Is there ever a light at the end of the tunnel?

Can you get them all? Guns that is. Will you ever be totally satisfied with what you have? Personally, at best, I'm hoping for an uneasy state of equilibrium where the desire to own more guns is matched by financial outlay and practicality. The thing is, all it takes is one discussion, one picture or piece of news footage, and there it is again, a whole new branch of your collection is shooting off at a divergent angle to everything you already have.



At first, it was simple. I had one gun and I needed a side arm, so I had a dodgy little AEP to go with my Jing Gong BAR10. I had acknowledged getting some kind of assault rifle type thing, but that was in the future. Right now I was complete. Then one day, it was suggested, for reasons lost to time, that a more effective side-arm should be acquired, one that would allow for stand-alone use, should the situation require and before long, an MP5K was picked up.

I don't think I'd even used the little H&K in anger by the time I came to handle the Tokyo Marui Desert Eagle I later swapped it for. As soon as I laid my hand on it, I knew it had to become mine. And so it did. In a straight swap, the MP5K was passed on and I had entered the world of the gas blow back pistol, thus relegating the pathetic little AEP to complete redundancy, eventual dismantling and a subsequent life of rattling around in my stuff box in component pieces.

The Desert Eagle paved the way and sparked the impractical idea of wielding a brace of them at pistol games, a pipe dream that never materialised, partly due to lack of a usable dual holstering systems and partly for other reasons that I don't even fully understand, even though both guns were actually in my possession for a long period.

Aside from slowly tinkering with and upgrading the Jing Gong BAR10, a quiet period of gun gaining was entered. At best this lasted around a month. A generous benefactor bestowed the second Desert Eagle upon me at this point, and much gesturing and waving was done. It was decided that the Desert Eagle, despite all it's downsides, was actually awesome.

At this juncture, my recollection of the family tree of my arsenal becomes a little hazy. I have a definite recollection of being instilled with a strong desire to own an AK after that same benefactor that supplied the second Desert Eagle allowed use of his Tokyo Marui AK74MN. This resulted in a bargain purchase of an Inokatsu RPK with Tokyo Marui internals, it wasn't an AK but it was pretty close. As well as being the most high end gun I currently owned, the RPK was special as it was the first gun I ever saw the insides of. Not that I had the balls to go it alone.

Peering over the shoulder of a friend and lending a hand to hold a lightly greased cylinder in place was a special experience, a bit like in war films, where to grubby soldiers attempt to patch up a stricken comrade as arterial blood rushes out of a wound. However, instead of our patient fading away in a splutter of phlegmy blood, the RPK rose again and barked out a confidence inspiring stream of BBs. This healthy gusto didn't last long though, but the whole ordeal did equip me with the knowledge that the internals of an AEG are not the mysterious and frightening place they are often depicted as. It's just cogs, springs and a cylinder.

Around the same time as acquiring the RPK, I broke yet more new ground. Until this point I had only ever purchased second hand guns and I had decided it was time to pop my cherry and get my own. As a long term fan of Black Hawk Down, I decided the M733 was the only way to go, but now before pondering so many other options (for the sake of breviary, I'll spare the decision making process for another day) . It had that stripped down, no nonsense thing going on. I didn't want lasers, magpul this and RIS that, yet...

The choice was made, in as much that I knew that I wanted an M733, but I still had to pick the right one. On a cold, rainy payday, I blagged the afternoon off and visited FireSupport to browse the goods. The choice was between the proven reliability of the Tokyo Marui offering and the external sturdiness and accuracy accuracy of the G&P. After much back and forth, I went home clutching the G&P like a doll, it was like Christmas day, I had a giant box full of my new favourite possession, it was raining and I didn't have batteries to put in the thing.



My room was staring to look like a Somalian warlord's basement, and I began to feel like a legitimate airsofter. I didn't really have anywhere in particular to store all these guns, but they looked cool laying around. I bought excessive amounts of magazines, mostly just leave strewn around, and for about a week, everything was fantastic. I was content. I think it was at this point, some sudden and unforseen desire to own a shotgun fully enveloped me.

That was it, I needed it, the Tokyo Marui SPAS 12, but for some reason, it took some time to acquire. I was put off by naysayers, dismissive of it's ABS construction and price and attempted to quench my thirst by purchasing a cheap stop gap. It was very cheap at £12, but it was like methadone to a heroin addict, there was no real satisfaction, despite reasonable performance.

To the amusement of many bystanders, the cheap shotgun met a grisly end shortly after the RPK motor clapped out on me at a skirmish. I drew the shotgun in a fit of range, intending to cause carnage. Instead, I slipped on a sheep poo and stabbed the thing into the ground, snapping it clean in half. And that's how the equilibrium is so easily disturbed. In the heat of a skirmish I had wiped out 2 guns within 30 seconds. The prospect of having just 2 usable weapons frightened me and it was decided that I needed more.

Although the RPK had done a good job in stemming the flow of desire for an AK, the steady trickle that it let through had pooled into a pond of discontentment... I really needed that an AK. Well, I didn't, until one came up for sale from a friend... I snapped it up.

