I don’t know really anything about Airsoft so can anyone give me a brief overview of Airsoft like the types and whats the difference between them like gas-blowback and electric and spring etc.
Also, does 250 and below FPS hurt much? Thanks!
A couple quick things in case you don’t want to read all of this…
-You get what you pay for.
-Faster is not always better.
-Safety is a serious concern.
Airsoft largely developed in Japan as a recreational sport in the 70’s. Since then it has spread all over the world. If you play with an established group of airsofters, you’ll notice a split in playing styles. One is commonly called "speedball", and is very similar to paintball. Play is a little more frantic, and generally speedball players tend to use automatic electric guns with high capacity magazines. Very often you will find fields set up for close quarter battle (CQB) and the fields will have FPS limits for any guns used, due to the close proximity of players. This style of play can be less equipment intensive.
The other style of play, and what seperates airsoft from paintball is "MilSim", or military simulation style of playing. This places an emphasis on using military style tactics and squad based manuvers. Players may spend many hundreds of dollars to complete a certain look, or "Kit", including full metal guns with magazines that hold the same ammount of rounds as their real-steel counterparts, tactical vests, BDUs and even Ghillie suits for snipers, so they can blend in to their envirnoment.
You mentioned the three general types of airsoft guns…
Spring powered guns, or "Springers" are completely manually operated, and require the user to pull back a bolt, slide or other mechanism for every shot. There are high end varieties of Springers, such as the Tokyo Mauri VSR-10 (sniper rifle) and various pump action shotguns. There is also an abundance of cheaper pistols and manually operated rifles on the market, such as many of the pistols found at Walmart. They may have a decent FPS (always measured with a .2 bb; more on that later) but due to the slow firing speed, many of these guns are suitable only for plinking around in the backyard.
Electric guns come in a few varieties. The cheaper guns are generally classified as either LPEG (low powered electric guns) or MPEG (medium powered…). These guns tend to use smaller batteries and cheaper materials. They may shoot as low as 100-150 FPS, and may not have an adjustable hopup (again, more on that later) which will severely limit how far you can shoot. The upside is that these guns are extremely affordable and fairly safe if you’re just playing around with friends in an old bar or something.
The higher quality guns are known simply as AEGs or automatic electric guns. These generally shoot between 300-350 fps and can be modified to shoot well over 500, although many airsoft groups and fields have fps limits around 400 or lower. These guns are made of higher quality parts and with few exceptions are made to be highly customizable and upgradeable. Many of these AEGs are near identical replicas of their real-steel counterparts. They can range from $100 on the low end to well over $1000 for working minigun replicas.
The last type of guns, gas powered, are generally either pistols or sniper rifles, although there are other models available. With few exceptions, the magazine is charged with one of a few available types of gas and then inserted into the gun. (Green gas, red gas, propane and CO2 all give different fps ranges. Temperature also has a noticable impact on the consistancy of how fast these guns shoot.)
All of the high end guns, spring, AEG and gas, rely on a few common factors that are discussed endlessly within the airsoft community, to achieve an "effective range." While even the definition of an effective range is debated, generally you want a gun that shoots fast enough and hard enough that your opponent will take notice when he is shot, without causing unnecessary pain. (The goal is not to make them bleed.) Some players believe that the faster your gun shoots, the farther it will fly, but you can have a rifle that tops out over 500 fps that will be worthless when shooting at anything over 20 feet away. High end guns have an adjustable hopup system. This consists of a little rubber "speed bump" that spins each bb backward, creating lift. With no hopup, a bb shot at high velocity will curve down quickly. With too much spin or hopup, the bb can curve up or to the side. Adjusting your hopup is what allows you to generally control the range and accuracy of your gun. Other factors, such as the weight and quality of the bb used and the diameter and length of the barrel also come into play when players are looking to create the perfect gun. To be competative in most airsoft games, you’re realistically looking for a rifle (M4 variants are the most customizable types I’ve personally seen) that will shoot 300-350 fps, which will give you an "effective" range of 130-150 feet. Some players claim that their TM MP5s shoot 250 fps and will reach 200 feet every time. That may all be true, but I couldn’t consider it effective because unless you were to actually watch the bb fl
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