I recently purchased a G&P M4 CQB-R and am very impressed with it. You can buy it for $330 at airsoftpost.com. The externals are absolutely gorgeous and when it comes to it's interior, it features a full metal hop-up, 7mm gearbox, and performs 350-370 FPS with .20g BBs right out of the box. It has an extend able Crane stock which can fit a large battery (I bought and use a G&P 9.6v 2200mAh custom crane stock battery). There is also a red dot scope and a metal front RAS type kit with a vertical grip. Of course you have to buy a battery and battery charger separately from the gun, so you must have enough money or willing to spend at least $400 to get this gun. Well worth the price if you ask me.

Konichiwa. I have quite a bit of history when it comes to Airsoft and everything related. After maybe about six years of quitting Airsoft, I decided that I may want to start up again. Back then, Airsoft was fairly new. When it came to AEGs, Tokyo Mauri was the only company you could really buy from. They only had one small line of AEGs for sale and if you wanted to buy one, it was too damn expensive. I had to buy all my airsoft guns and equipment overseas, from RedWolf Airsoft. There were a couple websites that sold in the USA, but Redwolf Airsoft was much more reliable and offered more of a selection. The GBBs were more impressive then the AEGs at the time. It seemed as if people were just more interested with the GBB technology than the AEG. Gas blow back pistols offered much more variety, realism, and were much cheaper. I started off buying a Steyr AUG Military with all the standard batteries, chargers, and .20g BBs (I believe they were .20g, it's been a while..deal with me). Before purchasing the gun, I researched a lot into it first. I also made sure to let my friends know about the details of Airsoft and I figured they would invest in the sport with me, since we already had been playing Paintball for years and Airsoft seemed to be a superior alternative. With paintball you have to deal with the high prices of the paintballs, constantly having to refill your c02 tank, only having one decent place to play at which costs an arm and a leg to play for just four hours, and having to deal with the ref's and the rules. When I had my first paintball gun, I was young. All I remember was it was a Spyder paintball gun. They were great as your first paintball gun. Well, the rules at this paintball arena were that all custom guns had to be tested. You could not shoot above 280 feet per second. Of course my gun was shooting over that, and some guy that worked there took my gun apart and cut the spring in half. All I know is since then I could never get my gun to shoot accurately, nor could it shoot above 200fps. I tried talking to experienced players and going to paintball stores to replace the spring, yet nothing could get it working like it used to. All of the BS I had to go through with paintball turned me off.

After some time, I ended up creating a team with mostly personal friends of mine, but I also found a couple people locally that had guns and wanted to play. I eventually signed up for a local Arizona Airsoft League. I registered our team in and started talking to the other members. I'm sure there are people from this league that still play and are probably members or administrators on here. I attended about four local games and most of them were great, but I do remember some negative aspects. At the time, I was under 18 and so was my team. There were some good guys that treated the ones of us with respect that deserved it, but there were also some guys who would play into the egotistical, alpha-male role, and an overall attitude of us being nothing but an annoyance. Well it's been a long time, I'm 23 now, and hopefully things will be different.

Anyways, it cost about $450 to pay for my Steyr AUG, necessary equipment, and price for shipping. I also had it tuned up and upgraded at one of Redwolf airsoft's affiliates. I got some kind of power upgrade kit and got it back with a huge battery and shooting over 400fps. I also invested in a Steyr AUG Phantom Kit. It was a good looking gun, but there were a lot of issues with it. I know it wasn't just me either. In our team we had a person with an MP5SD5, MP5K PDW, G363, AK-47, and a couple others. Everyone ran into issues with their guns. I decided to invest in a GBB pistol at the time. Redwolf was offering a special deal on a Glock 18C with full metal slide and metal barrel with some interior upgrades. I don't remember which company made the gun, but I ended up selling it to a member in the Arizona airsoft league. If you are still around and you read this, contact me as I would like to talk to you again! I later purchased a used Tokyo Mauri M92F Custom Samurai Edge BioHazard 3 GBB, and I believe lost it during one of the local games. The Glock 18C was FAR superior in every way. The glock was NOT a Tokyo Mauri, that I am sure of. The name of the company was WSC or something similar to that.

I have noticed that Airsoft has improved greatly. Not only are there a wide variety of high quality guns offered, but the prices are much cheaper. Of course airsoft is way more popular now and the technology has improved. I'm seeing gas blowback M4s and AK-47s and full metal, upgraded AEGs with recoil engines... it's amazing. For about $400 I can get a metal AEG with multiple upgrades. There are full metal M92F's for $90! Obviously I am interested in starting up again and buying some nice guns and gear. A metal AEG, a metal M4 GBB rifle, and a metal GBB pistol sounds like a good line up to start off with!  

It will be a pleasure meeting you all!