BrightCandle

So many options at that sort of price point, you have a vast vast array of possibilities with recoil and such. You will be spoilt for choice even just sticking to the well known guns at the mid price points.

Since you hired a tech to do the work then take it back. The job isn't finished the gun doesn't work after his changes and its best he look at what he did and why its stopped firing correctly. I might be concerned about how the gearbox has been put back together and potential problems with the work but honestly the reason you hire a tech to do this sort of work is to have him deal with the potential problems of changing the internals if you don't know how to track down these problems yourself.

Most Airsoft stuff is reviewed on YouTube. So I spend a lot of time searching and watching there. Unfortunately there are a lot of biased/paid reviews on YouTube as well so you have to try and find good reviews that aren't from the retailers as well.

Another problem is power source. It seems to run on some form of chemical battery rather than the usual NiMH or a lipo. Its really low voltage electrically but it uses a chemical energy as well to drive the gears. You can't just leave it the cupboard either, you need to charge it everyday or it breaks and will never work again. It can come in a range of colours at least, from pink to brown. However there isn't a nice shiny metallic black option and if you bang it into something it damages really easily. They developed some self healing technology which deals with the vast majority of issues within a week which is really quite incredible but you do need to take care of it.

I don't think they really need to address the law because the retailers and sites have a clear process. Yoiu can rent or use two tones until UKARA is obtained at which point you can buy a realistic Airsoft gun. You can also at this point strip the paint/replace parts on a two tone. Its clear as day what you can and should do to be legal. I have pointed out technical problems with the scheme and how it is used but its very clear what the hoops are. Its when you start trying to work around the clear part you can start creating potential ambiguities, but that isn't the law its how you choose to interpret it to try and circumvent. If you are in court arguing the technicalities of how something is written and whether the gun is really 51% bright coloured or not you are screwed. You might win but all airaofters will probably loose because of it. More changes to the law would not be good for us, they may just ban it outright next time. Some people are a bit more blaise about the implications and clear intent of vcra but personally I think its very important we tow the spirit of the law as well as the letter of it. We aren't living in a country with a healthy culture towards any form of gun ownership. Its imperative we keep our hobby hidden from plain view, our guns equally and we act responsibly and patiently. Get and maintain your skirmisher membership, get your UKARA number and keep the gun out of sight anywhere that is not a skirmish. Its really simple. Anyone can import a rif from Hong Kong, but get caught with it before having a membership of a site and it might not be pretty. I draw quite a lot of attention from police with a gun bag, camo trousers and big backpack when travelling to skirmishes. I am going to get stopped at some point, I am surprised it hasn't happened yet. Its your life, your risk, but I can't help but feel it effects all of us as well.

http://www.airsoft-forums.co.uk/index.php/topic/20919-redcar-teen-fined-after-being-caught-heading-to-middlesbrough-college-with-imitation-guns/ is where we discussed the news article about it.

There was a news story this week about an idiot who showed his social worker his airsoft guns then drove off to college. Support worker called police, they stopped him, arrested him for a knife he had. The airsoft guns he had were spray painted black, so while initially arrested for the knife he actually got a conviction for converting an IF into a RIF. Not being an airsofter he had no defence for that action, so despite the fact he could have the guns the spray painting of them is how he received his fine and criminal record. Are what you doing so dissimilar? No its the same thing. Only question is will you take action to get caught, but its almost certainly a crime.

Pictures obviously show a lipo and a balance charger, all as expected. No magic going on this is just how the technology of these batteries works.

You can't (my charger doesn't have one anyway beyond red for charging, blue + red for 90% full and red for done) you need a volt meter of some description.

