Corvid
New member
- Sep 22, 2026
- 2
- 0
Hello!
The Arnies Airsoft forum shit the bed, apparently, so I'm here! The last remaining forum in the UK? Or a brand new one... not sure which, but it seems cool here. Zero-in went the same way, Facebook isn't a forum... and Reddit isn't a forum. I want a damn forum, are we just all... oldschool on here? I don't feel oldschool, but to be fair... the last time I went to an airsoft skirmish I was 20, and I'm... getting on for double that, Jesus fuck.
Anyway, I'm Corvid! Airsoft was basically THE only hobby I spent any money on for quite some time (photography is basically free once you've got a really decent DSLR and a handful of nice lenses, and "urban exploration" used to be free, till Instagram, YouTube and Tiktok pissed all over the chance of getting into anywhere interesting without avoiding security!)
I was one of 5 or 6 users on Arnie Airsoft who was known for being really friendly if you wanted advice on running AEGs at 35+ rounds per second really reliably. RSM and ***Ice*** were two names I remember well! If you've ever heard the acronym "AoE", with the capital "A", lower case "o, upper case "E", that's because I got so... SO tired of typing "ANGLE of sector piston/1st tooth Engagement" to people, that I started using "AoE" and "RoF" for "Rate of Fire" (both with the lower case "o" for some reason, and it really stuck around, which is kinda neat). These days everyone uses GBB rifles, which is... actually really fucking badass. One of my first guns was a TM FA-MAS, creaky nasty plasticky thing, with crap FPS... and aparrently an ok-ish manufacturer just casually makes a GBB FA-MAS too?! I'm not sure I care how bad people say it is, I'll rip that thing's guts out, fit a TM VSR barrel/hop unit in it, and we'll see how shit it still is! He says... after a year building a Guarder-only P226 has resulted in a GORGEUS paperweight that needs a shit-ton of tweaking to get more than 30 BBs on a single mag of propane if it drops below 25 C... kicks like a fucking MULE though!
I'm back in the world of airsoft partly because I really miss it, and I need a break from music every now and again. I LOVE being a musician (non-professional), but I've spent 17 years working out that I basically need to learn to become a producer... AND a guitarist... AND a bassist... AND learn how to use synths/samplers. Which is cool and all, but I've now got a studio full of really nice gear, and have had zero expendable income (or free time for other hobbies) for way too long. I'm finally putting a band together, but holy shit... sometimes I just want to run about in a forest and shoot people with BBs, it's SO fun, and SO simple!!! Until I strip 3 pistons in 30 minutes, then it stops being quite as fun, because I was always shit with a pistol.
And partly because I've got a semi-regular gig working as an armourer/prop designer/constumer/advisor on indie/low-budget film sets. Got get my UKARA back for that, and I'm currently exploring the finicky world of "Plug Fire Cap" guns... literally a cross between a TM GBB and a cap gun, or a hideously underpowered blank firer. So yeah... very VERY fragile, and very difficult to run. I got massively into 9mm PAK blank firers, which were so much fun, but they near enough got blanket banned back in early 2026. Shame, I had so many gorgeus guns.
My pride and joy was a full auto Glock 18C, which took hundreds of hours of cosmetics and tweaking to get running right, but was terrifyinly realistic. I was also not looking forward to having any interactions with police, as when you've done enough cosmetic mods, there's this immediate vibe of "hang on, why is this modified?" which is fine... I knew every last detail of where you mustn't cut, what you musn't modify to make sure the gun was immaculately intact in terms of the suspicion of being "converted" to do anything naughty. But that's literally a job for the UK Police forensic firearms lab, and I know 100% I'd come out on top (like one domestic producer of DIY blank guns did!). Kinda glad that's over in a way, because the police do just "charge first, sort it out later", which would mean a miserably hassle before I managed to prove I'd deliberately kept every single pressure bearing component completely stock.
