Pyramyd Airsoft Blog

RATING:
Shoot 'Em Up 101: Introductory material
Shoot 'Em Up 201: Intermediate material
Shoot 'Em Up 301: Advanced material

Tactical Load-Bearing Vest or Chest Rig. Again, not required to play right off the bat, but as you add more and more stuff to your collection of Airsoft stuff, you'll need the vest to help you store that stuff. Stuff like extra mags, two-way radio (aka "Comms"), maybe a stash of extra BBs or even some tactical snacks while you're out in the field. Perhaps one of the most important items you'll need to have readily available on your person during a game is easy access to water for staying hydrated and/or preventing dehydration. Getting dehyrdated during a game is not only lame, but downright dangerous. Not to mention extremely selfish. People have actually died on Airsoft fields from dehydration (i think). And that puts a damper on everyone's day, which in effect, makes it a selfish act to literally die on the Airsoft field from not taking the proper precautions and maintaining your body to allow it to function like a champ on game day. Don't be that guy.

Red Dead Rag:  While certainly helpful and advisable to newer players, these "dead man walking" identification tools are not entirely necessary if you simply call your hit (as soon as YOU get shot, NOT when you shoot someone else), and then raise your hand and/or gun up in the air to signal your opponent(s) that you have been hit and are walking out.  I've found that waiving my hand and pointing my gun up in the air is much more effective at signaling to the OPFOR that I'm no longer in the game than simply walking out with the red rag on my head.  Sometimes I've been shot while walking out because my red rag wasn't visible to the shooter for one reason or the other.  Other times, I've placed the red rag loosely on my head without securing to my goggles or keeping a hand on it, and the stupid thing flew off my head unbeknownst to me, resulting in the receipt of additional shots to the body because it looked like I was still in the game even though I wasn't taking on an aggressive tactical stance or anything of that business.  So again, I wouldn't say their necessary to play, although some fields may require them so check that out before showing up to play for the first time, however, red rags can be effective and useful when used properly in conjunction with walking off the field with your gun pointed up in the air or something else to signal others that you've been hit. 


Extra Magazines. You can get away without extra mags if you have a high-cap mag that came with your rifle, and there's always a decent chance someone at the field will have a spare or two that you could borrow, but at some point, you're going to need at least one extra mag of your own. I don't recommend being a charity case every time you go out the field, unless of course, you're just down on your luck. It's cool. I've been there, too, my friends.

Boots. Not an ABSOLUTE necessity, but if you're running around a field where it's basically just raw land or has a lot of treacherous and uneven footing, the next few weeks of your life could be ruined by a severely rolled and/or broken ankle. Here again, I roll exclusively with the 5.11 boots. They're made for real world operators, who depend on them to be legit in order to slap evil upside the head on a daily basis. So naturally, they're going to be a great option for Airsoft as well. They offer a full line of different boots that serve different functions. I wear the very water-resistant 8" ATAC side-zip boots in black when conditions are wet, and when I don't anticipate any real moisture put out by Mother Nature, I roll the ultra-sexy suede XPRT boots in Flat Dark Earth (tan). Phenomenal ankle support and extremely comfortable (once you break them in, just like any type of footwear).


So there are a few items that you'll want to think about once you've got the essentials acquired that I've covered in the last two installments of this series. For direct links to each of the two blogs preceding this one, see the following links:

Practical Choices for your 1st Airsoft Rifle

Other essentials needed to play

There you have it.

Airsoft fa sho.

RATING:
Shoot 'Em Up 101: Introductory material
Shoot 'Em Up 201: Intermediate material
Shoot 'Em Up 301: Advanced material

Tuesday's blog focused on some reasons for choosing a practical AEG for your 1st Airsoft rifle versus going with a more exotic looking rifle that may or likely may not be reliable, accurate or both. That blog is here: Choosing a Practical Rifle

So, once you choose a solid AEG option that should, in theory, last you awhile, you'll need to take a few other items into consideration before blowing your entire budget on the gun. Here are some items that are pretty much essential and/or required in order for you to actually go out to a game and play with your beautiful new AEG.

Airsoft BBs (you know, ammunition?)  This isn't like your favorite First-Person Shooter (FPS) game where you automatically start out with a bunch of ammo.  Nope, this is the cold, cruel and very real world where you have to buy your ammo in addition to your rifle.

AEG Batteries (AEG = Automatic Electric Gun). Need I say more? I'll be revisiting batteries again later, but for the time being, refer to this thread (AEG Battery Pack Knowledge) for more specific information regarding the types of batteries available to choose from.

AEG Battery Charger Otherwise you won't get too many games in before you run out of juice. Know what I mean, dog baby?

Eye Protection It's hard to enjoy looking at all those beautiful guns in your arsenal if you you've been blinded by a BB to the pupil.






