Archive for the ‘ramblings’ Category

Some of you may have noticed a marked increase in the output of Raptors social media pages of late. Both twitter and Facebook.

I would love to say this is because Swampy and Spider have become more knowledgeable and conscientious about publishing stuff, but lets be honest it would be easier to get a noob to take their hits at Ground Zero than that.

It’s all down to the enthusiasm of previous contributer MilGeek who has started penning (should that be keyboarding?) upon our pages. A long term airsofter and self confessed old fart (probably why he fits right in…) for those who don’t know him we heartily recommend his own pages on airsoft, military history, modelling and computer gaming. You can find him over on the MilGeek Blog and his spin off pages chronicling his modelling past times. (No. Not that kind of modelling you filthy minded…)

 

..and he does graphics too!

..and he does graphics too!

We’re sure you’ll like his stuff and he shares a fun first ethos like us, has a penchent for Ruskie gear, for those that can recognise him he’s has already appeared in our vid for Centurions CQB game at Scarbrough and written the report

Welcome aboard buddy.

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5 Years on and still going strong…

Who’d have thought this website nonsense would still be getting read? Haven’t you all got better things to do?…

Rest assured more to follow and thanks for popping in!

2 blokes, too many airsoft guns, no sense.

2 blokes, too many airsoft guns, no sense.

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Politics is probably like football and religion, topics best left out of friendly conversation. However I’d noticed some political posts over on twitter by big retailers obviously very pro one party so I wondered how the general election could impact airsoft?

To those who think it is of no consequence, a little recent history is worth checking… we came very close to losing the hobby on the initial drafting of the VCRA. Only huge lobbying efforts, players getting involved and accepting a lot of rules prevented it disappearing.

So I simply asked the candidates from the big 3 parties in my consituency on twitter
” last Lab Govt tried to ban our hobby.Can you give the many NE players an assurance Airsoft is safe for the future?”

Which got the following replies

First up, they all replied swiftly – so thanks for that! As you can see some are more supportive in tone than others. I leave it up to you kind reader to read between the lines and decide the support or lack thereof airsoft would receive!

Of course there are many other matters which effect our votes. Trifling matters of taxation. welfare, defence but on this one matter dear to our hearts you can at least make an informed choice.

Last point is a personal one.

Vote.

You have a privilege many do not and many fought to get you. Whatever person gets your support, or if you just scribble an abusive note and no suitable candidate, do something. After all “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”

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intel
Sad news that GunHo Airsoft in Guisbrough is closing down. Sorry to see any site, especially one I’ve managed to get to a few times close up shop.

They’re hosting a final skirmish day this coming Sunday, hope they get a good turn out to see the place off in style all the best for future endeavours and thanks for all the games!

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[Spiders opinion]
OK, maybe setting myself for some flack here, but I thought this needed wider audience.

The National Airsoft Event took place as usual over the August bank holiday weekend, with near 1500 players descending onto the Zero One site “Ground Zero” near Verwood. Now we didn’t make it this year for one reason or another but it seemed that a good time was had on the whole by most with the usual grumbles we’ve had over the years.

A good write up was in Popular Airsoft which if you read between the lines says good game, lots of people who don’t know each other so hit calling an issue.

What I find really worrying if accurate was the article by by Maree on Yossers Airsoft Odyssey. usually a good blog to read it describes seeing signs up at the Zero One shop stating “No UKARA needed this weekend with festival wristband”, and even stuck a photo in as evidence.

Image from Yossers Airsoft Odyssey

Image from Yossers Airsoft Odyssey


Now I have a similar view on UKARA to Yosser in that it is a purely voluntary industry association. There is nothing in law that says you must be a member. BUT it is an easy way of confirming membership of a skirmish site with public liability insurance. retailers and sites put a lot of effort (ie; time and money) into complying with it to allow their players to easily purchase RIFs and remain within the specific defence in the VCRA that was so hard fought for.

