Last night I went to TTAC3 for a training session for the upcoming Force Recon mil sim Nightfall 2. We’re already pretty proficient at CQB so we were practicing something a bit different and I had a great time. While I love TTAC3 the venue was too small to do what we wanted, still we made the best of it and focused more on team work, communication and some other small stuff. It was good and I certainly enjoyed myself.

I’m not super big into training however I do agree that we should improve on team work (though we’re already way ahead of other most other airsofters) and perhaps next time we can do something outdoors. In any case I had fun and can’t wait to play Nightfall 2. I know a few guys on the other team will be gunning for us and so be it, bring it on. 🙂

So today I receive a set of Ops-Core goggle swivel clips that I ordered just over a week ago. I bought the 19 mm version as I wanted the clips to be smaller and I’m going to rig up my lower mesh mask to them instead of zip tying it to my goggles. There have been times in the past where I would have liked to take off the lower face protection in game while still keeping my goggles on.

I hate doing my own modelling but that’s the only way I can get decent pictures and it seems to work pretty well! It’ll certainly make eating during a mil sim much easier and I guess I’ll be able to test it at the upcoming Nightfall 2 mil sim in the middle of June. 🙂

So I had some time last night and worked on the 2007 M16 PTW, I swapped the A2 upper with an A4 and changed the delta ring to the modern version. LOL good thing I have a lot of spare components, I also rebuilt the hopup unit from a spare unit that I have, the one that came with the gun was in terrible shape. The electronics are also wonky, there’s no active breaking and I think it’s due to the EL003 board being burnt out.

Heh now my AR PTW family is complete at the top is the 2012 MK18 Mod 1, the factory 2007 M4A1 is in the middle and at the bottom the newest addition the 2007 M16A4. 🙂

The blue cylinder that came with the M16 shoots at a nice consistent 400 fps and I’m glad to have another high powered cylinder. I’ll be ordering replacement FCC electronics soon, the motor should be ok as it’s an old Systema 480 which is reliable. Mario has kindly offered to give me his spare lower receiver so I’ll grab that as it’s probably in better shape than the “C8” receiver on the gun right now. I also need to get a M16 length gas tube and an A2 pistol grip…

It’s going to be a fun project and I’m glad Maggie isn’t giving me too much grief… Let’s see how long that lasts lol!

So last Saturday at the zombie game I ran into a fire hydrant, it hurt like hell but I could continue playing after about 2 minutes so I figure I was good. The swelling went down on Sunday but throughout the week it started to hurt more and more and I found that I didn’t have full range of motion in my right leg.

Just noticed my lower right leg is about 50% bigger than my lower left leg. 🙁 It doesn’t hurt much when I walk around however if there is any pressure on my leg other than straight down, it hurts like a bitch. I guess tomorrow I’ll need to go to see the doctor too, sigh this sucks big time as I had plans for the long weekend.

Saturday evening I went to play a zombie game at the Picton complex (yeah airsofters love that place) and it was fun. There were two warring human factions along with a zombie horde in between and the game was fun. I’ll admit I was a bit wary, in the past zombie games with players having unlimited ammo never worked out that well but this time it seemed to be alright.

We started off the game slow, there was quite a bit of light at dusk so we killed some time and waited for darkness haha that may be cheap but work to your advantage right. When it was time to use the NV, that’s when we really went to work and lol NV + IR laser = easy pickings… We were under no threat from the zombies outdoors, indoors it was definitely much closer but it we still were alright. Definitely had difficulties with the other human team, their respawn rules were much faster and we quickly found out it wasn’t in our interest to engage them heavily so we played hit and run with the other team all night.

One of my personal highlights was taking the fight to the mauraders/Force Recon. It’s certainly a compliment when they said they knew it was us because only we could do it without IR or white lights. Another highlight was when there were mauraders guarding one of the entrances to the gym, there were four people outside and a bunch more inside so we decided to engage them in an effort to force them to search for us. Four of us lined up, we placed our IR lasers on four different targets and on the order to fire, we took them all out with double taps, it was like in a video game!

Keiko took some pics and here were the ones with me in them.

The game ended around 3AM, I understand why Delta called it, a lot of people were starting to bail though I was still roaring to go. Oh well another good game, I played around a bit with Q’s PVS-15s and damn man… Now I really do want a set!

Back to the grind today, hope it’s not too busy.

Woo received my Elcan SpecterDR kill flash today, good timing too since I’ve got a game on Saturday. 🙂

And because I can, here are some more pictures of the unit… So excited, I can’t wait to play with it, it’s going to be sweet!

So I was finally able to snag a real S&S Precision Manta Strobe. 😀 My version does white/IR, I thought I was going to get the green/IR version but whatever these things are almost impossible to get in Canada so I won’t complain.

