BrightCandle

We mags are better than TM? How bad are the TM mags? Because my We mags all leaked, all required replacement seals and valves and need to be tightened and silicon applied every few months. They are pretty high maintaince and they don't survive past 1 magazine. My KWA ones on the other hand have required no maintenance, came with no leaks and has 2-3 fills of BBs per gas fill.

There is also the KWA ATP which is just about a Glock 17 as well, and its the most gas efficient gun and tested as one of the most accurate pistols out there. Its also a metal slide, doesn't kick as hard as the WE but its also not going to strip paint and break in 6 months like the WE inevitably will! I was told there was nothing inheriently wrong with the WE but mine was loosing paint within the first clean and after a metal piece snapped because of the pot metal I got my first taste of WE manufacturing quality. I don't want the toy feel that TM has, I don't want the quality issues WE has so I got KWA, quality metal slide guns.

I end up doing the same thing. I have to set the hop on the site and on the day and that adjusts the point of aim. The left and right setting is best done at home where there is no wind anyway and then the elevation is going to wait for that hop to be set.

How big is the site?

Just be aware that choice will impact on the trigger response. Smaller batteries are worse batteries and it has impact on the performance of the gearbox, how quickly it fires and how quickly the current ramps up to spin the motor resulting in slower trigger response and rate of fire.

1200mah works out to about 1200 rounds, maybe a little more depending on the gun. Personally I wouldn't want any less than 2 of them for a days skirmishing, at worst I can use the better part of 3k rounds in a day. I don't know whether your gun can fit bigger (if its the CM16 it almost certain will) but if it can you should consider doing so. The higher the capacity the better the current capability of the battery and you'll get better performance out of a bigger battery.

when you do the compression test get your lips near the cylinder head. You will feel it if the leak is there.

I think most PDI barrel users probably ignore the slant and continue to make a vertical cut slice of piping. The PDI barrel I have does have quite a small window and that is unfortunate for R hop because the longer it is the better the hop patch is (but more sanding you have to do!!!). I don't think its practical to try and slant the r hop patch without precision tools to do it and it would have no impact on the patch performance.

I can't say every moment of the game was awesome because it wasn't, the 3 hours on Sunday laying down awaiting an attack on the damp forest floor was certainly not the height of excitement or comfort! The meta game aspect for the government forces was pretty unrealistic as we were outnumber and the rebels had all the equipment. But I said it would ruin skirmishing for me and it will. I am definitely doing more milsim games and I will do okto again and this time I am trying to get a complete fireteam of friends together because they need to experience it as well. This isn't just airsoft for the weekend its a experience that everyone that has an inkling that might enjoy has to do. There were some awesome firefights, some amazing role play, some of the scripted moments like farmer sasha and his chest bomb were wonderful. But really what sets the whole thing apart from a skirmish is the team work and comradery on display. I loved the game its warts and faults and all. I agree it has ruined skirmishing forever, because I'll never get that level of team work at a skirmish. The average skirmish doesn't have time to hurry up and wait. The moment above with the farmer was pretty cool, we were about to head out on a raid of the MPF camp. He starts driving up and we had been talking to him in the camp earlier. We stop him about 30m out and he tells us the rebels have his children at gun point and says they strapped this explosive to his chest. First words out of the CO's mouth -"everyone 30m back". We all disappear into the woodland around the base, we find concealment and hard cover and prepare for an attack. Some of the guys search for a dicker but we don't find any. Eventually we send a few guys to try and disarm it, they fail and I know this the moment I hear behind me an explosion, turning briefly I see the guys with red rags walk away from the tractor and the farmer gone. An unscripted moment is Sunday morning in briefing we were asked to make the battlefield more noisy. Men bleeding out don't call for a medic once they scream and scream until they die. MDF is defending the north west base and we get overrun. I have been hit, calling for a medic and am timing my 5 minute bleed out. I am face down in the ground so I can't see anything but I can hear the enemy foot steps moving up and around me. I keep screaming in pain and whimpering and an MPF player walks slowly up to me from behind, stops and says "Comrade would you like me to put you out of your misery" in his best russian accent. "Nooooo I don't want to die" I say and then click, single round into my water pack, so I go quiet give it 20 seconds and get my rag out and walk back. Technically there is no "out of misery" rule in the game or finishing them off on the ground. We don't walk over the injured and get to kill them fully (might be cool if we could though) but its one of those moments I'll cherish. I never knew who it was who gave me and the people around me that little moment but I enjoyed that more than I should have! When those signups open in 2 weeks just sign up, its just plain worth doing, its awesome and I had a tonne of fun. Firefights with tactics and decent orders and the ability to plan your approach and attack however you want is just how it should be. I have 2 wishs for the future game from what I experienced as I think the game was unbalanced against MDF and I didn't really get the feeling of powerful government force from what we were doing, more the rebels are winning this war and your all done for: - MDF needs to be a bit more dominate on the battlefield and to me that means manpower. It can't be outnumbered if its defending assets and trying to do missions as well. To me it should feel like the rebels are having to set ambushes to do damage and wait for the moment when the MDF is weak and overstretched before they can realistically attack. - Most of the assets at least initially really ought to be with MDF. Would be nice to be able to get a helicopter when we needed it so we could execute our plans as well as technicals and some materials to build defensive positions and FOBs where we wanted. An example is that given the option I would have lugged some hay down to the southern woodline on Saturday morning and built an MG nest down there. Some hay squares in the MSRF to build defences with would be a nice touch as the first order of business for government forces is to 'dig in', but we aren't allowed to dig holes so we need to be able to do that on the surface. I think it would add to the game quite a bit for that side. Thanks for the game baz, it was amazing.