Even on the government website it advises that the first of the key elements of these arrangements for the airsoft specific defence under sec 36-38 of the VCRA 2006 are:

“new players must play at least three times in a period of not less than two months the two months before being offered membership”

This proves not only that you can turn up at an Airsoft “Festival” but that you are a bona fide member of a site with liability insurance.

For a founding member of UKARA to blatantly ignore the rules set up to protect the hobby to gain a commercial advantage on its competitors frankly takes the piss.

It takes the piss out of retailers who would all love to just sell you goods but choose to accept a regime that has commercial implications for them for the good of the sport.

It takes the piss out of players who abide by the rules by risking our sport for a few extra quid.

So what now?

Zero One are alleged to have a letter from the home office giving them an exemption to sell at their own events. Therefore it should be easy for them to publish this advice and we can all sleep easier.

If not then UKARA have suspended retailers before. It must maintain its credibility by doing so again and removing Zero One registered players from the database. Will this inconvenience players? Certainly. It will also hurt Zero One when players moan that membership there does not grant them the same ability to purchase from other retailers as other site memberships. Of course the cynical amongst you may ask if that is Zero Ones ulterior motive – to make so that their members can only purchase from them?

I have had multiple airsofters remark that comments regarding this on the Zero forums are shut down (no surprise really) but this is serious. This sort of behaviour risks everything that was fought for. I trust you will amend your airsoft purchasing habits accordingly.

BZ to Yossers for the report

+++UPDATE+++
Thought I’d check out the ZeroOne website for their rules. It appears that they know what they should do!

Do as I say...Not as I do

Do as I say…Not as I do

[/Spiders Opinion]

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Quick thought for the day here. Watched this vid, seen via popular airsoft.

The actual poster of the vid asks what would you have done? Have a watch first…

<

I guess we can expect to see more of this as HD cams become cheaper and more frequent. My immediate thought was like may I suspect “what a cheating b*****d!”

But backing up a bit a few things occur.

We have no context. We don’t know if the video star has had an afternoon of shooting players who refuse to call and was frustrated and decided to do similar. Despite the video we cannot actually see the BB’s hit him only his reactions which we draw the inference that he was hit. There is so much we don’t see.

I also thought about my own play. Like everyone I hope I’m a sporting player, I like to think I call my hits, I occasionally even shout a “good shot” to whoever got me. I try not to overkill, and I like to giver players the chance to surrender rather than take a painful close range shot, and I try not to shout at people I’m convinced aren’t calling hits…

Do I manage to live up to these ideals all the time? Of course not. Can any player honestly say they have called every hit? I don’t mean intentionally necessarily, but when ricochets are flying, your webbing gets hit, you’re wearing a bit soft shot absorbing ghillie, or you’re in the middle of a dash for cover did you call every hit? Really?

Now consider this. That one time you don’t notice it, or were convinced it was a ricochet it gets videoed and put on youtube by an irate player. Is that likely to make you more or less sportsmanlike to players you don’t know?

Not sure myself, by all means show a ref to back up a complaint. Fair play to the guy who made the video for not losing his temper, but this now smacks of vindictiveness, which is no more gentlemanly than deliberately not calling the hit in the first place.

Controversial I’m sure. I’m certain we’ll see more of it in the future, just not convinced it’ll enhance the sport.

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We don’t really do much in the way of kit reviews as we only talk about kit we actually own and use, and obviously nobody sends us free stuff to comment on and review (although if you are manufacturer or retailer and are looking for a mention we have negotiable morals depending on the size of the freebies!…)

But saw this via Popular Airsoft. It is actually the first Airsoft Weapon in a long while that made me think “I want one now!”… Now all that remains is to find the price and eta!

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Are you a student type in Newcastle?

Do you like, or think you may like Airsoft (lets be honest why wouldn’t you?)

