BrightCandle

I would have taken the hit and headed off to spawn. I can understand why you did what you did but I would consider he had me fair and square and I would rather he learn the lesson to use bang than try and shoot "accidentally" under the minimum range with a 500 fps weapon. He should have a secondary for those circumstances but depending on the bang I would take the bang. I am not going to take a bang at 30m, that isn't going to happen but at 5m I definitely would.

You could always just buy another gun and have a 328 and a 350 setup. The 328 sites are probably all CQB so having a short CQB gun set for under 328 might be a good idea and then a longer outdoor 350 gun. Quick change still normally has you ripping the gun apart to take apart the top part of the gear box, its not like its actually quick quick.

My Bolle Raider spare lense seems to be about 1.2mm thick. But its also worth noting its curved which may very well impact its effectiveness at stopping BBs. The Desert Locust ones I have are 2mm thick exactly and they are also curved. The desert locust is covered to a much higher standard, it can stop shotgun pellets whereas the Raiders are more like a 280m/s (50/50 chance of penetration point) steal pellet. Both are well in excess of the necessary strength for airsoft even with 500m/s snipers firing point blank which is your worst case. So I suspect the answer lies somewhere around 1-2mm assuming the curve isn't a significant factor.

If BAC doesn't fix it soon it has a real chance of hurting the sport. Sad reality is that if they continue on as they were and people continue to ignore the glaring problem and accept BAC's lies then they are put in a position to do very real harm to the community by handing out passes to people who aren't really airsofters. All it takes is one of those guys to use a RIF in the crime and a front page news story in the Daily Mail and the whole thing can come crumbling down around us. I stand against all those trying to work around the law, whether it be consumers or retailers or sites, if we aren't taking proper care to ensure the law is complied with then its a real danger to the sport. Its not so bad if a real airsofter gets caught with a RIF on a crime, at least then the law was complied with, but if a BAC member who hasn't been checked properly (which we have to assume is all of them at this point) then it just looks like a scam scheme setup to bring problems to the sport. That is a good way to ensure no independent body can ever be a place to register airsoft players and I for one want to see the UKARA cartel fall but BAC's current behaviour tells me they aren't the people to do it. Pitchfork time, it needs tearing down so we can build the right thing out of the ashes.

Most of the games I play are either defined as semi auto or I end up there anyway because I don't need to pepper my target. I find my mediocre 12 rps is more than sufficient to scare my poor targets into being suppressed, infact 1-2 rounds will do that job. So far I have used auto fire just once. My team had pushed up and as we hit the enemy all my team mates died. I was literally on my own facing most of the enemy team. I was in cover and I just started firing, burst here, burst there, a spray in the general direction of a group on full auto for a couple of seconds. All of it to make them think there were more of us still alive than there was. My plan was to hold out until my team reinforced me and I racked through the ammo to do it. I got through 350 rounds mighty fast, but even against about 10 guys on my own I still don't think 30 rps would have made a blind bit of difference to my situation or my enemies fear factor than the 12 rps I was using. Infact I kind of wished it was a bit lower as I couldn't keep up with that ammo consumption for too long. 1 round per second suppression on semi was not going to be sufficient in that scenario but 12 rps was probably unnecessarily wasteful. When it comes to gun upgrades I think the key is actually accuracy. If you can get your gun shooting consistently and with great distance then by and large the rof doesn't make much practical difference in game. In my mind if I do end up full autoing I am either overkilling or suppressing, you just don't need that many rounds to get the hit and its safer and hurts other people less if that rof is lower. I am not playing the game to hurt other people, 30 rps is just too painful to be on the receiving end of and its unnecessary when 1-2 rounds would have done the same job. I pretty much double tap most shots these days and then wait for the hit and arm. That in many peoples eyes is probably overkill, but spraying the poor fellow with 30 rounds is a good way to get punched by your opponent.

