Tomorrow evening Maggie and Brandon return to Canada and I can’t wait!!!

Over the weekend I was bad and picked up a LCT AKMS… I know I shouldn’t have done it was cheap and I really like the AKMS look.

Yes it’s very similar to my RS Type 56-1 so I’m going to revert that thing back to wood for a more classical look and keep this as my modern AK. Sigh unfortunately I don’t know when or if I’ll ever use it as I’m just too comfortable running my PTWs. Oh well if that day comes that I use something else at least I’m prepared. 🙂

With that said my Surefire SR-07-IT dual pressure switch’s flashlight pressure switch finally kicked the bucket. It’s been finicky from day one so perhaps I got a lemon, anyway I’m going to send it back to Surefire to get it replaced. In the mean time I have reverted back to two individual pressure switches and I have to say it’s actually not bad. With the rail facing forward, I placed the PEQ box pressure switch on the 10-11 position and the flashlight pressure switch at the 4-5 and both fit nicely between the rails!

It’s actually pretty comfortable with the way I hold my gun, maybe I’ll save the Surefire switch for something else when I get it back.

Ugh fighting off a cold, I feel like crap so stayed at home today… Hopefully it won’t be too busy.

So I recently picked up new BUIS and a Docter mounting plate for my Elcan SpecterDR and woo I’m happy to report a NcStar Docter mini red (err green) dot works with the plate! I was considering buying a real Docter sight but worried about a $300-400 optic being shot out, if this thing breaks no big deal though it’s no big deal since it’s only $60. 🙂

Graham tells me that NcStar will warranty their stuff even if it’s shot out by airsoft so I guess that’s cool, hell if they allow for it then why shouldn’t I take advantage right… I guess it kind of makes the 1x setting for the SpecterDR kind of useless but whatever, this has got to be the ultimate combo. Mini RDS on top for quick and dirty action, 4x scope for those times I need some magnification.

Awesome, too bad I can’t play a mil sim any time soon.

I remember hearing a lot of great stories from the guys about Operation Athena so when Athena II rolled around this year (and with the family away) I decided to attend as well. The game was located at Thamesville ON so I would camp out Friday night with the guys instead of driving up early Saturday morning. On Friday, Henry came to pick me up then we went to Brayden’s place and lol we met his mother and grand mother. After loading up the mini van, we hit up a local Montana’s for lunch and then Walmart to pick up some last minute items while waiting for Graham to make it to our location.

After chilling for about 30 minutes in the parking lot Graham met up and I rode with him so he’d have some company. Along the way he was telling me about his time in the CF infantry and while it sounded very cool all the time I was thinking that I am definitely not tough enough to do it! Before hitting the field, the four of us went to have dinner at this local pizza place and it was fun. At the field we met up with Ray and Campbell, were allowed to go to the green (Russian team) parking area and set up our tents. Afterwards as more people started trickling in, we played the game Cards Against Humanity and we had a blast. As it got colder, we met up with the game host and asked if he’d find out from the field owner if we can start a fire, he said yes so we made an impromptu fire pit. It was pretty relaxing and at around 11PM, I decided to turn in as I wanted to sleep as long as I can so I don’t have to rest during the game.

The “coffin” tent I was using sucks ass, it was light but all I could do was lay down and got really wet every time I got in and out of it due to condensation. I learnt my lesson though and will be picking up one of the multicam Lightfighter tents that Graham is selling, they’re much nicer and a lot of the guys have them already. Anyway the US Army sleeping bag system worked great and I was nice and warm even though the outside temperature was in the mid single digits.

On game day we had about 40-50 players on the Russian team and there were equal numbers on the (tan) US team. We had various tasks throughout the game and even though I was attached to Cossack 5 as 2IC, I found myself in charge of a small group with various tasks throughout the game. During the day the Russian team held around 60-70% of the field and control points and lol I knew the domination would only continue at a quicker pace at night. Around 11PM I led a small 6 man squad all the way to the US CP, it looked lightly defended so we decided to attack as I really wanted to capture the US base card however it didn’t turn out the way I expected haha… There ended up to be 20-30 US players hanging around base and that battle ended rather quickly.

A couple of hours later there was a more coordinated attack with a much larger group of Russian players and this time around we were able to get in, wipe out the entire US base and grab their base card. 😀 I was very happy with how it turned out as we were in and out rather quickly.

Our last mission of the day was to move a VIP to the open farmer’s field and lol what a character… He was dressed in a white lab coat covered with glow stick goo and looked like Mr. Burns, technically he was suppose to be radioactive so we needed to keep our distance. Anyway we got to the farmers field and the VIP told me that if we could get him to the center of the field, he’d pop smoke and we’d win so I kept telling (yelling) the Russian team that we needed to push out into the open field. LOL anyway with about 5 minutes left in the game, I was able to transport the VIP to the middle of the field and after that it was mission and game complete.

