Colin Allen

It does indeed; I preferred the version it replaced.

Guess what? That is the upgraded website.

While it has all the issues that one might expect from an Ares, it is a very easy gun to work on, except for the mag catch and the bolt release. Mine now has a real steel mag catch and spring. Fitting a battery into the handguard is a definite stress raiser.

One of my MP5s is an SRC. Well, the externals are :).

I have an L1A1 and a VZ58.

It is far from being crazy. They are badly designed, badly manufactured and badly assembled, with poor quality parts. I have had a number of them over the years and am now down to two and only keep those because I cannot get those two guns from any other manufacturer.

Ares make beautiful RIFs that are junk internally.

A chap who goes by the name of Siggi Langnasen.

Not that I am aware of. I have just seen an old post from you on another forum that mentions the individual :).

Indeed! It was rather impressive really. As the site is so large, the beginning and end of the two minutes were each signalled by a single shot from a blank firing pistol so that everyone got the message at the same time. I will be observing two minutes again tomorrow. Those cheap DE shotguns are surprisingly good.

Following the rather less than wonderful experience last time out, I set out on a cold and foggy morning for Airsoft Plantation. The site was not quite as busy as usual, with probably only about 100-120 players present. For once, I didn't have any guns to test and set up, so my pre-game experience was rather more relaxed than it generally has been of late, leaving me time to chat with other regulars, the site owner and Luke, one of the marshals, who was also at Splatoon last time out. The first game of the day was a fallback. Starting at Swaziland, we had to drive the enemy out of the DEA base and then push on to get five players onto the bus located at the back of the mortar pits. We had infinite buddy regens after a 30m fallback, while the defenders had three lives to take wherever they chose after a 30m fallback. I started off on our right flank, pushing up along the site boundary with a group of players and flanking the DEA base; we managed to take out a lot of defenders to our left, although our advance was slowed by a couple of very annoying snipers. Having cleared the DEA base and after an impeccably observed two minutes silence starting at 11:00, we pushed on to the mortar pits, where everything bogged down a bit. We slowly fought our way in against tough resistance; I was particularly pleased with a flashbang that I lobbed over some bushes which I thought a couple of the enemy were hiding behind; after a shout of "Oh, fuck!" and a loud bang, seven of them walked out with their hands up. As we moved forward, I used the SR47's range and accuracy to help neutralise the defenders on the bus by making it too dangerous for them to appear at the open windows. Eventually, five of our players made it onto the bus. Huzzah! After the usual short break to reload, the game was turned around; suspecting that some of the enemy might try to sneak through the scrubland along the edge of the firebreak, a small group of us took up position in and around the fort. They did indeed do so and we had a great set of firefights, along with more lobbing of some of the 16 flashbangs that I won in one of AP's raffles a few weeks ago. Inevitably, I was eventually hit and retreated to a position behind one of the berms, from where I picked off enemy players who showed their heads above the fort's crenellations and those trying to force their way around by the comms truck. Being hit again, I was falling back when there was a shout that the enemy were attacking in force from the other side of the mortar pits. Moving over there, I found a spot behind a car from where I was able to interdict their movements across my front until a couple of snipers appeared, one of whom potted me. The enemy completed their mission. After luncheon, which as usual, was delivered delivered very efficiently, we walked out to the mortar pits for our own commemoration of WWI, a very short game with the two teams lurking behind facing berms and, after the application of copious amounts of pyro by the marshals, having to "go over the top" towards each other. It could have been trivial, but it was actually quite thought provoking. After that, we played another fallback game; we started at the border, with infinite regens on a marshal, while the defenders had one life in each of the village and the mortar pits. Our objective was to clear the village and then capture the bridge in the mortar pits. We pressed forward against a stiff resistance, which involved me making multiple trips back to regen on Luke, which is always a somewhat disturbing experience. After a hard fight, we pushed into the village and cleared it; myself and another player then swept the village, making sure that no defenders had been left behind. Having done that, we followed our colleagues towards the mortar pits and were moving into the fort, which rather dominates the bridge, when an enemy player popped up and shot a load of us in the back; clearly, our sweeping of the village was not as effective as it could have been! Having regened again, we joined the push towards the bridge, which was duly taken. This game was duly reversed and I found myself on our extreme left, lurking behind the hut in front of the still dried up pond; in the pond were a sniper and a couple of other players. It was a great position, from which I was able to slow down the attack by sending a large number of attackers back to find a marshal to regen on. As the pressure grew, the players in the pond bugged out; I was unable to do so, so I sold my life dearly. Crossing the firebreak, I moved into the brushland with a few comrades in case some of the enemy swept through that way; quite a few of them did and we had a running fight with them, engaging them to slow them down before pulling back to new positions. We held them at bay, but another group to our right eventually pushed through to the bridge, ending the game. It was a typical AP day of well thought out games which engaged both the experienced players and the fairly large number of rentals, played in a good spirit apart from the couple of typical tiny tantrums that seem to happen whenever grown men play with toy guns. Weapons used: Hurricane Kit SR47 Golden Eagle AMD-65 ASG XP18 Commander (CO2)

Cat Crap is excellent, as is Absolutely Clear; it was recommended to me by my eldest, who uses it when diving.

At one site where I used to marshal, a chap who became somewhat notorious in parts of the airsoft community started attending in full Waffen SS combat gear with the eagle and swastika badge and lightning rune collar tabs, accompanied by his young half-Japanese son in full HJ gear with a swastika armband. We persuaded the site owner to make them cover up or remove the Nazi emblems. After his first appearance, a bit of research revealed that he wasn't just playing at being a Nazi. He finally got the message that he wasn't wanted and never came back. As this was many years ago now, I am content to say that his lunch always had added ingredients.