I've marked this point as the top of the hill... I reached the summit and now I'm in freefall, tumbling down the hill, with my collection of guns building and growing, like a giant snowball... Occasionally, pieces break of and the collection shrinks marginally, but by and large, the numbers are growing. Sometimes, the snowball stalls on a ledge, hanging over a sheer drop, and it only takes one war film, one picture or one conversation to push the whole lot down the chasm and once again growing.

See, the collection is an organic thing... In a years time, you'll be somewhere totally different to where you thought you'd be but you'll certainly be surrounded by guns.

The numbers game

Do you know the FPS of your airsoft guns? I'm pretty sure anyone that owns their own AEG or other airsoft gun has taken an interest in the speed at which their gun propels the BB down the barrel, whether it makes any difference to to your game is another matter, but some people are hell bent on taking the gun right to the limit.

The limit at most airsoft sites in the UK is 328 feet per second on a .20g BB. Some sites allow a variation of 5% on this limit, and will technically allow a gun firing up to 345fps to be used. Exceptions are commonly made for single, or bolt action, rifles, commonly used for sniping, due to the low rate of fire and relatively long range they are used at. The level of exception varies between sites, ranging from 400fps to up to 500fps mostly dependent on the size of the site and the terrain it encompasses.

Of course, this is all fundamental stuff, any experienced airsofter will know this inside out. It's drilled into you at briefings and any online discussion you care to broach the subject on. We all know the rules and we are happy to recite them given the opportunity. The thing is, do we practice what we preach?

Everyone knows a few tricks that will get a hot gun through a chrono, and it's easy to abuse the trust placed in you by site management, but excuse the cliché, it's not big and it's not clever. Thankfully, most don't.

Just remember, 345fps is the upper limit, it's not a target to hit. If you are aiming for anything, try and hit 328fps and keep things fair and honest.

Take one for the team.

“Take that hit! I saw it bounce off you!” How many times have we heard that immortal line, or even yelled it over the top of our rifles as we pepper some unfortunate opponent behind a bush or window frame? Then there are the times you have accompanied a disgruntled teammate chuntering away about “those bloody blues, not taking their hits” as you trudged the long path back to the dead zone? If you’ve taken part in just a couple of airsoft skirmishes, you’ve probably experienced one of the above situations already.

Knowing if you have hit somebody is going to be one of the eternal quirks of airsoft, it’s one of the first things any newcomer asks and its part of its charm. The idea that a group of guys can get together and be sporting enough for an honour based system to work well enough for everyone to have a good time.

Problem is, it doesn’t always work like that does it? Sometimes, even with the best marshalling, you can come across somebody not exactly invested in the spirit of the game, and it’s easy to get wound up by it. Obviously, you can deal with this frustration in a few ways; I’ve certainly been witness to a few “solutions”.

You could flick it round to auto, break cover and blast of the rest of your mag blindly, holding the trigger until somebody shouts “hit!”, but it rarely gets results.

You could call a marshal to check the situation out, but even with the best site management, they are not always around.

Then, in my opinion, there’s the worst thing to do. You can start yelling out, calling “cheat” and quietly moaning to your team mates after the event.

Ok, you’re probably confused now… Why’s that the worst thing to do? Well, it’s simple when you think about it. A little moaning causes a negative response from all involved, and it spreads like wildfire. All it takes is one accusation of cheating and that’s it, the negativity spreads as word gets around that the other team “ain’t taking their hits”. At this point, instead of acknowledging hits honestly and sportingly, players start to bend the rules to compensate, maybe not accepting that glancing shot to the hand as they ducked round the door, it was a ricochet, right?

Before long the opposing team catches wind of this and the game breaks down, you might as well be pouring BBs down the drain for all the good they’ll do now.

So, what do we do as a community to prevent this from happening? It’s easy really, you take your hits. Getting shot isn’t as counter-productive as you might think. Adopting a benefit of the doubt attitude is the best thing to combat a negative attitude at a game, and if everybody is doing the same thing, the game as a whole will be more enjoyable.

It works both ways, and it’s essential it does. If you’re firing at a target, think you probably hit them, try and reverse the situation. How many near misses have you had in the past? What about those times you ducked out the way of a stream of BBs, matrix style or what about that lone blade of grass an oncoming BB took a deflection off of at the last moment? Give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe it didn’t hit them, maybe they made an honest mistake.

Next time you think you might have taken a hit, but you’re not sure, don’t hesitate; just give your opponent the benefit of the doubt, maybe he just got lucky? It’s not that far to the dead zone anyway, and didn’t you need to mag up?

We all want to tell our tales of heroism but we’re playing airsoft, and at some point you are going to get shot. That’s the great thing about it, no matter how much kit you collect, how dialled in your guns are or how good your knowledge of the site is, sometimes little Jimmy Newbie with the rental gun is going to get the drop on you. Why don’t you make his day, congratulate him on getting a good hit and walk back to the dead zone with a smile?

All this sounds sickeningly idealistic, but as long as we’re all playing by these rules and adopting the same positive outlook on the game, everybody has a better experience, because what goes around comes around. Give your opponent the benefit of the doubt, and before long, you’ll be pulling off shots you thought were impossible, instead of moaning we’ll all have better stories to tell after the game.