Budget.

Airsoft.

Two words most airsofters will tell you dont go together.  So when i saw a gun listed on ebay as a full size uzi aeg, for 29 bucks plus shipping, i knew it had to be too good to be true.  it of course was, but still, an interesting gun.  

It was listed as a JTN Fang production, and as far as i could tell, they made a mini uzi that ran off aa's, but not a full size that ran off of the 7.2 v battery advertised to come with this one.  So i said what the heck, and ordered.  when the gun arrived, there was no mention of JTN on the box, but a model number VER201.  Looking this up, i found i could have saved 10 bucks on the same gun at jungle toy.  ohh well.  The gun was suprisingly solid, though still all plastic and rather light.  the purported 35 round magazine turned out to be a prop, it in actuality was a hopper-fed machine.  Strike one.  The battery compartment was a bit large, and looking at the engrish instructions, i soon found out why.  it was designed originally to take 4 c's, not the battery pack it came with.  Strike 2.  And the location of the hopper?  right in front of the gun, where the barrel began, in a kind of reverse bull-pup.  a 4 inch barrel total.  Strike three.  This thing will fire like a pos.  So, fill it with the cheapie .20s that came with it (a good sign, .2's, not .12's, but still...) and let spray.  a couple times it double shot, and the bullets werent that in line, but better than i expected.  the shots actually went teh full 80 feet across my backyard, farther than i expected, and made a decent smack sound against the wall.  not bad.  Checking the poor mans chrono, a decent dent, and in fact a slight line of breakage.  it might actually chrono at the 280 claimed.  the hopper was somewhat quickly accesable, so the 35 round max wanst too bad, and besides, that can be made a bit larger real easy.  i do think that ill take the fake mag, open it up, and use it for bb storage though.  

My one big gripe with the gun is teh folding stock.  they used a smaller tap screw than they should have, so it kept popping off, but i can fix it.

all in all, for 21 bucks plus shipping at jungletoy (the cheapest of 3 stores i found selling it) this is a half decent budget cqb gun, and certainly a better gun than a cheap springer.  Id mostly reccomend it for cheab sob's like myself, or people considering whether to start playing who want a small first investment on a gun to find out if they want to play.  better than expected, though not as good as i hoped, but not a waste of money.

im sure some will argue though.

http://www.esurplusauction.com/IANAuction/tx/houston?ianac=view&auc=58081





edited for a missing n

Peel-And-Stick Armor May Save Soldiers' Lives

POSTED: 3:15 p.m. EST January 26, 2004

VANCOUVER, Wash. -- Peel-and-stick armor could soon save the lives of some GIs.

A new peel-and-stick armor system is going to be tested in Iraq. The armor plates are like giant bumper stickers.

Soldiers just peel off the backing and stick the plates on the sides of their Humvees.  

The Aztik 100 armor was developed by Washington-state based Armor Systems International. The company says the light-weight composite plates can stop a round from a heavy machine gun.


The company's Ed Menteer says they'll be putting the armor in harm's way for a real-world test. Welding steel plates to a Humvee can take weeks and cost $100,000.

But Menteer says the peel-and-stick armor goes on in a couple of hours and costs a fraction of the conventional type.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

how cool is this?  i mean, quickly and easily replaceable armor has been a dream since armor was invented.

to put a little counter on the posted stories (which i loved, disagree with the objectives given to our soldiers if you want, but support the soldiers themselves!)  i thought i'd mention this.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s ... y_suicides

WASHINGTON - U.S. soldiers in Iraq (news - web sites) are killing themselves at a high rate despite the work of special teams sent to help troops deal with combat stress, the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s top doctor said Wednesday.


Meanwhile, about 2,500 soldiers who have returned from the war on terrorism are having to wait for medical care at bases in the United States, said Dr. William Winkenwerder, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. The problem of troops on "medical extension" is likely to get worse as the Pentagon rotates hundreds of thousands of troops into and out of Iraq this spring, he said.


Both situations illustrate the stresses placed on the troops and the military's health system by the war in Iraq.


Suicide has become such a pressing issue that the Army sent an assessment team to Iraq late last year to see if anything more could be done to prevent troops from killing themselves. The Army also began offering more counseling to returning troops after several soldiers at Fort Bragg, N.C., killed their wives and themselves after returning home from the war.


Winkenwerder said the military has documented 21 suicides during 2003 among troops involved in the Iraq war. Eighteen of those were Army soldiers, he said.


That's a suicide rate for soldiers in Iraq of about 13.5 per 100,000, Winkenwerder said. In 2002, the Army reported an overall suicide rate of 10.9 per 100,000.


The overall suicide rate nationwide during 2001 was 10.7 per 100,000, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites).


By contrast, two U.S. military personnel killed themselves during the 1991 Persian Gulf War (news - web sites), although that conflict only lasted about a month. The Army recorded 102 suicides during 1991 for a rate of 14.4 per 100,000. The Army's highest suicide rate in recent years came in 1993, when the rate was 15.7 per 100,000.


The Marine Corps has the military's highest suicide rate. Last year the Marines' rate was 12.6 per 100,000. During 1993, the Marines' rate was 20.9 per 100,000.


The military investigates every death and some of those probes may be incomplete, meaning the actual suicide rate could be even higher, Winkenwerder said. He said health officials haven't identified any common threads among the confirmed suicides.


"We don't see any trend there that tells us that there's more we might be doing," Winkenwerder told a breakfast meeting of Pentagon reporters.


The military has nine combat stress teams in Iraq to help treat troops' mental health problems, and each division has a psychiatrist, psychologist and social worker, Winkenwerder said. Of more than 10,000 troops medically evacuated from Iraq, between 300 and 400 were sent outside the country for treatment of mental health problems, he said.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
wish the administration would show a little more support for our troops...

lol, slightly familiar with the style.  first time i heard the name, i had a mental picture of a weapons style with feather dusters in place of kama, brooms instead of bos, and wet towel nunchuka.  lol.  so i have a twisted mind for puns.

and jesse, i love hearing when someone has spent years and not at a mcdojo.  its good to see the arts surviving the commercialism of the past couple of decades.

so, we have any fencers?

i never understood that mentality.  the "yes, but he holds firm " bit.  first off, from a tactical standpoint, the idea is to flank the enemy.  walking through the woods, you realize that your "flanking manuevar" has been expected, and theres a buttload of opfor waiting for you.  do you A> come up with a new plan, or B. charge ahead according to plan and get slaughtered?

also, its not even true.  bush, against homeland security.  then, after 9/11, hes for it.  against the 9/11 commision.  then, hes for it. plenty of others.  and most of the so called flip flops are rediculous.  the voting for the war in iraq before voting against it?  lets add that most of the repubs voted AGAINST the war before viting for it.  it was two different war resolutions with different terms and funding.
the so called 500 votes to raise taxes were votes on 12 bills to not raise taxes, and votes for clintons balanced budget bill, that raised taxes on the top 1 percent only.


besides, bush sold his soul years ago.  if he had one.

http://www.orbghostphotoresearch.org  heres a guy that trys to duplicate them.  the strap and smoke photos look kinda, but not quite, like this one.

note to would be robbers, when breaking into the home of an armed homeowner, try to choose one with bad aim!