Then keep an eye out as they’re trying to get a Airsoft Society off the ground. They already have the obligatory facebook group up and running, make contact, say hi, get blamming. Much better than all that studying crap…

See you on the battlefield.

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Not really an after action report as we didn’t make it this year, but more of a congratulations.

To the Misfits, Legion Clan and anyone else who played for “The Others” this year well played fellas. Beautiful news to see the team dedicated to chaos and mayhem overwhelming the corporate nancy boys of Delta and Bravo. Hope you all came back with tall tales of daring-do!

See you there next year!

Bravo Zulu

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We’ve been quiet of late I know. Our visit to Northern Alliance in July never got written up and Spider had a run out to NSC where they fielded an APC! Worst of all is we won’t be making Ground Zero weekender this year, for only the second time since we both started playing, and gutted not to be there.

Plenty of reasons, all involve real life getting in the way of airsoft, but hopefully a chance get to maybe a single day in somewhere soon and rack some games up in October and November.

So for now best of luck to all the lads heading south. To Razor and the Misfits, anyone from NSC, Northern Alliance, Legion Airsoft Clan and North East Airsoft UK, and anyone else we know going down, have a great weekender, (no getting naked and trying to jump on quad bikes, it’s uncouth) and make sure you absolutely murder Delta.

Get some fellas.
Raps.

…& in case you didn’t notice we recently topped 100K hits, you lot must be bored for something to read! thanks for coming back!

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Interesting article on Popular Airsoft about the motorola tx 700 tactical comms system, a ruggedised mobile smartphone style handset that provides first resposnders with comms, both mobile network and PTT radio and position data and availability.

Wonder what tarriff they're on?


The article has plenty of comments on how the milsim players will love it, I guess satisfying both the “real steel” obsession and the geardo inside us all.

A large percentage of airsofters already use comms of varying degrees of sophistication (see Swampys post), and I think positional and tactical data may well be the next level of softing. I use positioning a lot in my life outside of airsoft, so it was with interest I came across this website. Battletac Milsim GPS tracking.

First impressions are quite good, running from a browser on most smartphones or PDAs it requires a gps if you wish to broadcast your position, although you can see other units with that. It does require a data connection. You are required to create a login, although it is free at this stage there are addons and dedicated hardware available for purchase, and unit security is provided via a user created password you can distribute amongst your allies.

So what do you get?

There he is...


The map screen (above) is a screenshot example. You get a fully zoomable google map with your allied units overlaid. You can pan and examine areas, or go straight to your location. You can go into the menu and there is a whole host of settings for you to screw about with…

Settings


SF for me obviously...

Two more functions which may prove useful are the message function which allows you to broadcast message over virtual radio channels, which automatically appears on any screen logged in to your channel.

Listen to me!

and the unit status, which then removes dead units from the display, ensuring anyone making tactical decision is doing so from available allies.

Is he dead yet?

There are of course a stack of other functions available, and the website shows it in use for a base commander with a very nice setup of course.

Will I use it? well, it is only of any use if several of you agree to use it and it does have that magic price tag of free! I can see it being of some use on big games such as the Ground Zero weekender where I always seem to lose buddies. It does eat battery power as it requires a data connection, screen on and gps to be running all the time, but this can be compensated for a little by slowing the update rate – in tests a HTC Desire (android OS) and a iPhone (not mine I hasten to add) lasted 3-4 hours without too much trouble. So team this up with an external power pack such as these and you should be set for a full day at least.

Word of caution; I have no idea what amount of data is used. If you have a restrictive tariff it may well be worth checking first! If anyone does give it a bash please let us know, it would be very interesting to hear some views on whether it enhanced your airsoft or just proved a pain and got turned off after 5 mins…

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One of the players at Centurion is doing some academic work on the subject of airsoft, you can help out by taking a 2 minute survey on the subject here to give him some data to work with…

Go on, you know you want to…

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…and I for one applaud it. Especially in the airsoft site sparse North East! Anything that encourages more people to play, give it a go or just support us in our pastime has to be good.

