Sunday 28 February 2010

Scottish Weather

  I am just back from NCIS Airsoft in Edinburgh, a few of the guys were running a Milsim game and I was asked to come along to film some new Pyro they were testing out, but by the time the game kicked off the weather was terrible with snow and rain at the same time, typical Scottish weather.
Most of the pyro was so wet it just did not work, so I promised the guys I will come back the next time they are gonna use it and hopefully it will not be such bad weather.
  I took some video as they were setting up the pyro and I will get that added to the blog this week as some exclusive videos for you guys, its interesting because the guys explain what they are using, what it should do and who made the items they use.
   Because it was so wet today the camera lens was covered in raindrops so most of the video was ruined, but I did still get a few decent action scenes which I will cobble together for a video this week.
      I guess the best bit I captured today was in the last two minutes of the very last game, a kid was one of three players defending a big base, one of the enemy threw a BB grenade into the base, quick as a flash the kid grabs the grenade and throws it back, now if that BB grenade had went off he would have had BBs stuck in his face and hand as well as some burns on his hand, he was very lucky not to get injured and he was told off by a game marshal who was watching him, but it made for a great bit of video and you will see that this week.
 I had planned to play a little today with my Real Sword Type 97, I took this gun to POW last week and to be honest I was not impressed with it, a gas blow back pistol shoots further than this thing.
I could not check the FPS at POW because every time I went to chrono check it a marshal had taken the chrono into games to spot check any players guns that they suspected of firing a little high and the chrono was not available today at NCIS.
  Site owner Nick guessed that the gun spring may have been clipped to reduce the FPS by the retailer, but it may have been clipped a little too much, so I will put a new Systema spring in it this week then test again at POW this coming Sunday.
  I bought a longer 6.03 barrel from a player at NCIS today and Nick who is a decent gun tech was good enough to fit it for me today, the gun was then a little better range wise but it is still short of what it should be doing and there did appear to be a lot of flyers, flyers are BBs which seem to go off in different directions, I have a new Systema Hop rubber in my collection of spares so I may change that as well.
Hopefully I will also have a few new Li-po batteries from the "component shop" for the gun because the one that RS advise for this is a total bitch to fit, most people fit the battery into this gun and never take it back out as it can be charged while still in the gun, but since I have had problems with this I have had to take the gun apart much more than is normal and I feel its better to just junk the standard battery
and replace it with a much more compact Li-po so that I have much less trouble rebuilding the gun after each repair.
So would I advise you to buy a Real Sword gun? Well based on this one NO. These guns are a bit more expensive than most and I really should not have to be doing such changes to a brand new gun.
Oh yeah, the pictures above are of WillieMoto and The Baldyman setting up their pyro for the game. Video will follow.                                         

John
                                               The NCIS Safezone

Saturday 20 February 2010

Real Sword Type97

I'm off to film at POW tomorrow Sunday 21st, got the cameras all charged up, Im taking my usual Canon HD camera and two 2010 Tachyon XC cameras one is mounted on a cycle helmet and the other will be on the Picatinny rail which is on my new Real Sword Type 97.
I was supposed to test the 97 at NCIS Airsoft in Edinburgh last Sunday but due to a wiring fault that I noticed on Saturday night I never made it to NCIS. After I found the fault I just stopped charging gun batteries etc and gave up, I opened a bottle of wine and chilled out, then my pal Kenny phoned to say he would take me up on the offer of a lift to NCIS which I had made to him a few days before. I explained that I was fed up with gun problems and now not going to any airsoft site, I later felt bad for letting Kenny down, so if your reading this Kenny, I'm Sorry pal!
You see Kenny in a lot of my videos most recently in at the start of the night vision video from POW, he also has a Real Sword Type97 but he has the B version, its very nice and a rare sight at any Airsoft sites here.
BTW NCIS is a really nice little site, it probably the smallest site I film at, but its well ran by Madjock and Frenchy, well planned games with plenty of action and some beautiful woodland, if your ever in the Edinburgh area then its well worth a visit, they have their own forum where game dates etc are posted in advance at, you will require a login to see all the forum topics or to make any comments.
So its POW tomorrow, the weather forecast is for heavy snow which is hard to believe as its been cold here but crystal clear blue skys all day today, so nice in fact I cleaned and washed two cars mine and my girlfriends.
Here's a few pictures of the Type97, the first pic also has the helmet with the camera on it which is set to give you viewers an eye level view of what I see.

I am using 130 round mid-caps with the Type97, I got one with the gun then I bought another five plus the Picatinny rail from Ehobbies I use them for anything I cannot get from my local retailer, I prefer to buy from local retailers because if there is any problems with items they will replace or repair without question.
Well thats all for now.
John

Friday 19 February 2010

A few weeks back one follower 5thstate asked a few questions, so at long last here are a few answers.He asked

Q. "How you go about shooting your videos--do you run around all over the place or just follow your mates into action? Do you have a steadicam rig? How much do you think about framing and how the end result will look, or is that all taken care of in editing?"

