BrightCandle

The Marhsals at the Mall astounded me. While at TWA they are friendly and at Billericay they are very professional the ones at the Mall are just incredible. The place is kind of famous for its long briefing but dang do they really think about the safety of their players. The game I played there sort of soured in the afternoon as some hit calling was being questioned and the marshalls were on it. We got this wonderful talk, not just about assuming the other guy was honest but also a warning to those players with plates and chest rigs about how they wouldn't feel the hits and how important it was for them to pay attention. It really got me thinking about moving and the sound of being hit and how hard those two things were together. I really didn't like the gameplay in the mall, it wasn't very tactical it was just close quarters and chaotic but at the same time it as a very good site that is really well run.

Bunker 51 is an example of where there are just too many. Games in there are 60 people big and no one can move, the fatal funnel is unbreakable. With about 20 players its better but still driven by its fatal funnel. The site was designed for 5 v5 so its no surprise that 30v 30 doesn't work very well. Its supposedly thousands of square feet, which is pretty small. Partly its the design of the place as well, I think the number of lanes of combat you have around fatal funnels determines how stilted the gameplay becomes more than the total square footage. Design matters a great deal and Bunker 51 is a bad shape. The mall on the other hand is a lot larger and you can obviously move around in it pretty well. Its got multiple routes through and the defence of some fatal funnels is hard so its possible to break through a well set up defence. But 100 players in there have 10-100x more space than the players in the bunker and instead of 1 fatal funnel they have at least 4 or 5 lanes to progress on and with cover fire and movement they often make some more. I wouldn't just look at a space in terms of square footage, 2 big rooms with 1 door in between them is going to be an awful game and would not support many players, a warehouse with 10s of shelves has a lot of flanking opportunities and the exact opposite type of play compared to 1 door. Each has different player base sizes (and appeals to different types of players) and isn't directly based on just size.

I am guessing I know quite a few of the TWA and UCAP guys. Sorry I haven't played the last month my house flooded and I have been dealing with the aftermath. Will be at UCAP in a couple of weeks time if the weather is OK. Anyhow I tend to agree about sites. TWA is one of those sites where I liked a particular group of guys more than the site as a whole. The games themselves IMO aren't that fantastic and the site is a bit too small for what I would ideally like tactically. But some of the guys who attended there in summer/autumn are good friends and so I find my games there are a bit mixed. Its a very underdeveloped site and the marshals are pretty friendly and its a bit of fun and not super super serious. I don't think its a bad site like bunker 51, nor is it an unsafe site like Epsom bunkerr, its OK its just not amazing. UCAP sandpit is a completely different game style, 2 halves and basically one game played in 2 different directions in a large open space. Billericay is actually my favourite site of the ones I play in around London, because its woodland (which is one of TWA's strengths compared to UCAP which is mostly open ground) and because its really well developed. Benches and food stalls and such that are part of the site and its really well built and constantly changing and its big and has a lot of players. Its also quite tactical, you can really flank all the way around if you want to, which in UCAP is kind of impossible, its possible to have a wide front but its open enough they see you doing it and defence can often stop it, and if its in the CQB area around the buildings obviously its a bit more fatal funnel driven. UCAP is the one place I have had people calling me out more than any other place (yeah I wasn't hit, they were missing by meters) but I just walked away as the aggression was a concern for me. They need to get that in check on that site. I have found there to be great guys and less than nice guys at all these sites, I think in the end they all have decent marshals and the game is pretty much fair all around. None of them are 100% on the people front however. If anything I would rather get the gang together and choose to play sites as I find playing with the gents who I get on with (D, J and T) more important to me than playing any one particular site. Whether the other side appears to be cheating or not doesn't matter to me, I to some extent have seen my BBs do crazy things, these guns just aren't as accurate as people sometimes think they are and so I just assume the other guy has a better gun and is a better shot, I don't try to worry too much about it.

The airsoft mechanics have one, its just a two contact hop rubber. It is not a product version of R hop unfortunately and based on its design the advertorial from RWA doesn't fit the quality as shown. No good reason its as accurate as it is.

Redwolf airsoft put out a video showing a new inner barrel hop up unit combination: There is some speculation that this is most likely a pre manufactured R hop like set-up where the bucking is paired with the barrel and hence produce similar qualities to an R hop. 60m with a pistol and a rifle with 300 fps is excellent range and the 460 sniper rifle reaches out to 80m all be it not very accurately. In addition it looks like its got a notch in the barrel which matches a similar notch on the rubber much like the VSR inner barrel/hop rubber design which aides air seal. This might turn out to be a really good upgrade barrel although its a bit early to tell.

A misaligned hop up normally has a quite distinctive pattern to it when the BB flies. They sort of seem mostly straight to begin with and then as the range goes on they seem to drift further and further to the right. If you overhop it a little you'll see the BB both climb and drift to the right.

A pistol crossbow would be far more useful. Air rifles/air pistols are a bit underpowered for genuinely stopping a dangerous intruder and I would far rather be using a self defence knife than an underpowered airgun, a BB gun would be effectively useless. Not worth risking the bluff, when defending oneself use a real weapon you know how to use and are willing to use.

