Rusmil

Thats Life…

Well Fearful Silence and me don’t seem to get on… I’m beginning to think I’m a little bit cursed when it comes to this site! The first time I tried to go, it snowed. Second time, this happened. Anyhow, yesterday I came up to Leeds to meet a mate and today we were supposed to goto Fearful Silence.

Anyhow, we arrive on site and pay our green fees and then I put the battery in my AK74S and pull the trigger.Dead, nothing, nada, zip. Nothing from my gun. Something has gone wrong with the internals, the electrics I imagine as nothing worked. Was a pain. Very annoyingly I’d not brought my spare AK so game over and unfortunately all hire guns were out and I was forced to go home. Luckily (and to the eternal credit of the site), I was allowed my money back and headed home.

So another day at Fearful Silence scuppered!

This is my Kalash and I’m now beginning to think that these Chinese guns aren’t worth the money. It’s somewhat annoying and I now have to find someone to fix the gun (unless I try and fix it myself). I’ve been toying with getting a Sig 552 and I might grab myself a TM Sig.

Tags: Airsoft, AK74, broken, fail, fearful silence, guns

Grange Farm – 21st March 2010

Well it appears spring is upon us finally as yesterday was the first sunny days airsoft this year. Temperatures crept up and made it very warm running around as I was still wearing many layers expecting it to be cold.

All that can be really summed up from yesterdays game was that water is essential. At Grange Farm, carrying drink for during a game isn’t to much of a big deal because the games are usually short 30minute to an hour affairs but drinking during the breaks is very much needed. I forgot to take water yesterday and regretted it by having to purchase drinks all day.

The games yesterday were a good mix of attack and defend type games. The scorpion made an appearance and made a few kills which was great fun as always. The AK74SU came out and was used as the AK74S is still not shooting above 220fps. Need to find a gun smith to fix it as I’m useless with gearboxes and don’t want to break it more than it already is!

Tags: Airsoft, AK74, drink, grange farm, scorpion

New Airsoft Site – Stealth Tactical Airsoft

It appears a new site has sprung up in Leicestershire.

Stealth Tactical Airsoft is in Lutterworth, just south of Leicester so it might be worth a visit from Rusmil to see what it’s like.  The website seems to be lacking pictures at the minute but when it gets them I’ll be sure to check them out and see what it’s like.

Tags: Airsoft, new, site, stealth tactical

Taking Stock and Grange Farm After Action Report

As regular readers may remember, I got my Kalash AK74S upgraded over the Christmas period with a MOSFET and deans connectors. I got to use it in anger in the last week at the Grange Farm game in January.

I thought this would be an ideal time to give a few words on it and a quick after action report on the game.

Gun Performance

When I got the gun back I was happy with it however I got a bit concerned when I got it chronoed at the start of the day – it was still shooting ~220fps even though I had a new spring put in. This means that the old spring probably wasn’t the issue and I may have an air leak somewhere, either in the gearbox or in the hop unit. Odd as the hop seemed to be working fine.  Otherwise the gun performance was good.

The deans connectors increased the RoF. In fact, the site owner asked me what the gun was as he said it sounds like a beast and was very nice looking (due to the real steel furniture). The deans connectors improve the rate of fire by providing a large surface area and better efficiency for current transfer. Anyhow, I was happy with that and all my charging cables seemed to be fine for it.

The MOSFET is a nice addition. I didn’t realise the difference it made until I compared my 74S with my 74SU. It actually made an impressive difference. And since I bought mine, RSOV have started selling a MOSFET for the AK here. for the price, it’s a very good addition.  For those that don’t know, it essentially makes the trigger connection electronic rather than mechanical. It speeds up trigger responsiveness which is always a good option.

Game

The game itself was good – unfortunately no pictures as my camera wasn’t present. Getting to the site was interesting due to the large quantities of snow that managed to fall overnight – there must have been an inch of snow which made driving a little interesting! However once the M1 was reached, it wasn’t to bad and we eventually made it there.

Game was slow to get started as we waited for people to arrive due to the snow but we played a good few games during the day – the snow made it very wet and cold through the entire day. The snow melted about lunchtime but it hadn’t warmed up at all.