The problem is that once a lipo voltage drops below is minimum voltage its a dangerous to charge it, that is the reason your charger wont do it. By all means try and kickstart it with a dumb charger, but you will want to watch it for every second for bulging, splitting and explosions because its got a real chance of doing that and its never going to hold the same charge again. That is just part of the lipo trade off, you can leave them partially charged, charge from any remaining charge and they are smaller and lighter. What you can't do is take them below about 10% of their energy or the cells don't work. If you want to avoid this in the future either count out your rounds (roughly) so you aren't exceeding about 1 round per 1mah giving a good safe margin or get a lipo monitor but be aware it will drain power constantly and they aren't all that great as some of them beep when you fire! I do hope dumb charging it will get it working again and not set fire to your house.

He seems to get a very healthy K/d ratio and he certain shifts when he is moving up. The games are usually exciting and he has good cameras. But he is not the right person to listen to about guns as he doesn't show any knowledge of the internals etc. His loadout video is useful just for the discussion of sights, scopes, mag pouches and chest rig but its not the best guide either. He is fun to watch rather than it being informative.

Go have a read of the VCRA and you'll see where you stand. Basically UKARA is a scheme for the retailers to ensure they are selling to people who have a suitable defence for needing to own a RIF. So long as you have a suitable defence then you can manufacturer a RIF from IF and own a RIF. If your gun doesn't have 51% of it in a bright colour it is a RIF by definition so you would certainly be manufacturing a RIF and owning one. Question is can you prove a suitable defence under the law? One of the questions I have about that is whether UKARA is the actual interpreted requirement from the police and CPS in regards to this or whether having played 5 airsoft games and with future ones bought and paid for I already show a suitable defence even without UKARA. Considering there is 7 years in prison on the line I kind of feel its not worth rushing the process! So long as your not brandishing a RIF around anywhere other than an airsoft site chances are no one cares but its also not something you want to get wrong.

Last nights game one of the players was really young, possibly 12-14. That was a surprise to me, by far the youngest player I have come across. He was actually pretty good according to my team mates, although I must admit I barely saw him all night. I don't know how relatively popular the hobby is, I suspect a retailer might tell you if business were up or down year on year if you asked nicely. My local site got a lot busier in the last couple of weeks but then the second closest site shutdown so that has caused an influx in refugees. I found the sport after I saw a game from levelcapgaming (he plays Battlefield 4 mostly) on youtube, that was what convinced me it was for me. But really the push for me was a trip to Nevada USA a couple of months ago where I spent an afternoon in a range firing lots of real steel guns, fired around 800 rounds from 9mm pistols all the way up to an M60. On the trip back I decided I was definitely going to retake up my shooting hobby after years of not doing it (first law change in the 90's stopped it the first time) so I found out about local rifle clubs, looked into what guns I could own and use and also came across airsoft probably looking at pellpax (real steel guns but they also do airsoft guns). I do play CS /COD/Battlefield/Arma and have done for many many years, but that isn't really where the interest started. So I can't say that in my case a few key gamers converting to airsoft was what kicked it off, it was actually my own trip to the USA. But certainly good quality and well edited gameplay videos from my local site and the gamers in the USA sold on wanting to do it pretty quickly.

Tonight I tried fogtech wipes, which is about as expensive as anti fog can get and supposedly its the best solution out there (better than catcrap supposedly). I applied it about 30 minutes before the game was due to start and its meant to last the entire night, but I took some spares with me incase it ran out. I applied it to the inside of the goggles and to both sides of the prescription lens. In the first game all was well, I could see great and didn't have any real fog or rain out. But when I got into the safe zone I could see there was liquid on the lens so I cleaned that off and went back in. Then I got Instant rain out, didn't even walk the 10metres out of the safe zone to the game zone before I was blinded. So it went on like that all night. I did reapply the fogtech later in the evening but by that point I was sweating heavily and the anti fog was ineffective against my fully sweating state. What I ended up doing was wiping the rain out off in the middle of the game with a finger (dangerous!) and then getting a minute or so of clear lens and using that to make my moves and fights and then ducking back under cover when I lost the ability to see, it got me killed quite a lot. As before the problem was entirely with the prescription carriers. The main polycarbonate defensive lenses don't seem to fog/rain out, its just the prescription lens. So far after a week Bolle has not got back to me about getting another carrier so I can try some polycarbonate lens instead of the plastic ones I currently have which is really awful service. It was better this week with fogtech because it did last longer than the op drops from before but it still wasn't sufficient to do the job.