To that end a facebook group has sprouted for players in the North East.

North East Airsoft [UK] says “This group is now open to anyone who has played airsoft in the North east of England at either the NSC, NTAC, or GunHo airsoft sites (including the now closed Marrs site)” With best part of 200 people following the group so far, and plenty to look at.

It’s also a good place to get a look at others photos, videos and comments on sites. Hopefully it gets more people on more sites and leads to better game days. Now who doesn’t want that?

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A welcome return to Airsoft for me, after a Christmas break of 4 months!!!

The planned trip to Otley saw us arrive amid melting snow and patches of ice.  One of us early and one of us late ahem…. A good turn out with a first in Airsoft for me, a large group of voucher users.  F+O have used the Groupon offer system and the result was at least thirty players the vast majority of which, if not all, were first timers.  A good idea and a way of inexpensively introducing new players to what can be or at least can  be perceived as an expensive hobby.  Again another good idea was the hire gun users being loaned a tac vest as part of their package another way of making new players feel more included in the ‘geardo’ feel of things.

So into the game brief, which we mostly missed, and another turn up is the handing over of control of the site from owner Jamie to a couple of his regulars badger and erm sorry if forgot the other guys name.  Still the instruction, safety and advice was delivered well and with more experience will only get better.

First game saw us defending bunker hill at the far end of the site.  Same as last time, although with no greenery, it was a bit of a turkey shoot but none the less a good warm up?  This part of the site is cracking with undulations, sand bags, holes, ridges and recounts.  More work here would make an excellent ville.

Second game, the ambush, saw us attacking down hill towards a known choke point to spring an ambush and fight our way throu with our VIP. Never knowingly undersold or outflanked, the raps were justly done in just so a fashion.  An excellent bit of sneaking by the enemy saw a lone gunman through our lines to fire on us from behind.  Well played fella.  Sorry I didn’t catch your name!

Third game was a tricky setup given the number of new players.  Three teams split up, one to take the VIP to a meet with thesecond, whilst the thwe’d us were hell bent on interdiction.

All went well until game on when all hell broke loose with bb’s flying everywhere! Not quite as the marshals intended however a cracking game with a couple of damn fine nerve shredding hits for the oppos when spider slotted them from deep cover.  Never knew what hit em, till he stood up and laughed at them.

A break to the safe zone up the previously mentioned big big arse hill saw the raps nursing a couple of injuries (paggered more like) and an extended lunch break was had.  Good to catch up with my mate and talk about all things Airsoft. Like my shiny new ascu2 installation on my G3!! Cheers to mick and sneak and all in the chat for talking about it.  Works a bloody dream!

Post lunch was reverse of the morning and saw us attacking bunker hill. A hard climb and a fair old stalk for not much offering but a good game none the less with the new guys starting to push hard and make a go oF it.

Finishing up at the car park again the raps knocked it in for the day and headed home.  All in all a really good day.

Again Otley is hard work, muddy but a really good site.  Am looking forward to it being full and hosting site wide games hopefully in the future.

Anything I miss spider??

 

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Right, about to load up and get going eventually hitting GZ in Hampshire on Friday. There’s a few stops on the way that we’ll reveal later, and I’m going to experiment with lots of updates on Twitter, including in the game zone (Nothing too revealing for the opfor obviously!). So stay glued, we’ll be using the hashtag #GZWeekender and you can follow us either here on the right, or on our twitter feed here

We’ll see how it goes!

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So its a week to go till GZ for the Raps after a two year hiatus (thankfully thursday camping is back on). The itinerary is set and the tour begins 25/08 with a trip to [REDACTED– Won’t be much of a surprise if we tell them now will it? – Spider] and possibly perhaps maybe a trip to an Airsoft store. Who knows hehehe

In honour of the trip and the fact I have broken 4 cheap radio headsets i decided to get a new throat mic.