LOL during the briefing I chuckled when I heard “Obviously the Russian team won” from the game host but everyone on the Russian side pushed hard and I’d say at least 80% if not more of the team was active the whole game which is impressive! After the end of game discussions, we all went to sleep for a few hours then hit Jo Mammas which was a local diner. All in all a great game and I’ll definitely go back next year!

Here are a few pictures from the game, there will be more however they’re not available yet. Heh yeah I had a good time and can’t wait for the next one!

So I got my King Arms M1A1 today… While I’m happy I got it, I’m a bit disappointed that it has a plastic receiver since I asked the seller specifically if it was metal and he said yes. Will contact him to see what he can do but I will keep it because I got a really good price on it.

A couple of the guys and I will be getting into WW2 airsoft next year and the most fun step is to get a gun right… Already have a FMU TM 1911 so woo weapon wise I’m set. 🙂

So today I went with Stephen to Graham’s store (Hero Outdoors) so I could pick up a new chest rig. I sold the Condor ATACS rig that Maggie got me last year, while I liked it, it was just too bright especially at night. In its honour, I picked up the same rig in OD along with the Condor hydration carrier and it’s pretty damn nice. It’s civilian gear but whatever for my needs it’ll work just fine. Along the way I also bought a Cold Steel training tomahawk axe, lol it was cheap and I thought pretty cool… It’s made of hard plastic but I’d like to try to use it at a zombie game if possible as it’s neat but we’ll see I guess.

Later on I went to Jason’s house to pick up my SKD Tac PIG gloves, I have a set in tan already but I wanted them in OD too.

I’ll be using the OD rig at the Athena game later in the month and I can’t wait!

So on Saturday I went to Nick’s Operation Operator game held at the Picton facility. The intended purpose of the game was introduce new players to command structures and help them with getting into the mil sim spirit. I was on the SOPCOM team and in command of 1st platoon, I knew the game would be difficult due to the rain already but when I gathered my guys I found out that a whole section of 7 players was missing! So all in all I think I had about 20 guys in my small platoon which made things difficult because I just didn’t have enough bodies to do what I wanted.

The game went well and I had a good time. Coordinating the defense of the kitchen was really difficult, new players don’t understand the concept of defending haha and often when I walk the line I’d find huge holes in my defensive line. Personally I found it very frustrating but hell this is all volunteer and we’re not doing it for real life purposes right.

During the day the op-for gave us a good run for our money and beat us to the punch much of the time during the daylight hours. That turned off a large portion of our team that basically quit but SOPCOM had its revenge at night… Even though the other team had more NV capable units than we did, our IR discipline was much better and we got the jump on them a lot. Haha a lot of the op for players didn’t like that we had a mission to turn off the generator powering the lights but I mean hell what’s the point of playing a highly scripted game.

All in all I had a good time, by the time it was 5-6AM, I think there was a max of around 6 players on SOPCOM still playing but whatever I enjoyed myself. 🙂

Some pictures of me and my boys in game and just before at the BB Bastards booth. Last picture was of Derek, Brayden, Graham and I at a small diner for our after game meal. 🙂

So a bunch of the guys and I picked up some USMC issue field packs for airsoft use. I can’t speak for the others but my Pantac 3 day pack was simply too small to carry all my gear for the large mil sims and I was already looking for something bigger when a few of them proposed this so I jumped at the opportunity. 🙂

I think 5 or 6 of us ordered and it came up to $120 per person, it came with a complete field pack (including aluminum skeleton and load bearing belt) as well as a smaller assault pack. It’s used and mine was a bit dusty but whatever, if it’s good enough for real marines it’ll work just fine for my uses.

Looking forward to using this on the field, perhaps I’ll bring it to the 18 hour game at Picton on Sept 7th. 🙂

I love playing airsoft but freaking hate the guns because they’re so temperamental and I don’t understand why “high end” companies like Systema can’t design a motor that works. The 490A, 7511 & 7512 motors all suck and die rather quickly yet regular AEG motors have no problems. Anyway I mentioned recently my M4A1 died on me, initially suspecting the electronics because it’s the 2007 design I put it on the shelf and just left it there. Anyway on a whim I decided to install a FCC 2.5 motor into the gun and yay it’s alive!!! Unfortunately it wasn’t my motor so I can’t keep it but I do have a FCC 3.0 motor on order.