I love how low profile the Manta strobe is, now I don’t have to worry about it being knocked off or at least easily knocked off when I move through brush. With my old MS-2000, I always had to put one hand on my head and now I guess that piece of kit is a bit redundant. Oh well it’s always handy to have an extra strobe laying around, I’ll keep it in my backup kit for now.

So today I held a newbie mil-sim training session at Flag Radiers and man when you got great willing students, it’s an absolute pleasure to pass on your knowledge! Of the original 18 newbie airsofters signed up, 6 newbies showed up along with almost 20 veteran players… I understand though as today came, the weather got colder and colder so I don’t blame anyone who bailed. It didn’t help that at times there was heavy blowing snow, I know I’m certainly glad I have my Under Armor Cold Gear 4 too. Having so many veteran players did make things a bit difficult as I wanted to keep everyone happy however since this was newbie training, I focused my attention on the new guys.

I got a lot of help from the team and it was nice to have a few other veterans come out and back up what I said about the necessity of good radio communication to central command and communication between teams on the field. It started out really rough, no one was talking to anyone else and everyone was playing as Rambo but as the day wore on, you could really see people start to gel with each other. Later I got Brayden, Graham, Jim and Derek to help the players with individual positioning and aggressiveness and you could really see it pay dividends. Of course op-for had much stricter ROE and difficult respawn rules but hey we’re here to help the novice players right. It’s no fun to have veterans steamroll newbs and that’s not the point of today’s event. 🙂

There were two newbs stood out above the rest, one was named Aziz however I forgot the name of the second anyway Derek and BB Bastard was kind enough to provide two bags of 0.25g BBs as prizes for the best trainees. 🙂 They deserved it and kicked a lot of ass today!

Sigh I was bad too… Ever since the last Picton game, I found myself wanting something that had magnification capabilities as it would allow me to spot and identify things off in the distance. Anyway I was toying with the idea at getting a 3x magnification optic to mount behind my Aimpoint but it looks like I’m going to be getting a real Elcan Specter DR instead. 😀

Um, I’m not going to post how much it cost because if Maggie sees she’ll kill me so shh! 😉 Anyway this is the generation 2 model (there’s a 3rd gen now) though from what I read online, the difference between gen 2 & 3 is the reticle, cosmetic housing differences and some gen 3 models can take the recoil of a 7.62 NATO rifle… In any case I don’t care this gen 2 is pretty kick ass, it does 1x and 4x zoom with a quick flick of a switch. On 1x it’s not quite as quick as a RDS since you have to look straight through the unit (you can’t see the reticle if you look off center) but I think this will be good enough for me and airsoft use. The 4x will be useful outdoors at places like Picton.

So far the only downside is the Elcan Specter DR is freaking heavy! Oh well that’s small sacrifice to be more effective on the field. I can’t wait to truly play with it, first though I have to get a kill flash for it to protect the lens… Can’t seem to find one in Canada but it’s only a matter of time.

All in all a great day.

It’s funny when I first started in airsoft I ran with this cheap $50 OD rifleman style static vest for years, yet I purchased a lot of guns so I could build a collection of toy arms. Now after 8 or so years playing it’s the complete opposite, I have little interest guns (I almost only ever run the PTW as my primary and swap between the TM MEU & Glock 18C for my side arm) however I find myself wanting to tweak my load out all the time! I don’t know if I am considered a gear whore as I don’t go for a specific impression but rather I am always interested in tweaking my gear to optimize for efficiency.

That’s my main direct action load out at the moment (minus camo and boots of course), I have others for greenside/low profile/civilian but they’re not as much fun to tweak lol. I’m pretty happy with what I have at the moment however I would like to replace the single smoke grenade pouch on my back with a two Pantac AI Tornado pouches (no real branded pouches exist to hold those things). Other than my 7 year old belt, replica S&S Precision LBT 6094 kangaroo insert and Madbull MK18 Mod 1 rail unit everything is real (um except the guns too lol).

I think if I had to do it again, I would get all real gear right from the beginning, I experimented with repro/replica gear at first to try to save some money and was never happy at the quality. So many times repro stuff has fallen apart on me in game, sigh but you know what they say right buy cheap buy twice.

Oh Mario and I also swapped foregrips and now I have rails on my Real Sword Type 56-1.

Even though I like AKs, I have never gamed them but now that I have rails on the Type 56 I would be more inclined to. I don’t know what type of rail this is, frankly it’s not what I was looking for but it’ll do for now. I’ve been eyeing this Midwest Industries AK rail but can’t find a retailer who will ship to Canada. For skirmishes it doesn’t matter what gun I run but I can see situations in mil sims where having Eastern bloc weaponry would be useful, that and now I can bolt on my flashlight and PEQ box for night operations. 😉

Sigh it never ends… I guess there are worse things I could spend my money on, at least with airsoft I get some exercise. 🙂