Yes, you would think that the swastikas would be something of a giveaway.

That is an immense simplification of a far more nuanced and complex situation. The policy of gradually increasing representation of non-whites in line with educational and economic development would probably have resulted in an eventual transition to majority rule as opposition to the policy decreased, with a much better outcome for everyone than what actually transpired in both Zimbabwe and the majority of other sub-Saharan African nations. The utter disaster that was and is Zimbabwe could have been avoided. Unfortunately, the rush to hand over power In former African colonies has been anything but a success. Before anyone calls me a racist or a fascist or anything similar, I am moderately left wing and very definitely not racist.

Go for it; let's see how he responds.

Welcome aboard! The natives are reasonably friendly, unless it is a full moon.

Did his right hand divorce him? I’ll admit that I was taking the piss by making the offer; however, I was somewhat surprised by his response. I do wonder what has gone so wrong in his life to make him the way he is. As I am a bit of a c**t, I have prodded him again by raising the offer to £15.

That looks very interesting and very fragile.

I offered £10 for that completely shit MP5K in the classifieds a while back. This is the charming reply I got from the seller: Wouldnt cover the postage, packaging and fees, do you get many free guns? I could just through it in the bin for the sake of 34p i'd get from your serious offer >.> am going to seriously reject that, but thanks for taking the time, to waste my time and hopefully you dont live much longer if this is how you spend your life... What a prat.

Is the trigger returning quickly enough when released after longer bursts in FA? I cannot think why it should do so, but... Also, try reducing the Stage 2 trigger sensitivity to see if that affects it.

It was almost the exact opposite today. The chap doing the briefings, who I had not seen before, reduced the briefings to such an extent that key parts of the briefing were left out or passed over without clarification. For example, the briefing for the fallback game took less than a minute, during which he showed where the two teams would start, which was ok, and then showed that the next stage would be in the container field with a wave of his hand and a few mumbled words that did not specify whether that would be one stage or two; given that there were a fair number of players who were new to the site, this led to some confusion when the fighting moved there.

Putting aside my ambivalence towards the site, I set out this morning for Splatoon in Essex, having made sure that my rifles were wearing their barrel socks. The site was remarkably busy, with 120 players being present, representing a wide range of ages and experience, including a fair number of rentals. Because of this, four of us ended up sharing one picnic table; I was delighted to encounter Luke, a former Airsoft Plantation and Tower Airsoft marshal who I have known for a while and who had once offered me a marshalling gig on behalf of Tower's management. After going through the morning rituals, which included setting up the MP5SD2 and listening to the safety briefing and the somewhat vague briefing for the first game, we set off to the field for a game of spinners. Each of the three zones has a spinner with two colours; each team has to try to finish the game with their colour upwards in each zone. I started off in the centre zone, where we had a great fight, eventually managing to get what we thought was our colour up and defending it. After a while, I was hit, so went back to regen, where I bumped into Luke. We decided to go into the container field with a group of other regened players; unfortunately, at this point, it became clear that there was some confusion over which colour we were supposed to get pointing up. One marshal said that we had to get one colour up while another stated the opposite. Regardless, we had a great time exchanging shots and kills with the enemy until the game ended. It turned out that we had somehow managed to get all the spinners pointing up the way we needed them. Talking to some opposing players in the safe zone, it became apparent that they had also suffered from the same confusion and conflicting instructions, so it may have been mere chance that resulted in us winning. After a mercifully short break to reload, we went out for a fallback game after another rather vague briefing which somewhat glossed over how many stages there were. As the attackers, we had infinite regens at our start point, while the defenders turned out to have one life in each of three areas. Attacking against 60 players in a very small area, our initial advance was slow and I made an awful lot of trips back to regen before we started making ground; after a long slog, we forced them out of the first area and regrouped before advancing into the first stage of the container field, where I got some excellent hits on defenders in the structures. Having eventually cleared that section, including some pesky snipers in the top woods who took ages to get rid of, we started our attack into the second part of the container field, but ran out of time before getting to the final objective. Having partaken of luncheon, during which some players left, another game rather inevitably ensued. Four large containers of water were scattered across the site; each team had to try to get them back to their regen. Firefights ensued all across the site as both sides searched for them and tried to get them back, during which a small group of us had a rather amusing private war with some opposing players in the lower zone which had nothing to do with recovering the containers. The game ended as a draw. After another break, during which more a lot more players left, mostly from our team, we played a reverse of the earlier fallback game; suffice to say that it went rather more quickly than the earlier iteration, with the remnants of our team being utterly steamrollered. I was hit almost immediately in the first section and fell back into the far corner of the first half of the container field; Luke and I decided to hide ourselves in the top woods in the hope that the enemy would declare the area clear without spotting us, thus incurring time penalties. This did not work. In the last stage, I had the pleasure of taking out several enemy players who were trying to move through the top woods and one impertinent chap who poked his head around a corner rather too often. Following this, I, along with many others, decided to leave, having had another less than excellent day at Splatoon. Luke's comment was that it seemed to be a decent site but the team did not seem to know how to use it effectively; I could not disagree. He will probably not return. Weapons used CYMA MP5SD2 Ares L1A1 Real Sword QBZ-97 ASG XP18 Commander (CO2)

"UMAREX glock 42, standard, now used by UKSF as a back up pistol for covert ops."

Well, I never knew that UKSF now used the UMAREX Glock 42 as a back up pistol for covert ops.