Tactical Dress Uniform (TDUs). These serve not only a practical purpose, but they also help to make you look like a winner. From extensive personal experience, I've found that the TDUs from 5.11 Tactical not only meets my demanding needs for a set of threads that can hold up against heavy wear and tear, but they also do a darn good job at making me look good in the process of ruining the OPFOR's day. Technically, you don't have to have a uniform to play in most weekly pick-up games.  Most larger events usually enforce the dress code a bit more, but I've yet to find a field hosting a pickup game where they turn you away because you're wearing street clothes.  However, you will find that you will be one of very few, if not the only one, wearing street clothes, so you might want to consider investing in a set of TDUs at your earliest convenience. 


So there may be one or two things I might be forgetting, but I'm pretty sure those are the main items that you have to have.
Some would argue that you ABSOLUTELY have to have a red dead rag and I'll explain why I've not included that in this blog when I post the next blog in the Introductory Airsoft material series. 

For now, I bid you tootles!

Oh yea, and on behalf of PyramydAir.com & Airsoft-Obsessed.com,

Airsoft.

RATING*: 
Shoot 'Em Up 101: Introductory material
Shoot 'Em Up 201: Intermediate material
Shoot 'Em Up 301: Advanced material

*For those of you who have checked in once or twice since the inception of the Pyramyd Airsoft Blog, you'll notice this new rating system.  I think it's pretty self-explanatory.  If it isn't, just let me know.  Whether or not there is any real value to it yet remains to be seen.  But for now, I'm going to be rating each blog as indicated above as a quick reference so that you know what you're getting into ahead of time, before spending the time to read my content before realizing that the content wasn't quite what you were looking for.  In that event, please send me a message or post a comment to let me know what it was that you were looking for and I will see what I can do about adding it to the blog.  Yes, I do take special requests for blog content within reason.*


So today's blog will be focusing on the theme of Practicality, a concept that doesn't get a whole lot of lovin' in the Airsoft world.  I've said it before, but I would say that the majority of us got into Airsoft because we saw how cool the guns and gear looked and instantly fell in love with the glamour of it all.  However, the cold cruel reality is that there are certain models or types of guns that are just not practical choices when you're choosing your first Airsoft gun.  There are multiple reasons for this.  For example, I would generally would not recommend a Gas Blowback Rifle (GBBR) for someone who is brand new to Airsoft and/or shooting guns, real or Airsoft.  GBBRs are much more high-maintenance than AEGs, in my experience, and most models use a very low-capacity magazine to enhance the realism factor.  I've found that most beginners, should go with a higher capacity magazine to start off with while they develop their shooting skills. Additional consideration when choosing your first two rifles should be given to durability and skirmishable accuracy (can the rifle hit a torso-sized target at 50 yards, assuming the gun is shooting between 350 to 400 fps with a .20g and the shooter has enough natural ability to figure out how to aim the rifle at his/her intended target).  Chances are, if you're new to Airsoft, you have no real business trying to take your gun apart for repairs or upgrades yet.  So you're going to need a gun that you can use that can stand some abuse and has a generally good reputation for not breaking down.  Again, since you really should leave your gun's internals alone for awhile, until you can do some proper research, so you'll need a gun with decent accuracy (read: a well-made hop-up unit). 

With those criteria in mind, here are a few recommendations from me to all the noobz out there, looking for which gun to get.  This is not an all-inclusive list, but should do you just fine. 

Brands:


Types:

M14s, arguably the most well-designed hop-ups out there.  Echo1 makes a very nice clone of the Tokyo Marui M14, and matches their hop-up design pretty well.  Classic Army M14s use a different hop-up design, but it is still better than most others I've seen, PLUS their M14 gearboxes are very beefy and make excellent platforms for heavily upgrading the rifle to a high-powered Designated Marksman Rifle (DMR).  Their gearboxes, while not made to Marui-spec, still fit a wide variety of after-market upgrade & replacement parts.   


AK47s: Generally consistent hop-ups and lots of accessories to geek out your gun with.  Remember, there's nothing wrong with going native.












M249s, M60s & RPKs:  No Airsoft arsenal is complete without an Airsoft light machine gun for the support weapon role.  Generally speaking, their gearboxes are easy to access for repairing stripped pistons & replacing springs.  Hop-ups are usually decent in most brands and are great for setting yourself apart on the field with a standout gun.  Plus, if you're playing at a field that only allows support weapons to fire on full-auto while all other gun-types must fire on semi, you will be a very popular fellow when it comes time to pick teams. 


M4s:  I'm including this option in here NOT because they have great hop-ups or anything, since they actually have some of the worst-designed of all the different AEG gun-types out there.  However, I am including M4s because they are in heavy abundance at just about every field you will attend.  Therefore, if you are ever in need of an extra mag or spare battery, chances are, someone at the field will have one that will work with your gun to get you through the day.   Additionally, they have perhaps the most internal parts and external accessories available on the market for tuning and tweaking your gun out to the max, when the time comes to get into that sort of thing.