I was using PTS EPMs.

The MAG mid cap M4 magazine comes highly recommended in these forums. Its a 120 round M4 mid cap, its all plastic, very light, a grey colour and classic M4 style. it seems to fit in just about most guns, certainly G&G and G&P and other popular low priced guns. The good It feed reliably in the circumstances its designed to work in (I'll get to that) happily at 14 rps. I can't comment about above that ROF. It fits in G&G gen 3 guns as well as in a Tar 21, a G&P M4 and a variety of other random guns on the fields I have played in the last 6 months. They are really cheap, £6 a magazine individually or less in a box of 8. The Bad The are reasonably prone to jamming. In about 6 months I have had 4 magazines jam and require a full strip down out of 8. It seems to be a fault with the followers more than dirt. They don't reliably lift anything above a 0.25g BB for me. I have used 0.28g BBs in them but I can't full auto with it as it will miss 1 round in 5. But at Okto milsim I saw quite a few people at using them and having major major problems with feeding in their guns. Most were using 0.25g BBs or 0.28gs and while my MAG magazines worked flawless in the hot and the cold some guys magazines did not. Initially I couldn't load the magazines above 100 rounds, it was too much of a struggle to push the loader. They wore down a little with use and now all of them will take 120 but its something to be aware of. The spring itself seems to be quite weak so it wears down quite fast to allowing 120 rounds, but then that might also be an issue with longevity as well. They are widely compatible and cheap magazines. They are usually decent for 0.25g BBs and below, but some people do seem to struggle with feeding in their guns. I have seen too many people have issues with them to say they are great at this point.

I use a blue force gear smoke grenade pouch for a TRMR and its reasonably secure in there. Its a little loose and too tall but no issue with it actually escaping.

I would really love to see the dead man rule go a little further. You really shouldn't on regen be telling your team mates where they are, the character you were that died is dead and that information died with him. Now you personally can't forget it but you really shouldn't be telling others about information gathered because it wasn't recon that made it back. Its hard enough getting the dead man rule applied as is but people really ought to think about the implications on the realism of what is going on based on how its being played and this rule not only really matters, but doesn't actually go far enough.

A bit wet? Its a thunderstorm.

I zero in doors and that means I risk quite a bit. I use a pair of MDF boards about 1cm thick covering about 3 sq metres as a back stop and then for all the areas around the target I use cardboard boxes, just empty ones. What I have found is the BBs enter one end but they never seem to leave the other, with a 350 fps gun. This has proved remarkably effective and I suspect that just a bit of crunched up paper inside of the cardboard box would be more than enough to stop the additional energy of the sniper rifle.