Figure I’ll move the 3.0 motor into my MK18 Mod 1 since I use that gun most and move the FCC 2.5 motor currently installed into the M4. And just for fun I took a pic of the AR family…

I want to get into real guns later so I’ll probably cut my collection down further but for now I like what I have. 🙂

Haha I was lazy over long weekend (and I took a couple of extra days off too) so here’s my Art of War update. I got to the field around 7:30AM and saw Victory actual running some shooting drills with a few of the guys he wasn’t familiar with, Ray is good there and a great leader. Anyway Q was playing with his new toy, a 6 rotor helicopter which he mounted a camera on and it was very cool! Too bad he didn’t have a way to transmit the video signal or else we really could have used it as a UAV.

At 11AM, JOTF was allowed to move into the field and many thanks for Derek for hauling people’s gear out to the field in his truck. I know I certainly packed heavy and so did most of the other players so this was definitely a relief. Once at base camp, we dropped our stuff set up our sleeping area then Brayden and I proceeded to set up the CP & interrogation building while the other guys on Victory 2 pulled guard duty. We didn’t expect much contact but you never know right, Victory 1, 3, Warthog & Gravedigger units went to the field to complete missions. For much of the first day we were on guard duty, it was kind of boring but needed to be done and I guess Jeremy was “resting” us for the night missions. We did do one sortie to rescue Warthog when that unit got stuck and lost some shooters.

At around 8PM, Chris informed us that he had to drive Keiko home, she wasn’t feeling well and had a fever so Brayden took overall command of Vic 2 while I was 2IC and in charge of our section. In the dark we did a few missions, secured the landing zone, set up an ambush and captured a lot of enemy players which was a lot of fun. Since we knew op-for had gen 3 NV as well as a section we decided not to employ our IR illuminators or lasers, hehe sneaky and it worked pretty well. One of the captured op-for guys was mentioning how he expected it to be a laser light show when we started shooting but it didn’t happen so they couldn’t pinpoint our locations.

There was a fully automatic fire incident around 2 or 3AM, one of the op-for guys got shot in the face and wasn’t too happy about it so there was a change in the ROEs where full auto fire was not allowed till 6AM. While I understand the safety issue, I feel that personal safety is always up to the player. I don’t want my teeth shot out so I wear something that will cover my mouth, but in any case I am glad the player wasn’t seriously injured as that is not what airsoft is about. It was a lot of fun shooting against the GOA guys, they’re always up for a battle and are good players. Haha I enjoyed chatting with them after we captured them. 🙂

At around 4:30AM, we were ordered to rest by Jeremy as he wanted everyone to have a bit of rest before pushing us out on day ops in a few hours. Of course before I turned in (even though I wasn’t that tired), I made sure all my guys were set first. My multicam top was drenched in sweat so I took it off and put it on the backing of my camping chair hoping it’d dry off. In my sleeping bag my pants were wet too so I took those off as well and laid them out.

I didn’t sleep very well, we were on a hill and whenever I turned to my side it always felt that I was going to roll down the hill lol. That and even though I had Surefire EP3 ear plugs on, the stupid birds were pretty loud and all in all I got about 45 – 60 minutes of sleep. I was up and about by 6AM, Jeremy informed me he wanted everyone up by 8 so we could begin day ops, I made breakfast and let my guys sleep a bit more while I pulled sentry duty.

The next day Victory 2 was a lot more active which was fun. We completed a whole bunch of missions which seems now like a blur because we were constantly on the move. Our last mission of the day was to gift wrap the comm tower to op-for and defend it if possible, unfortunately they never showed up! Jeremy was given three separate missions in the last couple of hours and had to split the forces up so while we were successful in defending the tower because no one showed up, we were unsuccessful in our main mission (which we found out it was the most important afterwards).

The pace of AOW was a bit slow but I understand the game hosts have a difficult time balancing that. Too fast and people burn out, too slow and people complain about inactivity… While I found it easy, I know a few of the other JOTF members were really tired by the end so I think it was a good compromise.

I agreed to go for dinner with the guys but on the drive to the restaurant I started to miss Brandon more and more and decided to bail. I got home within 30 minutes of his bed time and it felt so good to give him a hug and kiss, definitely worth it.

A few of the guys weren’t happy with how the game was run but I mean whatever that’s how it goes… I understand hosting can be a difficult job so unless the host does something blatantly stupid it doesn’t bother me and I had a good time so that’s all that matters. Oh those Off Mosquito clips work pretty well. Not so much when you’re on the move but when you’re stationary after about 5 minutes the bugs really do leave you alone for the most part. Time to stock up, next time I’ll have one on either side of me for double protection haha.