I would say the G&G tbb is very variable, mine is totally rubbish for example. Its not as bad as the CM16 one but the PDI I have was a vast improvement to groupings.

The longest one I have seen was at the Mall, it was probably 20 minutes. Its also the best the one I have had, it was very effective.

It works out of the box but its far from perfect. I have run it stock for a number of games and now I know what is wrong with it I am fixing it. But I have a similar set of concerns about my G&G T4-18, and my G&G CM16. I haven't yet had a single gun that is actually decent out of the box. I don't think that exists.

Not so sure if NVGs will work so well down there. You have a mix of lighting, some of it is quite bright and the rest is 100% black. The lighting stops your eyes from fully adjusting to the darkness and many of the fights are one side in the light and the other in the darkness (defence usually in the dark). You may find the NVGs are flooded just like your eyes are. It seems the way you succeed in the bunker is you shoot where you expect the target to be, simply knowing the site is what it takes.

Gun (3) the Umarex one is known as the S&T professional. Elite force do it in the USA but you can't import theirs. I actually got it from Hong Kong and it arrived in about a week but then spent a week in customs. Basically the S&T professional is the most modern of the guns, it doesn't have the issues with the mag release button like the Ares and fixes a lot of the major complaints about the S&T explorer model, that is the gearbox is metal, the gears and bearings and such are decent quality, its got a quick detach spring and EBB. I have had it apart a couple of times and my main complaint about the gun is actually the air seal, but the gearbox is partly type 2 compatible so you can fix it and then its actually really quite a good gun. Its been much more reliable than my G&G T418 and better accuracy as well. I had a bit of trouble taking it apart and putting back together to begin with because I couldn't find any good guides, and it is a pain as there are a lot of parts that need to come out to strip it, but the gun itself is pretty fun. My current list of complaints: 1) Default air seal is terrible. Strangely consistency wasn't awful (accuracy was decent) but checking air seal its universally awful. 2) The inner barrel is bent out of the box! Its got a lean downwards and it means the sight is at its limit of adjustment. Not good. 3) I think it needs a more powerful motor, especially due to the EBB. Cycle time is kind of high in full automatic fire and I need it a bit more responsive. 4) The trigger pull is long and the break has no feel to it at all. Typical problem with bullpups of course but its accuracy impacting. 5) The quality of the polymer around making up the gun is hard but not very good. In particular there are seals showing all around the gun which look pretty bad. 6) Watch out for the pins, a few of them are a bit loose and possible to loose in the field. 7) The hop unit is plastic and its not all that great. I find mine has a tendency to slip through the day and need resetting every few hours. Its mostly an M4 design however unlike the Ares which is completely custom so I am wondering if I can get an M4 one in there. This S&T professional isn't the same class of problems as the explorer, its not perfect but its more upgradable.

My gen 3 has showed a number of pretty serious problems, they are lemons. Its not just the mosfets the inner barrel quality is awful, the airseal is pretty bad and all of that leads to bad accuracy. I have also lost the charging handle button twice, once on a G&G replacement part, the darn thing just falls apart easily and often. I have had problems with a badly formed bucking that came with the gun and that I think is about it. All in all not good for its price.

The inner has some bearing on accuracy, there is evidence for that. The optimal inner barrel length for maximum accuracy is about 450mm. The difference between the usual 350 and 300 inner barrel is going to be very slight and to be able to measure the difference you would need to get a lot of other aspects of the gun working perfectly to even notice. Its a minor aspect of accuracy as far as I can tell from the research I have done.

293mm is the usual 12" inner barrel length. You can always measure your own of course but that is the common short barrel length that I know about for the close quarter guns.

Is the issue with trigger response the length of the trigger pull or is it that the motor isn't finishing its spin when you let off the trigger? I just want to make sure that you are solving the right issue as a lot of trigger response is in the dead space on a lot of guns.

My experience so far is that all brands are a bit rubbish in terms of quality control. Everyone on the fields I play has broken guns from every company (including brand new Tokyo Marui's, VFCs, G&Ps, G&Gs). Most people seem to be playing with guns that have issues and at home they have a broken gun or two. They aren't exactly well made or long lasting generally.

One of the things I noticed the other day was that I get hit a lot below the chest rig and above but I rarely notice the shot that goes into the chest rig, because I have to hear it. I only hear it if I myself am not shooting or not moving. I notice the same thing happens for most of the guys with plate carriers I play against, they just don't notice a lot of the time. Its kind of obvious they got hit given the circumstances but they just don't ever feel it. So I would wary of anyone going towards full padding, chances are they won't notice a lot of their hits and its going to be a problem. Wearing camo should be sufficient combined with the usual things people do such as face masks and shemaghs around the neck.There is no reason to do more, the guns are set at a power level to ensure no real damage occurs and wearing too much armour is going to stop that individual feeling their hits which based on the number of idiots I have run into is going to be far more dangerous than the hits themselves. My advice is don't even do a plate carrier, go with a battle belt to allow body shots to be felt but do wear some nice thick well made camo to absorb much of the energy.