A. I don't have a steadicam rig, I only recently looked at getting one but decided against it for now,but I might get one in the near future, a lot of the time I am flat down on the ground with the camera pointing up and I could not get as low as that with the steady-cam and that's why I have never bought one so far.I do think about the framing a lot when filming, I am always looking at whats going on in the background of the frame, trying to get the people behind the main shot into the frame or watching for fingers of sunlight beaming like lasers through the woods, all kinds of things, I am never just focused on the main person in the frame.

Q. "Who owns the Minigun and for goodness sake WHY?"

A. That would be Rab, he probably has every big Airsoft gun I can think of, all the expensive versions of M60s, 249s, Miniguns you name it, he must have spent thousands on Airsoft guns. I dont see him so much now as his favourite site "The Fort" which is owned and ran by local retailer "Airsoft World" its closed just now, but hopefully it should reopen in spring. I think Rab sometimes goes to a CQB site which I will not mention but I have filmed at,but they saw fit to ban me from their forums when questions about safety were mentioned by another player, the questions were removed their forum by a moderator and I simply asked why they were removed which got me a ban from their forums and so I am taking that as a ban from their site, silly people.I have to say that many players warned me not to get involved with CQB here, I thought they were all exaggerating, but they were right.

Q. "Do non-Airsoft-players ('civilians') think you are all weird?

A. I would imagine many think we are weird, but I really do not care what anyone thinks, as I often say to my non Airsofting friends who try to make a remarks about Airsoft players being odd I point out that I and all the other people on our sites actually do something which involves going out, getting good exercise and meeting lots people who will soon become friends. Where as they my so called "normal" friends who mostly like Football (Soccer) sit alone on the couch in their lounge where they shout and talk to their TV usually while getting very drunk and munching big bags of potato chips, after the football is finished they ramble on for days, weeks even years as if they were actually playing in the games when in fact they more often than not sat alone, drunk talking to an inanimate object...So who's the weird ones? And talking of weird the closest village to the POW site is called High Bonnybridge, where over 600 UFOs sightings were reported in recent years and where the local councillor (Talking of weirdos) is said to have the biggest collection of human hair in the world. If that is whats considered "Normal" then I would rather be weird.

Q. Do they know what you all get up to in the woods?

A. Well I guess they have an idea, POW is sited in a private forest, but there is a public right of way through the forest which is used my horse riders and walkers, its interesting to see the faces of people going through for the first time in a peaceful woodland only to stumble upon 80-100 people standing in the forest with a lot of them wearing SS uniforms, US WWII marines etc and many armed to the teeth

Q. How much awareness of Airsoft IS there in the general public?

A. Not a great deal, most think its paintball, I seldom bother to correct anyone who says "oh you play Paintball"

Q. Have the numbers of participants at Bonny bridge increased much?

A. Yes the numbers at POW are fantastic, I think POW has over five hundred members now, players bring friends and we get a real domino effect so player numbers go up all the time, I don't think I have ever met anyone who came here, played and did not like it.

John

Tuesday 16 February 2010

Midweek Quickie

I don't know if you have noticed but the last two weeks I have put up a short video midweek, the plan is to try and have a ten or more minute video every Friday/Saturday and a short one every Tuesday or Wednesday.
Regards the comments I spoke about last time and the fact that I try and reply to as many as I can, I should point out that even though I say on my channel page that I get about 200 messages every day this is totally incorrect, as of last Friday (12Th Feb) I started keeping a note of the total messages I get from YouTube every 24 hours on the first day I got 796, day two 816, day three 689, day four 912 and its like that every single day of the year.
Most YouTubers get messages like "Oh your cute" "are you single" etc nothing special that requires no real reply, but the questions I get are usually technical which require a fair bit of time to reply to and it would be totally impossible for me to reply to every single question, even if I were to hire a person to sit here eight hours a day replying to questions for me they would still never manage to reply to them all. When I do reply I then get more questions from the person, usually a few because they think that since I answered one question from them I am now gonna reply to five, ten or more, its crazy.
I really do appreciate that people watch my videos but often I bang my head on my desk in despair with the sheer volume of mail most of which could be answered if the people just went to Google and typed in their question.
When I first got into making Airsoft videos I used to watch videos from a guy called Flanker Tanker, about a year back he totally gave up though illness and I can understand why as he too complained about the massive amount of messages he was getting, so if you ever sent me a question via YouTube then never got a reply please don't moan about it, just sit for a minute and think about it.... Could you ever cope with this amount of mail, plus make videos, deal with your young kids and work full time?
John