Games were quick and punchy thanks to the cold – however one game seemed to drag for a bit and we seemed to be taking the brunt of the enemy attack and seemed to be failing. And then just like that, it suddenly changed and the battle swung in our favour completely – I’ve no idea what happened but one minute we were losing, the next, we’d won!

Anyhow, it was a good day all round, if a bit chilly. The benefit of the Partizan I have is that it’s designed as an over suit (at least it seems like it), so I happily stayed warm by wearing some “civvie” clothes underneath to keep warm. And during the summer, I can wear just that to keep cool! I think I’ll be purchasing another set in the KLMK pattern to replace the KLMK suit I sold on.

Anyhow, another big thank you to Grange farm for another great days airsoft!

Tags: Airsoft, AK74S, grange farm, kalash, MOSFET

Fearful Silence

Well it turned out into one of those days. Unfortunately, the game didn’t go ahead due to my mate ordering the wrong size batteries for the M4 he recently bought. I told him to order a crane stock battery which he did and then it turns out the battery was to wide to fit as it was using large battery cells and should have used stick battery cells!
As my AK74S is still in the shop being repaired, it meant that we had one AEG between us and therefore we had to call the whole thing off. We did try and construct a crane battery  out of his old small battery but very quickly realised we’d be spending more than £15 on making it and thus we might as well call off the weekend and he’ll order a new battery.

Well from this, it pays to find out what batteries your AEG takes before ordering!

Tags: Airsoft, AK74, batteries, M4, sites

Next Game – Fearful Silence 23rd January

This will be my first game of the new year and will be a chance to try out a new site.

It so happens I am doing an interview in Leeds the day before this and so a short stay over with a friend and then on the Saturday I’ll be trying Fearful Silence. The game site looks to be good and there seems to be a reasonable number of players so it’ll be nice to try somewhere new.

Due to some upgrades on my main AK, I’m reduced to using my AK74S but this shouldn’t be an issue as recently it has been outranging the longer AK74. I’ll mention more on the upgrades when I get it back from the gunsmith.

Tags: Airsoft, fearful silence, sites

SMERSH Review

This weekend I managed to get out and test some new gear and to actually play a game!

I went to my new local site, Grange Farm. My previous trips here have always been good fun and this was no different. This was the first time I got to use my SMERSH webbing and I was very impressed.

This is the SMERSH as it arrived to me.
SMERSH seems to be a the webbing of choice with current Russian special forces and it comes up time and time again in pictures.

From Russian Military

I’ve been wanting a set since I’ve seen it and after some saving, I managed to purchase a set second hand on the Red Alliance forums. This webbing isn’t cheap. We’re talking about £100+ a set but this IS real deal kit and not Viper knock offs.

My first impressions of the webbing is it’s quite heavy. Without anything in, this weighs quite a bit, a lot more than my M23 Pioneer chest rig and probably heavier than my 6SH92. It is also very comfy, even with the weight.

Tags: Airsoft, gear, military, russian, smersh, webbing

New AK Case

Regular readers or those that know me personally may know that I’m a keen archery fan. I have been for some while now. Early last year, I upgraded my carry case for my bow to a backpack based bag as I was carrying my archery equipment around a lot more and using the backpack was far easier than carrying around the hard case I used to have. This obviously left me with my old Negrini bow case. I didn’t fancy selling it on eBay as the postage would have been quite expensive. In the mean time it sat in the corner gathering dust.

Then it dawned on me that I could probably use this case for an airsoft gun, especially after I sold an AK and a bag (which was the only bag I could fit a full size AK in). After checking that the AK74S will fit, I set out  to purchase some foam to put in the case to replace the foam cut to my bow. Cutting around the AK was easy but getting the foam out of the foam was hard. I resorted to cutting and ripping foam out using my hands. If I had used a hot wire cutter, the foam would have been much easier to remove and I would have ended up with a tidier finish. As you can see, the AK fits quite nicely within the case. The top layer of foam had to be cut down as well to allow the AK have a foam base (when I had the archery equipment in, the bow was against the case – not ideal). However I now have a nice smart gun case that will protect my case more than my previous green padded case, which to be honest was getting quite tatty.