Very different world to airsoft I'll admit, an area of gunsmithing that "real" gunsmiths won't touch, but it was there for those with serious bollocks, and a wicked eye for detail in a legal/mechanical sense. But holy shit did the Glock run well... SO worth it. I never did get it on screen, but I had it ready. I'd have used that onto a film set free of charge just to see it do it's job properly... which isnt a bad deal, considering the price you'd pay if you hired one of the major companies in the UK who have a god-teir "Section 5" license to use real guns on sets (most high budget films use real guns heavily modified to fire blanks reliably, it's a serious and permanent mod for semi-auto and full-autos, which usually leaves them unable to properly cycle live ammo, but still able to manually feed it one shot at a time... criticalal safety note there). I woudn't be able to give an accurate figure, but I'd estimate hiring Bapty and Co to have an actor fire one 30 round magazine of blanks through a Glock 18C would set you back easily £1000, BARE minimum. A 30 second gunfight with 4 or 5 actors would be £10,000+, so we're talking INSANE money... but on the up side, you can have any gun you can possibly imagine. And if it doesn't exist, they'll just build it for you, like they did with the The M41A Pulse Rifle. Yeah... Bapty and Co BUILT those, so they don't fuck about price wise! But on a £15,000 budget? You can't afford shit, so guns are normally "fired" very sparingly, and janky visual effects used to try an simulate smoke/action cycling/ejected brass. Surprisingly hard to do really well!
Not the kind of stuff one even discusses on forums to be honest, but it's all very much past tense now sadly.
And finally, my best mate died back in 2021, which was really shit. We literally met each other through airsoft, back in 2006 I think... and despite having never touched an instrument in my life, and he managed to get me into music somehow. There's this weird empty hole where him and airsoft used to be, and as I explore the world of 6mm again, I'm finding I really regret stopping... there's SO much more choice now in terms of guns and upgrades, and my favourite airsoft site ever (Elite Action Games Epsom) re-opened, so I've GOT to go back and make a complete nuisance of myself hahaha!
See you all out there!
The Arnies Airsoft forum shit the bed, apparently, so I'm here! The last remaining forum in the UK? Or a brand new one... not sure which, but it seems cool here. Zero-in went the same way, Facebook isn't a forum... and Reddit isn't a forum. I want a damn forum, are we just all... oldschool on here? I don't feel oldschool, but to be fair... the last time I went to an airsoft skirmish I was 20, and I'm... getting on for double that, Jesus fuck.
Anyway, I'm Corvid! Airsoft was basically THE only hobby I spent any money on for quite some time (photography is basically free once you've got a really decent DSLR and a handful of nice lenses, and "urban exploration" used to be free, till Instagram, YouTube and Tiktok pissed all over the chance of getting into anywhere interesting without avoiding security!)
I was one of 5 or 6 users on Arnie Airsoft who was known for being really friendly if you wanted advice on running AEGs at 35+ rounds per second really reliably. RSM and ***Ice*** were two names I remember well! If you've ever heard the acronym "AoE", with the capital "A", lower case "o, upper case "E", that's because I got so... SO tired of typing "ANGLE of sector piston/1st tooth Engagement" to people, that I started using "AoE" and "RoF" for "Rate of Fire" (both with the lower case "o" for some reason, and it really stuck around, which is kinda neat). These days everyone uses GBB rifles, which is... actually really fucking badass. One of my first guns was a TM FA-MAS, creaky nasty plasticky thing, with crap FPS... and aparrently an ok-ish manufacturer just casually makes a GBB FA-MAS too?! I'm not sure I care how bad people say it is, I'll rip that thing's guts out, fit a TM VSR barrel/hop unit in it, and we'll see how shit it still is! He says... after a year building a Guarder-only P226 has resulted in a GORGEUS paperweight that needs a shit-ton of tweaking to get more than 30 BBs on a single mag of propane if it drops below 25 C... kicks like a fucking MULE though!