Sunday 14 February 2010

NCIS no show

After saying I was going to NCIS in Edinburgh on Sunday 14Th I never made it, I charged the battery for my new Type 97 which I was taking to test, I got the battery in thanks to Flanker Tankers tutorial on YouTube, but each time I pulled the trigger nothing happened, after an hour of tinkering about I realised a wire close to the fuse has not connected, by the time I figured this out I was pretty well fed up so the gun went back in the box until either I can fix it or get it back to the retailer, I am not having much luck with guns just now.
So I had a Sunday afternoon free to edit a video, which I have done, I have a nice ten minute video ready for upload on Friday and I may just do another short one for Tuesday if I get the time, the amount of great looking outtakes I have is amazing.
Someone asked what sort of planning goes into filming my videos, to be honest there is no planning, its just a case of grab the camera and go, I sometimes look around the safe zone where all the players have their gear set out just to see who has a new or interesting gun then I might follow them for a while or if there are players from other countries visiting the site I will try and catch a little bit of video of them since they have usually taken the trouble to travel here after seeing my videos.
Over the last few days on my videos people have commented that they really appreciate getting a reply from me to their questions that they leave on the videos, a few said that I am one of the very few YouTubers to even reply to questions, is that really the case?
I don't look at too many other YouTubers comments so are they really ignoring their fan base to such an extent? Do you guys ever get any response from other video makers?
OK guys gotta go

Friday 12 February 2010

Lack of spare time

Well guys, if you have seen the video I posted up late on Friday 12th Feb, then please understand that my son was off school due to some teacher training that was taking place and I had to spend some time with him, that meant there was very little time to do my usual standard of video. So I just picked a long clip and added some detail to let the viewers understand what they were seeing, it took me two hours from start to finish, its not amazing by any means but it was either upload that or wait until next Friday which I was not keen on doing.
The video was filmed pretty much at the place the last one ended, the site is divided by an old dry stone wall which the teams were fighting over on the last video, in the latest one yellow are just over that wall and heading into a dark area of woods where they had to capture some more bases within a limited time, I think it was a sixty minute game and there was around eighty players on site. On the last video a lot of viewers commented that they liked being able to see around POW instead of my jumping from player to player, so I just continued that and it lets viewers see more of the site layout, but in the next video I will return to a few more edits.
Having said that I will be at NCIS in Edinburgh on Sunday the 14th, I will be playing for a change and have two headcams on, so depending on what I get there the next video maybe from that.
Above is a little bit of my AI magazine collection, I have about forty of these, I know a lot of people slate it but I still buy it every month http://www.ai-mag.com/ If you don't buy it or have never even heard of it then take a look, its available in most countries.
A little pic of my A&K Dragunov SVD, I will be using the Type 97 on Sunday for the first time, not taking the SVD, maybe next time.
John

Wednesday 10 February 2010

Some Pictures from Sunday 7th at POW

Just a few images from Sunday at POW, I totally forgot to take more pictures for this blog, but I will get more next time, the jeep is owned by Chris who you see in the latest PPsh video and if your ever up at Airsoft World where he works I think its parked up in the back of the store, if your nice to him he may let you see it
In the drivers seat is Brian AKA The Sarge
Again Left to right is Brian, then George and Ross, this was in the site car park, which was full as always seems to the the case at POW even on cold wet days, this is one very busy site.
George with his VFC Bar and Brian with his Cyma M1A1, not a posed pic, they were watching Red team trying to capture this wall, which they pretty well failed, Red were very bad on Sunday.

Tuesday 9 February 2010

Why Puddock? Real Sword Type 97

Just a quick post, I promise to do a longer one in a few days. One of the things I was asked about by reader "5thstate" is why does Puddock wear the clothes that he does? So I asked Puddock and he said that "it matched his name" I did not understand what he meant, he explained that Puddock is an old Scottish word for a frog, he picked up Puddock as his nickname at school, Frog is a common national stereotype name for French people, though I don't ever use it myself. So since his nickname was frog he went for a WWII French Resistance look, the armband on his jacket is I think from the French Forces of the Interior, he could afford any uniform he wanted as he is not lacking cash as was suggested, after all he is using a Tanaka Kar-98 which is not the cheapest of guns to buy and maintain as well as his custom made MP41.
OK I have to go, its 9pm as I type and my brand new Real Sword Type 97 has been waiting for me in the hall still all packaged up and like any big kid with a new toy I cannot wait to rip it open but I have been dealing with emails from YouTube since I came home at 4pm. I will add a few pics from Sundays games at POW later, as you will see our car park can be as interesting as the games. John

Monday 1 February 2010

A quick one Q&A ?

Thanks to 5thstate for the comment, he has given me a list of topics for the blog and I will do as many as I can, if you other readers have subjects you want me to cover on here or players you want me to interview just let me know what you want me to ask the player and I will speak to them all and get pictures of their guns etc if need be.
OK Im off to watch Aliens in the Attic with my son.
Later guys

John