I run an ASG Ultimate 30000 rpm high torque motor in mine on a 7.4V and it notably increased trigger response. No doubt 11.1V will be better but until I put a mosfet in my gun I wont be moving up to 11.1s.

Lipo 11.1, I personally think a mosfet is a good idea. It will work without one but your trigger contacts will get damaged faster, there is a reason they use mosfets on these high voltage and high current batteries.

You set the hop up so that it flies straight, personally I find the best way to do that is actually looking down the side or even firing from the hip. It will take some fine adjustments until you find the ideal point. Once you do then you have to zero your sights/scope to where its then shooting. It doesn't matter that your sights are currently off, it matters that its shooting well with good lift and that you can zero it at the effective range (just before they drop).

I don't think its a gimmick, it makes noise which definitely changes the battlefield perception but that is about it.

They will likely perform about the same. The blow back is mostly about noise (which can be good but on the G&Gs its too high pitched) and the visual of the bolt moving as you fire (no one ever looks at that!). The internals are going to be the same until you go for a top tech where they step it all up a bit. Its basic internals that all work well enough and will last a while. None of its going to outperform custom parts and its not going to have a perfect airseal or fantastic accuracy or range but its going to get you a decent platform quite cheaply. My personal experience of the plastic is its pretty tough and the lightness I feel is quite an advantage after 8 hours of running around in the woods.

Darn it I should have ordered a set it would have arrived in time. Well its OK its one more smoke grenade instead :-)

The main reason I ended up choosing the desert locusts was because I saw numerous reports of the ESS fan failing. As I looked around my conclusion was the desert locust lens was tougher and the fan lasted a lot longer. Ultimately I didn't get much beyond that in making the choice. The odd thing is I actually find the desert locusts a little annoying. Its the battery compartment, its on the left rear of the head and it gets in the way of caps and boonies and all that jazz. I am not sure what the solution really is as they all have this to an extent and you have to wear the strap a little lower than you might ideally want to. But having used normal goggles I am convinced by the fan and the desert locusts, I wouldn't stick to them for the last 8 months unless it worked, it does work well. I still have had sweat accumulation issues in the goggles (not really fogging, like beads of water) and the thermal lens seem to have reduced that quite a bit, not eliminated I still get it happen but considering how much I am sweating I think they are doing a decent job. I recommend them, I think they work really well.

