cbm). So if you just wanted a few boxes of parts you have to pay for a full pallet. In general it's an absolute nightmare.

I don't think that's quite right, before covid a pallet from China cost around £450, then went to around £600 and now back down to around the same as before. Are you sure it was for a pallet and not a 20ft container? Every day I get messages from Chinese freight agents all fighting each other for business and dropping their prices on a weekly basis. There's a clear difference though between the pricing of sea freight and domestic (Royal Mail) shipping. In fact in the past 6 months RM have reduced the price of small parcels. Currently £3.95 for Tracked 24 (1st class) for 2kg parcel, fully tracked, email and text message with photo.

Only 1kg, would only be £3.95 via Royal Mail 24 Tracked service. My guess is in order to simplify their website backend shipping function they just use a single shipping weight. It's a pretty lazy way doing shipping but very tempting as it can cut a huge amount of confusion. Took me a few hours to get my head around how the shipping worked and I had to "fudge" the system in order to get it working as I wanted. So many work-arounds.

Airsoft companies have been over charging for years sadly. Some do it to try to get the customer to order more items in the attempt to justify the shipping etc. I actually subsidise 90% of the shipping fees in order to retain customers. £12.99 is very high for some BB's, what was the total weight?

@Josh SocomTactical how are you finding the ETU's? Is it fully micro-switched or a mix of optical? We're testing micro-switched ones at the moment - so far so good but early days yet. I've always been super weary as they are prone to failure after extensive use. Even the more expensive Japanese switches are only rated for 50,000.

If I remember rightly the sector gear is short-stroked from the factory, something to keep in mind

What's your current cylinder? What's your spring and FPS? Might not be any reason to change anything, just because you can doesn't mean you should. 🙂 Good job for actually thinking about the cylinder to inner barrel ratio though, generally for a 363mm you want a 3/4 or 4/5

@Fatboy40 thanks for the feedback, so far I've been very happy with the performance and reliability of the XT 22TPA. I was getting around 5% failures with the ZCI and Rocket motors, very annoying. These XT motors with their top fan seem to keep the temperature down, so less damage to the wiring and commutator over time. The stock Chaoli used ferrite magnets I'm guessing. TPA is a term that isn't generally used by motor factories, and I guess doesn't mean too much to them without knowing the thickness of the wiring. RPM and Torque seem to be what they go by. What battery are you using with the DE?

I had a pair of US Woodland camo Y-fronts in the 80's, much love

Be interesting to see what you get, I've done several nozzle tests recently, with o-rings against those without, good seal nozzle at retracted and extended point vs one with no seal and the fps was always the same. A lot of other variables of course and no 2 setups are ever the same. Let us know how you get on.

Upload a video if you can, with sound. If not try another battery, if you don't have one buy a 7.4v lipo.

@nappa Invicta Battlefield is pretty close CQB to Dartford

Guy who runs it (Tomo) used to be one the main dude at Lambda and then before that was at PDI. Not tried them myself, but 3 times the cost of ZCI. It's always worth seeing what you can get out the stock inner barrel, good clean and polish inside first. Since they're in Japan pricing might be better these days, I should send an email and ask about them really.

@concretesnail they arrived yesterday bud 🙂 let me know when you've ordered and I'll pop one in for you

As soon as I clicked on this thread this song came up on my playlist

Stock could be a problem going forward. Really depends on how the larger wholesalers want to play it, i.e. take risk that the end customer will buy more expensive stock or sit back and wait a while - see what happens in the market. We might see factories like CYMA and Double Eagle start dealing in smaller numbers, selling direct in order to get their products to market. There's also been rumours of the Chinese President Xi Jinping was under house arrest in a coup 2 days ago, still no news and none of my regular Chinese suppliers will talk about it.

Wouldn't a soldering gun work better? One of those hot air blasters, just got one myself but not had a chance to try it out.

As @Rogerborg states, UKARA is owned and run by UK retailers. I can't see any reason why the scheme would aid anyone importing into the UK

that's what some people call a 4/5 cylinder or 70%, ideally for 240mm you should go with a 3/4 cylinder

Sucks it got caught but it happens. Who was the courier? From my own experience having the UKARA number displayed does f**k all since they seem to be doing random selection checks where the item is sent away to their testing/holding depot. I had a whole box of chrono's take 4 month stuck in customs where they said there were no instructions for these electrical items since they were being resold. When they finally arrived after 20 or so emails back and forth sure enough the instructions were in the box.

Mini slide switch or micro toggle switch. You'll need to know how many pins it is, my guess is 4-pin. I've got some on their way to me, not for the g&g but for another etu but they look similar in size. You're welcome to one of them when they arrive.

Such a shame, HK was the go to place. So many bargains, so many online stores and as someone said $2 to £1 - it's now $1.09 to £1 and shipping has pretty much doubled. There's some gloomy times ahead for the airsoft industry, most new stock coming into the country is going to be hit hard. Lot of panicking Chinese suppliers have been messaging me in the past couple of weeks, almost desperate to make sales but yet unable to reduce their prices. Pegging their own currency to the USD maybe great in some circumstances but now it's causing it's own issue. Dang it.

how much did all that cost?