Overall I’m very impressed with the solid case and I’m considering buying a pistol size case for my Scorpion. My local archery shop, Merlin Archery, also sell airguns so have a good selection of hard cases that I can choose from –  however these will be the eggbox foam style rather than cut like the AK one above – I do however have a large amount of foam left from my £6 block so I could customise the boxes to suit what I currently use.

Tags: Airsoft, AK74, archery, bow, case, foam, Negrini

(Very!) Late GZ Weekender Run Down

OK, so a very late Weekender post! I’ve been carried away at work since I went to this so thought it was about time to mention it!

I arrived reasonably early on the Friday afternoon – probably about 2ish thanks to staying with family who lived locally. My first pain was finding the site – the satnav directions posted on ASCUK for the even told me to turn off the junction BEFORE the event and ended up directing me to a housing estate – not good.

However I made it and was then initially impressed at how the layout and the organisation had improved over the 4 years I hadn’t attended. The top field which we had once all camped in was now given over to the smooth running of the event – toilets, a fully licensed bar, a shop, the signing in tents and food vendors. Unsurprisingly it was all needed to cater for the many, many people attending (1,200+!)

Finding our campsite I started setting up camp and getting into the spirit of the weekend – chatting to my mates and meeting new people – unlike previous events as well there seemed to be a roaring second hand trade going on with people displaying any extra items to sell in front of tents as unlike my previous event 4 years ago, there was more moving about and chatting between teams and players.

Game Day

Saturday marked the start of the weekends games – all the players had signed up onto teams when playing and thus the 3 teams made their way to the morning safety brief at which point a plane flew over distributing propaganda leaflets! This had been planned by some of the players attending and because of this, they were given bonus points and the game hadn’t even started!

The games revolved around roving around the game site (huge game site!) trying to find items and also holding various positions at various times – points were also gathered from shooting “intel” holders and retrieving the intel they had. Base attacks were quite common.

The site is fantastic – for the first half of the morning our team held a ridge against enemy attacks as we struggled to hold to the hill for our first objective. We managed it and then successfully pulled out, netting our team some nice points. However I remember the afternoon games very much less organised – I got cut off and killed from my team mates and thus spent the rest of the day with other members of my overall team (rather than my mates who I’d been with all morning). I spent a fair amount of time dead in the afternoon – 10 minute breaks in the dead zones were actually quite a relief!

Night Game

I briefly did one night game, before feeling very ill and retiring to bed. For this I used my Scorpion and did the entire night game with just a scorpion and a small bread bag as webbing – nothing much else was needed! These games were single shot only which some players gave up and walked off when they found this out. However it was for safety concerns and I reckon it was a good choice. The games were much smaller – not everyone played the night games and those that did were split into 6 groups to play at 6 different sections of the site before being rotated around the site.

I got to use my JG Tracer unit and was very impressed with it. Yes it did give my position away with muzzle flash but it was well worth it. The single shot rule was a good rule as I managed to “bang” kill an opponent – as he turned away he knocked my scorpion which was pointed at him – he’d was close enough that I could tap him on the should when I banged him!

Sundays Game

Sundays game was brief – I left early as I had slept badly the night before but I played the mornings game which was very tense – I spent the morning defending the village with pretty much our entire team!

Overall the weekend was a great success. The games were a lot more organised than the previous event I attended and there was far less cheating than before (in fact I saw none this time!) which is much better.  Interesting to note that shotguns were a viable alternative to AEG’s in various parts of the site and it was interesting to see the number of players using shotguns!

I think it’s well worth a trip if you want to attend a massive weekend!

Tags: Airsoft, ground zero, Reviews, weekender

KLMK – Chinese repro sets due soon!

It appears that there will soon be a Chinese reproduction of the Russian KLMK over suits coming out.

It’ll be interesting to see what people make of the camo. I know when I’ve worn my set, at least one person usually laughs. However in my mind it’s a very Russian camo. I love my set, even though I don’t wear it often enough.

However if your after a more modern set (something I’m considering), then Redzone.com.pl stock the modern two piece Maddox suits (which are used by Russian troops – notably in South Ossetia)

eBaybanned – Front Page

Redzone – KZM-M Uniform in KLMK pattern

Tags: Airsoft, camo, KLMK, News