Airsoft Gun Maintenance

Every single time you play Airsoft, your gun, whether it be spring, electric or gas, gets some normal wear and tear. If never maintained, the lifespan of your gun is going to go down the crapper (trust me, I've done it).

Cleaning an airsoft gun is about as simple as operating a toaster, but if you have absolutely no mechanical knowledge, now would be the time to stop reading. Here are some crucial aspects of keeping your gun in good shape:

Clean Your Barrel- You will need: cleaning rod, paper towels, 100% silicone spray lubricant (links at bottom of page).

Cleaning your barrel can drastically improve accuracy by removing gunk.

-Take a strip of paper towel about 1.5"x 2.5" and fold it lengthwise until it will fit through the hole in the end of the cleaning rod.

-Spray a bit of lube on the paper towel

-make sure your hop-up (if you have one) is turned all the way down

-insert the paper towel end of the rod into the tip of the barrel and push while turning, then reverse and pull out

-Repeat until the paper towel comes out clean (getting a fresh strip each pass of course)

LUBE LUBE LUBE!- You will need: LUBE!!

Any parts of your gun that see wear and tear form constant movement get some lube.

-Locate any parts on your gun that get wear from movement such as bolts (sniper rifles), AEG magazines, blowback slides (pistols), etc...

-Spray the part that moves as well as the part that it moves on

-Actuate a few times (i.e.: rack the slide on your pistol, pull back your bolt....)

-Wipe visible excess

Proper Storage- You will need: a bit of time.

Keeping your gun stored after a game can make a huge difference in how quickly parts wear out.

-Unplug your battery and keep it somewhere room temp and dry. extreme cold or heat kill even a good battery very quickly.

-Unload everything. Leaving spring magazines and even wound up hi-caps loaded wears out the springs and will eventually cause feeding problems.

-(AEG Only) Make sure to fire your gun on semi once or twice before putting it away, because after full auto firing, the spring can end up in a partially cocked position with wears it out very quickly. firing on semi sets it back in the unstressed position.

There, that wasn't so bad was it? If you do this regularly, you can significantly prolong the life and performance of your guns. Its not some hooey I made up, after playing for a few years and having owned (and destroyed) many different guns, i figure i would spend less if i just put some effort into keeping them in working order. Feel free to leave questions! Now, here's some links to products I would recommend:

Lube:

-http://www.amazon.com/Warehouse-M9-14-Gunk-Heavy-duty-Lubricant/dp/B001DEODPK

-http://www.amazon.com/UTG-Airsoft-Cleaning-Silicone-Spray/dp/B002GO062A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1294987205&sr=8-1

Battery DIScharger:

http://www.airsoftgi.com/product_info.php?products_id=5014

-John, PNWproductions/Airsoft Diary

Airsoft Bloopers Montage 2

Because one just wasn't enough... Enjoy!

12/27/10 Airsoft Battle Video and Re-Cap

Yesterday my group had a really awesome day of airsofting, the best that I've had in a while.  The weather was good despite an 80% chance of showers, I'm pretty sure that the sun even broke through at one point!  John, the guy in our group who does the majority of the work for our YouTube presence and also has author rights on this blog, has edited and uploaded one of the rounds from that day.  It is embedded below, but first I'm going to go over the rules for that round.

Rules:

• 1 hit to a death and 2 spawns, so players essentially get 3 lives including the one that they started the round with
• semi-automatic only - we've found it's too easy to get pinned on full
• tennis ball grenades are a kill if they land within a 10 foot radius and upon landing have a direct line of site to the victim (ie the effect of a grenade does not go through cover)
• a new rule we tried out and ended up liking a lot: gun hits ACTUALLY matter! If your gun gets hit it is counted as "broken".  To "repair" it, you must bring it back to spawn without getting hit.  If you get hit going back to spawn, it counts as a kill, and then you continue back to spawn and lose one life.  After dying, your gun is "repaired".  If you choose not to repair your gun, you may not use it unless you respawn.  You can still use any secondaries or pistols you may be carrying, however.

Notes about the video:

• At 0:42 there is an outdated picture of me with the thompson.  I now have a G36c, as the text states.
• At 2:04 I begin to quickly duck down into the trench after slowly raising my gun up over the sandbag.  I didn't know someone was sighted in on me and I soon as I was exposed three BB's wizzed past my left ear.  It was an EXTREMELY close call.  But it sounded awesome.
• At 2:12 you can see my team mate, Sam, get 'naded.
• Billy has a bit of a fence-hopping fail at 2:32.
• I had an epic slide to get behind cover after respawning.  John caught the end of it and chuckles at the overdramatic-ness of it at 3:34.
• I curse at a mis-feed at 3:56.  Cover your ears.
• I get trigger happy at 4:15.
• At 4:20 Sam (my team mate) calls himself out after his gun stops working.  Something weird happened with the trigger plate and made the gun stuck on full auto even if he wasn't pressing the trigger, the safety was on, or any other reason.  We had to quickly remove the battery to stop it from wasting the clip.  The video continues after he gets a new gun to finish the round with (John's tan M16).
• At 4:35 something pretty funny happened.  I had asked if we were going and couldn't hear the response.  I yell, "What?".  I then start getting shot at and yell, "Oh sssshit, we're going".  John pans the camera over to me and says, "Nice one, Luke".
• At 4:43 I announce that I'm going to go reload.  I meant to say repair, because my gun had been chipped, which is why I then ran behind the garage to the spawn area.
• I get hit in the wrist at 5:03.  The round is over.
• Starting at 5:10 Billy has an epic victory high five sequence.