Iasus Concepts NT3 Black Ops system. Bought and shipped from Hong Kong for under a ton (including adaptor for my motorola) it took only 36 hours to reach the UK and then the usual 8 days to get from ‘The International Hub’ of stupidity to Rotherham Depot. Still its here and in one peice and looks the Mutts. Tried throat mics before with some success but they were the cheaper wired kind that form a C shape around the throat. This is a full belt deal and fits perfectly and is comfy. Comes with optional ear pieces (not at extra cost!) and the acoustic tubing is adjustable by trimming and using a spacer which is secure and works a treat. Testing to follow shortly.

Soooooo had some time in the months leading up to GZ to sort out all of the Airsoft related jobs that get forgotten about and they are nearly done.  List was getting silly so got stuck into a new Ghillie Suit first.  Ive had some Jack Pycke Netting (like net curtain netting) for some time and thought it would make a decen t base for a suit.  SO using a boiler suit as a template a new one has duly been cerated.  Its the last of my old batch of camo scraps so its been bulked with torn up flecky material which isnt ideal but will do.  Looks the biz so the MKIV suit to be started this winter will definitely be on this theme as far as a base goes.  As for the hessian (dont like jute it tends to clump) Im not going to go down the route of using upholsterers webbing as it is messy and takes a shit load of time to unravel for the fibres.  Instead its gonna be natural hessian thread / twine home dyed in my choice of shades.  More to come later…

Finally in swamp at the minute has been my rather dissapointing ( in terms of performance) CO2 powered Umarex USP.  Sold as having a variable hop (which it doesnt) has lead to me not skirmishing it and sitting looking at it longingly and contemplating another purchase I decided to try and mod it.  After all if I knack it then theres no option but to buy a new one.

So after handing it around half a dozen people finally figured out how to field strip it.  Very simple if not given to a bunch of bozo’s.  Simply depress the breech cover ( mine is NBB by the way) and slide the slide back and lift from the rear.  Confronted with an alloy block holding the inner barrel, which was disassembled it allowed me to drill and tap a small grub screw into said block which sits neatly over the tiny hop ring inside (it does have a hop ring…) once done variable hop.  Pics to follow if I can be arsed.

H&K USP CO2 Airsoft

Anyhooooooooo thats all for now and for those that are bothered…. 160 odd hours to go.

Link to there throat mic here

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Well tweeting anyway.

We’ve joined the world of twitter, mainly to follow airsoft news but anything else we fancy. A select few will get added to the website feed you can see on the right, for a more extensive look at what we’re following click here!. Please let us know of anything good we can add…

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Now just a few scant weeks to go till we head south for THE bank holiday weekend bash at Ground Zero.

Raptors sign for the Others

Raptors sign for the Others

As is traditional we’ll be playing for “the others” dedicated to chaos and mayhem, and whose numbers stand at 470, vs Bravo (562) and Delta (569). So with 3 weeks to go there are 1601 bookings and there’s always a few more closer to the day… Will they top 1700 this year?

There’s some frantic last minute sorting of gear, and trying to work out just how many guns I want to carry up the hills. But even with usual chaos, in-game shennigans, Swampy on his iphone like a teenage girl, and outnumbered 3 to 1 it looks set to be a good weekend. Where else are you ever going to be part of an airsoft event on this scale?

It may not be the most serious event, but for sheer fun hard to beat…

The Raptors also have a surprise detour planned. More of that in the post match report!

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Short note, it appears that MARRS airsoft, a site in the north east has ceased playing. Never attended myself but a shame none the less. More sites means more players, so a shame to see any site close down.

If I hear of any new venture by the guys there rest assured a post will follow.

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It wasn’t my intention to just put random airsoft posts on the team website, but this video was so good I thought it warranted sharing! It captures the feeling of airsoft sniping really well for me. Well edited and some fantastic use of more than one camera to convey the atmosphere of stalking. Nice work…

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