As the Zed adventures guys like to ask - Anyone want to loose an eye today? What about your teeth? Anyone getting hit on the side of the head with a fake arrow? Yeah we thought not.

Arma 3 if you can find a group to play multiplayer with, its kind of the ultimate virtual battleground and really nothing like other games at all since its milsim to their speedball.

Its neither simple nor reasonable nor proportionate or how any of us would want this sort of thing to happen at all. The officers involved were primed with the news that a kid with a gun was threatening people in the park, both by the caller and then by the absence of knowledge that there was reasonable suspicion the gun was fake. Those officers were lied to by omission and this could all be the fault of the caller who knew full well the kid was playing in the park, cooked the story due to their own irritation with it and boom we have a kid dead. The kid caught on the UK streets was told to stick his hands in the air and the first thing he did was pick the gun out of his waistband and put it on the ground. He didn't comply with orders either, but our armed police didn't shoot. But there is a difference between reaching for the gun and starting to aim it at a police officer. We will never know at what moment those officers really chose to shoot or how it could have played out if they had all the information. Not as serious but it reminds me of a crime I called 999 on a while back. I see a guy fighting to get away from 2 guys. Initially its a fight and then they have him by the arms, they slam him up against a wall and they are holding him there occasionally hitting him. I am on the 999 call and I can't explain what is going on at all. Then about 45 seconds later 4 guys turn up and surround him on the wall, one of them kicks him hard in the stomach and then they all drag him into a corner shop. What the hell just happened based on what I saw? Was a guy just brutally assaulted by a gang of 6 guys? Or were they something to do with the shop and giving a beat down on a thief? Was the kicking really necessary to apprehend the thief, sure didn't look like it. How you prime the police in your reporting of the facts as you see them and the facts you see can dramatically change the outcome. How the police perceive the information given to them, how the kid has been taught to regard guns, the police, other people, his own experience of the world and the people in it all come together in a few seconds and change lives forever. Do I see a good and a bad guy, I just don't. I see a lot of lives broken on both sides and mistakes were made all around, The kid lost his life due to his mistakes, the question is whether the officers also end up in jail for murder/manslaughter as well. Will the people who fed the misinformation to the officers also be held accountable?

Nothing about our legal system stops this from occuring in the UK. Indeed it wasn't more than a few months ago when a kid was seen on the high street with an airsoft pistol and was stopped by armed officers at gun point. That time they didn't shoot because he wasn't stupid enough to aim it at them but it could have gone the other way just as easily. Two toning doesn't really change the situation and choice for the police. If it did then the bad guys would all be spray painting their guns orange. But these situations do reenforce for me personally the desire to stop IFs and RIFs getting into the hands of minors, There is definitely an age at which someone understands the implications of carrying something that looks very much like a real gun, and 12 is too young. 18 might arguably be too old in a lot of cases but its definitely a cause for concern that age and understanding is a factor. But as a kid I used to happily play Cowboys and Indians and war games with plastic copy cat guns in the streets and my neighbours would smile and wave and say good morning. Nowadays I fear if my nephew did the same someone would call the armed police. Something in our society went wrong as well when the assumption is a 12 year old with something that looks real is actually real. Edit - So I am conflicted on the whole issue. The current reality doesn't match how I wish the world was and I don't see why its not like that anymore other than irrational fear. I shot air rifles, pistols, .22's and shotguns as a teenager and yet nowadays these are hobbies restricted to specialist gun clubs, and I just don't see how any of that helps.

I might be odd but I don't carry BBs into the battle with me. I fill my mags before the game and then I go onto the battlefield with the rounds I have, which is 700 rounds. I do occasionally also dump a speed loader (another 700 rounds) somewhere like a FOB is the game is longer but I find that I am carrying enough ammo for most games. UCAP sandpit and its 2 games (one morning, one afternoon) is one of the few places I find where ammo was a genuine problem for me. So while perhaps not the answer you are looking for but buying more mags is another way to solve this.

Rule of Darwin unfortunately applies, if you are not fit enough to know that brandishing a pistol at the police will get you killed well then you wont survive to adulthood and have children. That kid did a really stupid thing, removing the orange tip to make it look real, then pointing it at a load of people in the park, then pulling out when police turn up I mean seriously what do people expect to happen here exactly? Its horrific that a kid died with an airsoft gun in his hand, but its the reality that we don't know who the good guys and the bad guys are, the police can only see the actions that occur in front of them. I feel for the police officers who had to fire their guns in self defence that day against someone who appeared to be trying to hurt them. I also feel for the kids family who lost a son/brother/sister after their kid was playing a stupid prank in the park. The police given the situation in the USA likely did the right thing.

Suicide by cop. Anyone living in the USA must know by now if you pull out a pen or hand out of your pocket let alone a fake gun you are going to get shot. The police in the USA love pulling the trigger, its the number one way to die with a gun.