Date: 30th April 2014 I was only there for 2 hours as its such a long trek home I couldn't do the complete night. We started out with 3 teams in 3 different corners with 5 lives and a search and destroy the other teams mission. This really introduced me to the basic layout of the site and getting my first impression of the bunker. Its dark, really dark, like pitch black dark. There are lights scattered around and if you are in one the dark areas are impenetrably dark. If you are in the dark the light areas affect your night vision but they are few and far between. I used a torch most of the night which meant I got shot a lot because I gave away my position, but since I couldn't see otherwise it was the safe option. The guys that know the site well don't use lights at all, but they also pop out briefly in a corner, fire a shot to where the enemy could be and then disappear back in. Knowing the site is vital to the way this site is played and there is a set of skills to develop here to be effective. The site was interesting although I didn't particularly enjoy the game as most of it I was walking around in near total darkness with not a lot of people around me and the occasional bounced sound of a couple of shots. The games weren't all that exciting nor tactical, you just had to push through fatal funnel after fatal funnel in pretty much all the games we played, and that is based on having 3 tunnels that are interconnected horizontally. There isn't much opportunity to flank and the defenders set themselves up in almost impossible positions to beat. It takes a lot of goes to push a defender off their position. There were a few oddities with the site which are worth mentioning. The first is that it was not clear what team I was on! It seems the organiser and the players know their teams so well already that as a new guy you just sort of tack yourself onto one of the teams, although one of them definitely wasn't interested in the new guy so I ended up following the guy who I setup next to who seemed to know his way around. No idea if the teams were fair or not. The second oddity is that there was no chrono testing at the beginning of the game at all. There is a site limit of 328 fps like other CQB sites in London but they didn't test for it. In this game I ended up with the worst welt I have ever had on my little finger. It filled with blood and the skin was raised about 8mm from its normal position and I had bleeding internally to my hand to all joints in that finger. I couldn't move it until I drained the blood out of it. It only just recovered (over a month). My finger was actually fractured according to the GP. I don't know what that says about the power of the gun that shot me, but I have never had anything like that from other sites, I would not be surprised if that was a very hot gun for the ranges we were playing (sub 10m mostly). The darkness and the wet puddles and uneven floor that you can't see combined with no chronograph or checking of safety kit and the general inability to see in my mind makes this quite a dangerous site. The two guys I shot that evening (its low on action most of the time) I didn't actually see either of them, I heard them and I fired a shot where I thought they must be, but its not that I was blind firing I just couldn't see anybody because they were in the dark. I also shot one friendly in the light, and because none of the teams have armbands or anything else its basically impossible to identify if someone is on your team and there was a lot of friendly fire in general on the night. Its all fueled but the incredible darkness that dominates this site, you can't see who you are shooting at and the regulars when you call "attacker" will say "yes attacker" and then shoot because they are actually a defender. I am not sure if that is the rules or what but I saw a lot of friendlies shooting each other and mostly we didn't know who was who and where the enemy actually was because it was impossible to communicate across the 3 tunnels. So I am in two minds. On the one hand the two games I played (both an hour long which was cool) filled me with adrenaline because of the sneaky aspect of it (don't bring a hicap!!!) and there were some high moments of hunting people through the darkness and following noises and such that kept you on your toes, but it also meant I missed the end of the second game a bit as everyone got called back (presumably) but I didn't hear any calls and found myself alone on the site and wandered back. On the other hand I didn't feel safe the whole night nor did I fully understand the games, which team I was on etc. Its a bit of a weird site filled with regulars and it will take a while to penetrate the veil and level of unfriendliness I felt. Overall I wont be going back anytime soon, its too far to travel and the fact I ended up with a fractured finger is just indicative of the safety concerns I had on this site. But really the dark is the main enemy at Epsom Bunker and beating it is all about site knowledge and maybe night vision!

I use a 2600mah lipo crane battery in the front of my CM16 and it could fit one of the triple crane batteries easily. You could get a weekend worth of power in that front hand guard, there is a lot of space. No reason to use a low capacity battery in this gun, its got lots of space.

You don't happen to be a Xenomorph and sweat acid by any chance do you?! :-)

Its quite apparent Qlimax that this is entirely their fault, that they are lying about the sorts of checks they do and hence are not sufficiently defending their membership from scrutiny by the government if appropriate checks are done. You know its funny, we have had a lot of organisations blaming the whistleblower recently, seems to me these guys don't get it, when you get caught doing wrong its usually best to fix the darn problem rather than try and deflect at the whistleblower who exposed you. BAC is in the wrong here, it is not checking players sufficiently and no store should accept or sell to BAC members anymore as its impossible to determine if they really are Airsoft players. Its really that simple, its for them to fix it or disappear.