Features The S&T Tar 21 professional was released in 2014, its a electric blow back and in the USA its licensed by Elite Force, but here in Europe you'll find it under its manufacturers name of S&T. Be aware S&T has an earlier gun called the Sport and these gun don't share a lot internally, although the externals are quite similar. It has no lock back on empty magazine or any other fancy electronics. Its actually a reasonably heavy gun but the weight is all centred on the gearbox at the rear, making it feel light, especially on the left arm. Its got one small rail on the top and one on the right hand side, there is enough to fit a scope on the gun and for a flash light but not a lot else. I am told you can swap the charging handle and blow back to the other side if you want to but I haven't tried to. The battery goes in the front hand guard and it fits a 7.4V 2600mah vapex crane stock battery just about but it wont fit bigger. Externals The gun is all polymer on the outside, which considering the real one is like that as well is to be expected. The externals show some seams top and bottom. where the two moulds join and there are some blemishes around those edges as well which draw attention to the way its put together. The plastic of the main body of the gun is quite hardy, the plastic is certainly very strong and up to about 8mm thick in places. The main issue on the externals is probably the top sight mount rail, which is a little wobbly. The bolt looks reasonably good as it moves back and forth and its quite a loud clang especially next to the ear. Sometimes the bolt looks half way back and sometimes it doesn't, I am not entirely sure why it sometimes leaves the hop wheel showing a bit. The trigger has a long pull before going off, partly because its a bullpup and partly because its just got a lot of tolerance. The trigger is pretty bad, its got no feel on break. The spring pushing the trigger overrides the feel of the gearbox switch so you wont ever get a nice bite point to pull to. One of the oddest things about the Tar 21 is that it has no sling points.The stock has a hole that goes through and the Israeli's actually use a para-cord loop with a figure eight on the back to produce a hook point. This does give you a single point sling point but its quite far back and you would need a pretty high single point sling to have the gun sit high enough on you not to interfere with your legs. There is no front point on this gun either so out of the box you are not going to be using a two point sling (the ares has one with the front pin). I fitted a QD point in the upper receiver, the plastic is strong and a simple nut and bolt on a QD was all that was necessary to get a second sling point on the gun. Prior to making the second point however I used a paracord loop around the middle of the gun behind the hand guard and rear sight which gave me a more forward single point sling point.. It was a more balanced point to have the sling attached to the rifle but it wasn't ideal as the gun still tended to sit quite low. In terms of magazines the MAG brand has worked well enough, feeding every time. They are a little loose and rattle about a little but they work just fine. PTS EPM mags also seem to fit and feed perfectly as do G&P mags, a lonex flash mag and some other random mags thrown to me in a skirmish as well. The magwell is standard M4 and it seems compatible with everything I have put in it. Internals Its got an OK enough gearbox shell. Its quite light and thin, its not ported, its not amazing or fantastic metal but its well machined. Its specific to the gun so its best not to break it. The gun came with a 400 fps spring and its about 25% shorter than most of the springs I have seen which is a little strange. The cylinder, piston head, piston, cylinder head and nozzle are all type 2 compatible (more or less) and the gears are all standard. The motor in the gearbox is a short type but its got a custom spring holding it in. I found the motor struggled a little pulling back the blow back, you could hear it struggling a little and getting warm. By default the motor seemed to produce about 12 rps. The gear has just bushings, no bearings that I remember seeing. The gears are metal, they seem reasonably solid and I haven't so far had any issues with them. I needed to completely reshim them and it took a lot of shims to get them to stay still. The gearbox seems to be far too wide for these gears and they make a lot of noise initially. Even once shimmed they never really turn super smoothly but it can be improved. I haven't really done much with the trigger switch I have left it completely alone. Its one of those components I fear will explode at any minute and its going to be hard to replace. The piston head in mine had truly awful seal, it provided almost no resistance at all. The nozzle also has poor seal onto the cylinder head and there was not even an O ring in it. The cylinder head also didn't seal very well to the cylinder and was of the usual cheap plastic single seal type. So all in all you can expect the air seal to be below par in this gun. The hop unit is plastic and it doesn't hold for more than a few hours before it needs resetting. Its also completely custom to the gun so you can't replace it. The original bucking half melted onto the inner barrel and really struggled to provide any useful hop effect and accuracy, I had to replace that immediately. The inner barrel is brass and the inner finish was fairly rough. The barrel on the outside wasn't very flat , it rolls oddly but that doesn't say anything for the inner bore and its straightness. The gun is held together with 3.5mm and 3mm hex screws and a few external pins. You are going to be using the hex screws alot if you take the gun apart an it takes a bit of time. To get the gearbox out you'll have to remove pretty much everything in the gun, including all the wiring (18 awg) and the trigger. There is no mosfet, no quick detach connectors and the wire is held in place with little plastic spacers, its never clipped down anywhere. The wires don't actually come loose but its not very secure and it certainly could come loose at some point, I have just had the gun open a lot. The outer barrel is attached a little strangely. There is a plastic plate just in front of the gear box that it notches into and that is held down by 4 screws (that go into plastic). It holds the hop unit reasonably strongly against the gearbox and it also holds the barrel reasonably securely but I suspect given a bit of force on the barrel you could snap this mechanism of holding it down. I have actually gone face down off a tree with this gun and buried the barrel 6 inches in mud and dropped the gun on the flash hider indoors and it hasn't yet shown any sign of damage but its a concern as most guns have either no structure holding it specifically or a lot, this is all at the rear of the barrel and nothing holds the outer barrel to the front of the gun at all. Customising the internals Personally after a few games I felt the need to customise the following to improve the guns range and accuracy. - Spring (used an SP120 and cut it down to size which dropped it right on 350 fps with 0.2s) - Cylinder head (ASG dual o ring) - Motor (ASG Ultimate torque) - Piston head + piston (ASG, the louder large hole version) - Nozzle (SHS metal red) - Hop unit's arm (from a lonex M4 hop unit, hand to be sanded to clear the blow back) - lapped the inner barrel (Hunterseeker 5 kit from air lab) - R Hop (Z kit install, but actually it took a bit of dialling in to work well). - The inner barrel required a little bit of shimming, just about half a millimetre front and rear. I would basically recommend all of these to improve the gun. The air seal needs work and the basic bucking needs replacing. Accuracy and range out of the box Not all that great. The main issue is that about 1 in 4 shots was normal and went the sort of range you might expect from an AEG, 30m effective range. But 3 out of the 4 shots showed very little hop and would drop short. Thus the out of the box performance was inconsistent. This was actually easily fixed with a bucking change. The black bucking that came with the gun had gone off/was completely rubbish and a change to a G&G green helped immensely to make the gun more consistent. Then it reached out to the 30m range or so. Upgraded accuracy With the airseal fixed and the R hop in place and the barrel nice and shiny the range is quite good, around 60m effective doubling the base guns accuracy from its default configuration. Much of that came from the airseal improving the consistency of the gun enormously making 3-4 shots bursts at long range enough for a hit. The R hop further extended the range, its more than a person width however but certainly better than the gun initially. Now it only uses 0.28g BB's or above (R hops fault) and it seem to prefer 0.30g BBs for the best accuracy. Problems There are some problems with the blow back feature locking back on the charging handle. The lock point on the metal of the blow back is wearing out as time goes on and I anticipate at some point it wont lock back at all. Right now its unreliably locking back but I don't trust my fingers on it. This will deteriorate quite rapidly until it can't lock back at all. The initial bucking as mentioned needed replacement. The top rail wobbles. Conclusion My overall feeling is that if you are looking for a Tar 21 this is the most modern version out there. Its more upgradeable than the Ares and its a lot cheaper as well. But its certainly not the best build for a high quality and highly accurate airsoft gun and many other base guns around its price point are going to outperform it. The main limitation on upgrades is the hop unit, most of the other poor performance parts can be replaced but this part is custom to the gun and its going to be a problem. An R hop will reduce the dependency on the hop unit, but the hop unit can break and its going to be hard to get the gun up and running again. Replacing the initial hop rubber is likely going to be necessary for everyone as will a spring change for UK field limits unless yours was already downgraded. This I feel is a project gun that needs work to be competitive and not really skirmish-able out of the box, and it can be made so due to the M4 compatibility of most parts. I love the ergonomics of the Tar 21, its remarkably well balanced and very pointable weapon due to its bullpup design and its weight distribution. I love the way you hold it and with the upgrades I am finding it to be a fantastic gun. However I can't say much good about the original internals they weren't great quality and the end result reflected that.