Really depends on how much charge they are loosing. I personally don't tend to get through more than a few hundred rounds in a few hours so I can go a day on a lot less than that (lipo). But really depends how much of the 3300mah charge remains available and how much you shoot. The rule I have heard is about 1 mah per shot so 6600 mah worth of batteries for a day is quite a lot more than most people I see using. Only you know can estimate how much charge you think remains in those batteries and how much you shoot on a day.

Bunker 51 is £24.99 if its prebooked, £30 if you book within 48 hours of the game. But you also need to bare in mind its only a 3 hour evening game as well, not a full day event. Compared to a lot of other sites its pretty darn pricey. But in London we have a short list of suitable sites within 2 hours, you have Bunker 51, UCAP sandpit but no two tones and TWA woodland (kind of hard to get to with public transport). Epsom is just within the M25 and there is another CQB site in the far NW at watford junction as well. Bunker 51 has a monopoly on airsoft in London basically and its full every time it runs. Have to travel quite far to go somewhere else. TWA Urban shutting down is a real pain. Wolfarmouries are also the only site I know of in London that don't charge you for stamping your UKARA form. So on the one hand its expensive but its also saving you £30 for the sites that charge you a "membership" fee. My experience so far in London is that UKARA is mostly used to fleece people out of cash and manipulate the market. It likely doesn't work in other areas as they have suitable competition but for sites near enough to me its all about choosing which poison you want to be taking.

Those custom lower masks based on measurements look like that might very well solve my issues with the TMC lower mesh mask that is too tall for me.

They are full metal AKs held together with black gaffer tape. The two I had (the first wouldn't feed at all) were both wobbly and the batteries were held in with gaffer tape. So no they weren't good, they were really heavy and rubbish. In that price you also get a face mask (was pretty bad also, very darkening mesh on the eyes and restrictive breathing) and 3000 0.20 g blaster BBs. You don't even get overalls/camo like some other sites I have seen do. Like I said in my review I think its a ploy to try and get people to buy the gun with their pre hire scheme to work around UKARA and drive more gun sales. I took exception to the tactic (even if they did sell a gun I would buy) and decided I would buy elsewhere.

Bunker 51 is £30 for the rental in addition to the game price. They vary from about £10 to £30 here in London.

A lot of the guys in the USA seem to be really big on the Miracle barrel but seems more people in the UK are choosing prometheus tight bores. Why is that? I would personally just buy a TM if it wasn't for the low FPS they come with out of the box. I don't really want to be playing on a 350 fps field at <300, that strikes me as quite a big disadvantage in range. Putting a M100-110 spring in there in place of its usual I am hearing isn't a good idea with the TM's either as they aren't really up to the additional strength, so then I am into a gearbox change and presumably cylinder and piston head as well to cope with the extra strain. Then I may have messed up the TM magic by replacing so many core parts and I have just upgraded the gun that shouldn't need upgrading. I know FPS isn't everything but being 50 fps down on the competition out in the woods is going to loose 10m or so at least.