Just getting groupings is all we really need, FPS changed we can fix otherways (although its good to know if an R hop decreases or increases a little incase we are close to site limits). Ideally at least 30m range and do 100 rounds or so into a target from a clamp or a shooting stand so its nice and consistent and your accuracy is removed. Then we need to see pictures of the groupings produced. I guess because the R hop has to be made for a particular barrel we are stuck with a before and after, but you can presumably go stock -> barrel -> barrel + r hop which will be enough isolation of each factor to make some useful conclusions.

Its June and we haven't heard anything. Any update on when/if you are intending to open?

I think we can fairly conclusively say the upgraded kit is better than the stock most of the time, the evidence at least for that is relatively sound. Its comparing the various upgrades that is hard. I haven't so far seen good conclusive proof that the R hop is better than the flat hop is better than a good bucking with nub. TM is widely considered the best hop up unit, and yet its a basic bucking and normal nub and achieves better performance than any other. We have to ask the question why that is and I haven't yet heard a good explanation, infact most reviewers just say its magic. You hear that a lot about TM hop up and yet there must be an important difference!!! It irritates me, there is a lot of magic claims and hand waving "this is better" and no tests. The R hop video also kind of irritates me, they talk about testing and fixing it if its broken, but without showing what its capable of how do I know if its as reliable as it can be?! Makes no sense to me that I have to calibrate my work without knowing what the target grouping should be and what a bad R hop verses a good R hop grouping looks like.

I have no idea why that is happening, nothing you do to them should be flaking the anti fog coating like that in one game. I sweat more than anyone I know and I can't even remotely get my goggles to do that, they just rain out. I would have to say they are just faulty, its not your fault and you should buy a different make/brand.

None of the reviews I have seen of R hop have really shown the difference of just the R hop or different barrels they are used on and certainly not at the sort of FPS we typically use in the UK. The few reviews I have seen often show a default 6.08 barrel and basic bucking+nub compared to a tightbore with R hop, ie none isolated testing. When someone says an R hop is more consistent what I expected to hear was something like - "on 100 0.4g BB shots the 99% grouping was 12 inches at 200feet, but with the R hop that grouping was reduced to 7 inches". Good isolated testing of the high end options and how they are combined just doesn't exist as far as I know. Even in a lot of the tests where we see them comparing groupings there isn't a lot in it, the pattern is pretty wide and the variance is very high that its hard with the number of shots they took to draw any useful conclusions from the performance difference they are claiming. There is this guy in New York who did such a video with R hop and a tightbore at 60 yards and looking at the two sets of groupings there really isn't much in it. He would need hundreds of shots to determine if there was a difference, and due to the variable wind on the day and his own inaccuracy it was very hard to tell if there was an actual measurable difference. There is one guy on youtube who did good comparisons of guns. He did them inside with the gun clamped. But he never tested upgrades, only the guns stock. I haven't seen anything from him in a year after he changed jobs so I think he has completely stopped now (despite updates on facebook saying he was going to continue). Ideally I want to see him with his highly isolated and scientific approach compare the upgrade options to determine the exact impact of these things individually and together. But right now I don't think there is a good test that I can refer you to that would show you the genuine isolated impact of the R hop or twisted barrel and certainly not one with them combined.

Chrono's tend to produce their most accurate results when the battery is nice and fresh and the lighting is good.

I am not primciply against what BAC is doing and stands for, fundamentally I would prefer the verification of Airsoft players be out of the hands of the retailers due to the corruption of the market that I have documented before. But if they aren't checking correctly and they aren't winning mindshare with the sites and players then its not going to be very useful.

Its more important to know who the enemy and friendlies are and what they are doing than to be shooting at the enemy. Battlefield awareness is the first step to being able to make the right response to the current situation. No plan survives contact with the enemy, the key is to understand as well as possible what is happening and respond to it.