I ordered my desert locusts turbofan from tac kit, no issues. Another afuk member (Yingkid) uses the ess goggles with a turbofan. We have compared them quite extensively. Our conclusion is the desert locusts are better. The main reason for that is how much the goggles stick out. The ESS ones do stick out quite far and it impedes vision down, ie to your gear. Whereas the locusts don't. Both seem to have effective fans and there isn't a lot in it there. I have also added a thermal lens to mine as well and that makes a good improvement as well. I got the yellow and dark lens with mine but I have never really used them and now I use the clear thermal lens exclusively.

Today I went to a site and didn't play. I went their with the goal ofyay or naying the r hop and spending the to.e to dial it in. I finally got it working as its meant to. So how does it perform? 60m effective range. Its incredible. No doubt it's worth doing. So a few things I think people need to know: - this is hours of sanding. You need somewhere to see the effect as it pulls sideway. It needs tweaking even with a z kit method. - heavier BBS are q must. Minimum for mine is 0.28g, but 0.30g is better and 0.32g better again. But my.mag magazines won't lift even 0.28g reliably. - its an odd hop effect. It looks more continuous like it starts as it leaves the barrel and just carries on. It has a very straight flight path compared to a normal bucking approach. If you are considering this do it but expect to spend 4 hours on a site dialing it in.