When you look at it logically you have a toy that is considerably less powerful than most airguns that don't have the same hoops as you can walk out to a shop right now and buy a semi auto air gun. They have the hoops purely because it looks like something more dangerous and its for airsoft and not another similar hobby like paintball. That doesn't really make any logical sense, a gun that is dangerous you can just buy but something that can't remotely kill someone requires proof you intend to use it in the appropriate places? These laws and the application of them wasn't really about actually making things safer, it was about being seen to do something. Its easy enough to make the argument that any reasonable skirmisher should be able to meet these requirements yearly and a new player doesn't have to wait very long at all. Just joining a rifle club with a police check can take 6-8 weeks these days so its not like 2 months is out of the question for an industry run scheme. The hoop however distorts the retail market. Either making rental guns far more important and lucrative than they would otherwise be and causing the sale of a lot of two tone weapons as temporary replacements. You could argue the current system is very much advantageous to the retailers because they often get to sell two guns purely because of UKARA and how they interpreted the law. I don't think its a really arduous hoops, its mostly impacting on new people coming into the hobby and making it more expensive for them to do so by about £100 where I am (either the gun is ~£100 or rental at £30 a game). Having to lump down rental money for 2 months or buy a beginners two tone isn't awful but its also increasing revenue to the airsoft stores and sites. Then what wolfarmouries does is allow you to buy a RIF from them and they will bring it along to any game you prebook, so you can avoid the rentals and still use your gun in games. That is great, its also a wonderful way to ensure all players at Bunker 51 have to buy their gun from them, helping to make them much cheaper overall than their competitors even if they are charge more for the gun itself. That is just another little application of the implications of this minor hoop that makes stores that run sites and run a similar scheme get to increase their yearly sales a little even if they are more expensive than the others. Its not that the hoops are really bad, I don't think its reasonable to argue against the 2 month minimum or the 3 game yearly limit they are in my mind perfectly reasonable measures. But we also have to recognise that some sites charge for getting the UKARA form stamped for a yearly membership to their site as well, just another way in which UKARA is used. We do have to recognise it distorts the retail and site market and its being used to fleece us of more cash, and puts a barrier in the way for new players who are disadvantaged by it.

I guess some things are easier to get in the future than others. If a gun comes with gears that aren't fantastic or cylinders, lacks a tight bore barrel and the hop up unit that sucks then all of that is usually easy to replace. The externals can to some extent be upgraded as well, but by and large you are going to be stuck with the core of the externals (receiver and such) unless you want to get properly mody with your hacksaw. Equally its not really possible to reasonably add blow back and bolt catch features to a gun later on. Good externals, compatible internals and blowback + empty bolt catch hold are basically what you want to buy for and then you can fix the barrel, hop up and gears if they aren't up to scratch. That is currently my thinking on what to do.

The real problem is going to be the gearbox. Its made of these soft fibres and it lacks crispness. Who knows how long it will last before it breaks and needs repairs. Some early adopters are already suggesting it struggles to complete 1000 rounds in a game before the stress gets to it and it slows down.

I don't think 3 games in a 2-12 month period is unnecessarily draconian. If you aren't managing to get 3 games in a year or you haven't played the game for at least 2 months its not really reasonable to say your a serious airsofter in need of your own kit. My issue with the law application is the assumption you'll play it all on one site and if you don't you can't (re)gain your UKARA for the purchase of RIFs. But its not hard to fix the scheme so it could account for those players and teams that travel all around the UK and world to play their games rather than being on one site all the time.

I am struggling with this choice myself. I have been considering a 416 or a SCAR H and in both cases been looking strongly in the TM direction for the bolt locking and recoil functions combined with the "magic" hop up and famous accuracy. Its obviously expensive and with the special magazines and with the SCAR that also means special pouches it really starts to add up in extra cost. But it does appear in every way they are quality guns all be it with plastic externals in some cases (where the real steel isn't plastic). I had been looking also at VFC but I have found the internals are often lacking in quality, they are very focussed on getting the externals and trades there rather than a really accurate high ROF gun. Then there is KWA which also seems to do good externals and the internals are decent enough but most people seem to buy these two high end guns for the purpose of upgrading. G&G top tech internals look decent as well, externals less so. I am struggling to work out if that extra money is going to be worth it as well. The choice in high end guns in many ways I feel is harder than the entry price points. I am not sure for example if I want recoil, that strikes me as a feature that might impact my aim and make me less competitive.