In the past I have also drilled them out. I use a small bit first to go down the centre of the screw to a marked depth on the bit and then widen it slowly with additional bits until the core of the screw is done for. You then find screwing in a replacement and removing it removes the bits that are stuck in the grooves pretty quickly. But a bolt remover is probably a better safer way to go.

I would agree with the guys above - get out and rent one first time. Had a few peeps with cheap guns in my last game and by the end they were really frustrated as they were getting stomped by the guys with real (and rental) guns. Rent first, determine you are going to play and then buy a transparent/two tone of something cheap but decent if it will save you money in compared to renting (I saved about £100 in all doing this). Then you wait for your UKARA and buy a decent RIF. Isn't any point starting with anything less than about £100 outlay electric AEG. Cheap springers just aren't skirmish capable.

I met one on Saturday, he was about 14 and he showed two really bad traits. Initially he was fine but as the games went on you could see how frustrated he was getting after failing to hit people.Its bad enough a guy on his first outing is screaming "call your hits" when he likely isn't very good at aiming, its worse as you watch him blind fire with BB's pinging off his shoulder and still he keeps on fighting. I can see why some sites ban young players, some of them lack the mental maturity to be humbled by their fellow players and they end up cheating and ultimately getting banned pretty quickly. Thankfully a vigilant marshal team dealt with him and he was my first know it all/hit nothing/cheating codsofter. His belief in his personal skills was so vast he couldn't see that he was a complete beginner with no skills at all.

On Saturday I had two jams where I couldn't pull the trigger, a release of the magazine and replace solved it in the game. I figured I better do some maintenance and I started with cleaning the barrel. I don't know where I got it but I have black/grey stuff in my barrel all the way down and 100 cloths so far have come out grubby. I have no idea how many its going to take to clean it but I can't believe its that dirty after about 6000 rounds. What I am thinking is that this is likely grease from the gearbox? But since its a bit grey should I open up the gearbox and check to make sure its not grinding itself apart and not shooting metal fillings out down the barrel?

In terms of actual blank firing grenades its possible to get cheaper than the Dynatek. Wolfarmouries do one at £63 (no idea if its any good of course: http://www.wolfarmouries.co.uk/airsoft/bb/product.asp?page=product&id=BFGXOD) and Oh shi booms can be bought for around £65 as well (http://uk-airsoft.myshopify.com/collections/accesories/products/oh-shi-boom-impact-grenade-black-shot-gun-primer). Personally I would spend more on the TRMR (landwarrior has them, other places presumably do as well) because they don't have a pin to loose and they are faster and easier to reload. But if price is the concern there are cheap (around £60-70 instead of £85) BFGs out there.

The main thing you notice immediately is weight, the polymer based guns tend to be a lot lighter. Its not necessarily an authentic weight but its a lot easier to handle and move around with a light gun all day than a heavy one. Metal is tougher but a lot of the modern plastic guns are surprisingly durable and don't have loose parts and show decent build quality. So really I think it mostly comes down to weight v looks. The metal looks authentic and the plastic really can't ever achieve that same look but the metal can't achieve the weight savings. You could look at getting a polymer based gun like a SCAR, then the real gun is polymer based and the airsoft guns are modelled well on the original, although the rails add a lot of weight its nothing like as light as a G&G combat machine but its also not as heavy as a full metal and wood AK.

How does the G&G blowback feel compared to the Tokyo Marui? I have heard the Tokyo Marui is quite a bit stronger than the G&G.

My fingerless gloves are by far the slowest drying item I have. I wash all my kit when I get back from the game and the one thing that is still wet 12 hours later is the gloves. I don't know what it is about that rubber material they are made of but it retains water extremely well, I squeeze a lot of water out of them but in the end they still take about 36 hours to dry fully indoors which is a long time. I leave them stood open on the backs of chairs so that air gets inside as well to aid the drying, without which it can take 2 days to dry them. So far I think fingerless gloves is the second worst gear mistake I made (the first was goggles without enough venting for hot air to escape leaving me blind with fog). At the same time I like the fact I can handle a shotgun cap and reload a grenade without removing my gloves, that saves a lot of time compared to how the guys with big bulky gloves do it but I have had 4 nasty welts so far on the ends of my fingers.