I'm back in the world of airsoft partly because I really miss it, and I need a break from music every now and again. I LOVE being a musician (non-professional), but I've spent 17 years working out that I basically need to learn to become a producer... AND a guitarist... AND a bassist... AND learn how to use synths/samplers. Which is cool and all, but I've now got a studio full of really nice gear, and have had zero expendable income (or free time for other hobbies) for way too long. I'm finally putting a band together, but holy shit... sometimes I just want to run about in a forest and shoot people with BBs, it's SO fun, and SO simple!!! Until I strip 3 pistons in 30 minutes, then it stops being quite as fun, because I was always shit with a pistol.
And partly because I've got a semi-regular gig working as an armourer/prop designer/constumer/advisor on indie/low-budget film sets. Got get my UKARA back for that, and I'm currently exploring the finicky world of "Plug Fire Cap" guns... literally a cross between a TM GBB and a cap gun, or a hideously underpowered blank firer. So yeah... very VERY fragile, and very difficult to run. I got massively into 9mm PAK blank firers, which were so much fun, but they near enough got blanket banned back in early 2026. Shame, I had so many gorgeus guns.
My pride and joy was a full auto Glock 18C, which took hundreds of hours of cosmetics and tweaking to get running right, but was terrifyinly realistic. I was also not looking forward to having any interactions with police, as when you've done enough cosmetic mods, there's this immediate vibe of "hang on, why is this modified?" which is fine... I knew every last detail of where you mustn't cut, what you musn't modify to make sure the gun was immaculately intact in terms of the suspicion of being "converted" to do anything naughty. But that's literally a job for the UK Police forensic firearms lab, and I know 100% I'd come out on top (like one domestic producer of DIY blank guns did!). Kinda glad that's over in a way, because the police do just "charge first, sort it out later", which would mean a miserably hassle before I managed to prove I'd deliberately kept every single pressure bearing component completely stock.
Very different world to airsoft I'll admit, an area of gunsmithing that "real" gunsmiths won't touch, but it was there for those with serious bollocks, and a wicked eye for detail in a legal/mechanical sense. But holy shit did the Glock run well... SO worth it. I never did get it on screen, but I had it ready. I'd have used that onto a film set free of charge just to see it do it's job properly... which isnt a bad deal, considering the price you'd pay if you hired one of the major companies in the UK who have a god-teir "Section 5" license to use real guns on sets (most high budget films use real guns heavily modified to fire blanks reliably, it's a serious and permanent mod for semi-auto and full-autos, which usually leaves them unable to properly cycle live ammo, but still able to manually feed it one shot at a time... criticalal safety note there). I woudn't be able to give an accurate figure, but I'd estimate hiring Bapty and Co to have an actor fire one 30 round magazine of blanks through a Glock 18C would set you back easily £1000, BARE minimum. A 30 second gunfight with 4 or 5 actors would be £10,000+, so we're talking INSANE money... but on the up side, you can have any gun you can possibly imagine. And if it doesn't exist, they'll just build it for you, like they did with the The M41A Pulse Rifle. Yeah... Bapty and Co BUILT those, so they don't fuck about price wise! But on a £15,000 budget? You can't afford shit, so guns are normally "fired" very sparingly, and janky visual effects used to try an simulate smoke/action cycling/ejected brass. Surprisingly hard to do really well!
Not the kind of stuff one even discusses on forums to be honest, but it's all very much past tense now sadly.
And finally, my best mate died back in 2021, which was really shit. We literally met each other through airsoft, back in 2006 I think... and despite having never touched an instrument in my life, and he managed to get me into music somehow. There's this weird empty hole where him and airsoft used to be, and as I explore the world of 6mm again, I'm finding I really regret stopping... there's SO much more choice now in terms of guns and upgrades, and my favourite airsoft site ever (Elite Action Games Epsom) re-opened, so I've GOT to go back and make a complete nuisance of myself hahaha!
See you all out there!