You might have noticed that in the title of today's blog, I mentioned "2nd" rifles as well.  I am referring to your backup rifle that you need to have with you at all games in the event your 1st rifle breaks down.  At some point, it will break.  I promise.  It might not break right away, but just be patient and enjoy it while it works.  But, when it does break, if you have a backup rifle ready to go, your day does not have to end there.  You can simply go back to your car, grab the backup and get back into the game.  This backup rifle should not be some exotic rifle with limited replacement parts or a bad hop-up either.  Use the same criteria I mentioned above to select your backup rifle.  It doesn't have to be the same exact make and model of your 1st rifle, but it also wouldn't hurt either.  If you're on a budget and don't want to have to buy all new mags and then load those mags in the middle of a game, then simply buying two of the same rifle would be the way to go.  Granted, you can circumvent the mag-loading issue by simply loading ALL your mags the night before, but if you're like me, sometimes that step gets overlooked in the midst of all the other items that need to be prepped the night before as well. 

The criteria for selecting a solid GBB Pistol to use as your sidearm is pretty much the same, but I'll get into that on another day.

Airsoft.

Here at the Pyramyd Airsoft School for Shoot 'Em Up, our unaccredited programs will allow you to broaden your Airsoft horizons in ways you never thought possible.  We offer classes for all levels from the rookie "noobzor" to the elite Airsoft "operationalist" and everyone in between.   To start off, we're going to be focusing on the essentials that one would need to get started in this hobby.  From there, we will graduate into the more intermediate and advanced topics similar to the ones I've been discussing lately on the blog. 


Some of you may not be too excited to here about some of the more fundamental aspects of Airsoft because you're now a veteran expert 1337 Airsofter, however, there was a time when every one of us began playing and didn't know straight up about Airsoft other than the guns and gear were really cool looking.  So we have to think about the new people here if we want this hobby/sport/activity/thing to continue to grow.  The only way to do that is to attract new people to Airsoft and then educate them as to why Airsoft is better than pretty much anything else you can do for fun as a sport of hobby.  I'm not stating an opinion here.  It's a scientific fact.  Airsoft is the bee's knees.  I think I read about it on Wikipedia or some other scientific journal publication, wherein they actually used the phrase, "bee's knees."

For the beginners, I'll be covering topics that discuss essential gear that every Airsoft player needs to have, which guns make excellent starters for first-time players.  Not only that, but field and game play etiquette, as well as tips on how to find local gaming in your area if you're new to the scene.

For the intermediate and advanced-level topics, I'll cover topics including, but not limited to, how to choose the right team to join or start one of your own, optimizing the placement of your various pouches & holster(s) for practicality and streamlining functionality, as well as my recommendations for solid gun platforms upon which to upgrade performance and/or customize.

Anyway, if there was literally any particular area of Airsoft that you'd like more information on, leave me a comment here on the blog and I will see to it that you get the knowledge that you seek.

So if you're anything like me, your sole purpose in life is simply to survive the filthy work week so that you can then get to the Airsoft game(s) on the weekend.  A couple weekends ago, my team and I hit up the Jericho Camp Pendleton Airsoft facility (Saturday) and then the Jericho Lake Elsinore facility (Sunday).  It was a stellar weekend of Airsoft, no doubt.  However,  things could have gone "south" (metaphorically speaking) for me real quickly if I didn't have all my gear prepped and ready to handle two days of action ahead of time.

So, what I do to minimize the risk of FAIL, is to create a checklist of everything that I need to do in order to be ready for the weekend.  It sounds lame, but I literally write out a list of every little thing that I can think of that needs to be squared away in order to be able to chalk the weekend up in the Win column.  Then I go get my stuff from my War Locker, seen on the left, and I do what I need to do to be a winner.

For example, here was my list for the weekend past's Airsoft extravaganza :

- AEGs:
M14 DMR


HK416


Classic Army M15A4 Carbine (M4)



- GBB Pistols:
WE 7" Dragon
WE HiCapa 5.1
WE Baby HiCapa 3.8

- BB Containers (.20s, .25s, .27s & .28s+)
- Magazine Container
- LiPo & NiMH Battery Chargers
- 5.11 TDUs in OD Green & Multicam
- Pack 5.11 Loadout bag with:
    - LBE Vest
    - LBE Belt
    - Eye Pro Goggles
    - Gloves
    - ICOM Two-way Radio & Headset
- Food from Grocery Store for Lunch & Snacks each day, which included a massive 1.5 foot pre-made sub sandwich, Backyard BBQ-flavored Kettle Chip brand kettle chips, Gatorade (for the electrolytes), 2 gallons of Crystal Geyser water jugs (on sale for $.99 per jug, can't beat that!)
- Sunscreen (just in case)
- EZ-Up Collapsible Shelter - Perhaps one of the best $80 investments you can make for attending games. Rain or shine, these things are pretty crucial.
- Folding Chair
- Folding table for prepping gear in parking lot
- ANSI-rated, full-seal goggles for protecting my "somewhat-spherical aiming devices."
- Tool box with assorted tools, just in case.
- Propane tank for filling gas pistol mags.


Truth be told, my actual list was even more detailed than that, because there were certain issues with a few guns that needed to be worked out, but I don't want to bore you anymore than I may have already. I just wanted to give you an idea of the kind of prep list I'm talking about here, in the event that it might help you forget less things and therefore become better prepared to have a successful weekend of "Shoot 'em up."

Airsoft