We also played some other rounds that were taped that day.  I'll address them in this blog as John edits and uploads them to the Tube.

1x45mm NC Star Red Dot Sight Review

Photo Credit: NcStar.com

Specifications and Features

Light Source: LED

Brightness Adjustments: 7

Power Source: 3V Lithium Battery (CR2032)

Objective Diameter: 45mm

Magnification: 1x

Reticle: Red Dot

Dot Size: 3 MOA (not quite sure how you can measure the size of a circle in arcminutes...)

Click Value: 1 MOA

Exterior Finish: Black Aluminium

Lens Coating: Ruby

Net Weight (oz): 8.40

Length (in): 5.12

Mount: Integrated Weaver Style
Price Range: 30-34 (USD)

Pros

First off I'd like to point out that this red dot is an extremely good price compared to similar ones out there.  The performance:price ratio truly is high.

Another nice thing about this sight is that, on it's highest brightness setting, it is VERY bright!  Even in broad daylight, you never have to worry about the dot being too faint.

The field of view in the scope is also nice, as it doesn't constrain vision very much and allows the shooter to actually see things surrounding their target.  This is also a con, however, and I will address it accordingly below.

The body is metal and seems to be very sturdy as far as durability goes.

The sight is extremely adjustable and the clicks are very slight, so it's easy to get perfectly zeroed in.

The scope also comes with some nice extras: a spare battery and a cleaning cloth for the lenses. 

Cons

 The wide field of view also leads to inaccurate aiming if you don't look down the sight straight enough.  This is a problem inherent to all red dots, but its exacerbated by the huge 45mm lenses.

The front lens is glass as far as I can tell, which is never a good thing for durability.  I've seen similar sights break from direct BB hits onto the lens.

The lenses tend to fog up from condensation in wet weather.  I live in Seattle, so this is a huge issue with me.

The lens covers are possibly the most obnoxious things on earth.  They stick really far up, making your guns profile a lot bigger, which is really annoying for CQB when being large and clunky can be a huge disadvantage.

Pictures

"Aiming Down the Sight" view

Those lens covers stick way too far up and are a huge nuisance on the battlefield, as you can see with the site mounted on my MK36c (G36c that dodges copyright infringement).

Final Opinion

The biggest plus of this sight is its price relative to its performance.  I'm going to give it a 6/10, though, because it does have one major flaw - the whole condensation thing.

Sources:
This Page

Mythbusting: Barrel Length and Accuracy

There seems to be quite a few airsofters out there who seem to have the illusion that, the longer the inner barrel, the more accurate the gun. When asked for reasoning, they explain that the longer an object travels in one direction, the more likely it is to remain going in that direction. Let me tell you now that there is NO real scientific basis for this ridiculous claim. The other thing they point to is that field airsofters use longer guns, like M16's and snipers. This is because a longer inner barrel allows for more acceleration of the BB prior to leaving the barrel, and thus yields a higher velocity. In other words, longer barrel = potential for higher FPS, which also = potential for being accurate at range (because obviously a BB needs to be 200 feet away for it to be accurate 200 feet away).

Once a BB is traveling in a direction, it is going to remain going in that direction unless acted upon by outside forces. The forces that will ultimately be fucking with your accuracy are those imparted by gravity and impacting air particles (what most people would just call "wind"). If variables that affect consistency are kept as constant as is possible within the gun (mostly the hop up and the smoothness of the inner barrel) then the BB's inertia is going to be the deciding factor in accuracy (assuming FPS is a constant). Because a BB's inertia is directly proportional to its mass, the BB's mass is going to be the most important thing for consistency (which IS essentially accuracy if you know how to adjust sights). However, this is dependent of controlling variables within the gun, so inner barrel quality (not length) and hop up quality are also going to be very important.

So please, no more ridiculous claims that a longer inner barrel make for a more accurate gun.  Oh and all you people that are hiding longer inner barrels in silencers are really wasting your money!

Sources:
This Post
This Article
This Guy

AirsoftGI TV

I really think that its' time to address the legitimacy of AirsoftGI TV and their "informational videos".  Let me just say one thing first - in case you weren't aware, AGI is an airsoft RETAILER!  Their primary concern is MAKING MONEY, not making scientifically accurate or informed reviews.  Yes, they know about airsoft and aren't morons, but they are STILL bending things to their advantage.

Don't believe me?  Fine, allow me to prove my point.  Anyone who has done any shopping for tightbores on AGI has probably seen their "Tight Bore Barrel Test" video.  If you haven't, it's embedded directly below.


The conclusion of the video is that 6.03mm tightbores do little to nothing in terms of improving accuracy, while 6.01's do a lot to tighten your spread.  What AGI conveniently DOES NOT tell you is that KWA includes a 6.05mm stock barrel.  In other words, the difference between the 6.03 and the stock barrel is a lot less noticeable than it would be if using a more common and less expensive model.

But why, you may ask, would they wish to make 6.01's look so much better than 6.03's?  The answer is simple.  Look at the price difference!  They make a lot more money selling 6.01's, so naturally they're marketing them.  Unfortunately, their "scientific" videos are actually fooling people - and not just into throwing more money around, but even to IGNORING or just plain not seeing the inadequacies of AGI's scientific method.

I rest my case.  So please, next time you watch an AirsoftGI TV video, ask yourself: "Is this just a money making ploy?  How much merit should I place in their results?"  Remember, the best sources of unbiased information are blogs like this one or forums like ASF.

Airsoft Turret Game "MG NEST" 11/6/10

Survival-type game mode in which player in the bottom yard must stay in the pillbox but is allowed to use semi auto. The opposition can only be on semi, as usual.