Stay Frosty

It's winter and it's cold. Well, more or less. Seems the temperature around here goes through a cycle of around 20 degrees, from freezing to few degrees above zero. So any given day it's either the fear of frostbite or slipping into a puddle.

A while ago we had a game in what was closer to the former temperature. Not only was it cold, but also windy. Not exactly ideal. Our typical weekend skirmishes would last for several hours, but this one was over after just two sessions. No one was really enjoying the weather and, more importantly, our guns started sounding rather unhealthy.

Some authentic Finnish snow right there

I had both of my AEGs with me as I wanted to see how the AUG would finally perform in the field. The G36C was there as backup in case something went wrong, but I actually ended up lending it to a team mate. He had had a malfunction in his primary some time ago and had nothing to play with, so a third team mate had brought a second gun with him to lend. That thing then refused to work at all. It just would not fire, not a single shot no matter how many different batteries we tried. Good thing I had one to spare. From what he said later, the G36C functioned perfectly all the way through. Not so with the AUG. Not even close.

I was using 0.25g bio BBs by G&G, which I've heard good things about, and should have performed very nicely. I shot some very nice groups with them in my apartment earlier.

Discounting the one outlier, a pretty nice grouping at 15 metres

While obviously not perfect, I was still expecting some rather consistent performance. I'm guessing the cold and my rubber G-hop did not work well together at all, since I was either lacking range, getting ridiculous amounts of over hop or under hop, or getting sideways spin, all without ever touching the adjustment wheel.

Towards the end of the second skirmish session, I was unable to hit the enemy at five metres because the scope had fogged over and so I had no clue where my BBs were going. I simply walked upright toward him, shooting from the hip. His gun didn't perform too well either, but he finally hit me at around three metres, which I only barely felt. It would have been more effective to just throw fistfuls of BBs at each other. At that point I also decided that I'd play no more, because the gearbox started sounding really unhealthy. I'm guessing the grease inside began to harden in the frost and the action seemed way slower. Needless to say, all of that made the first field test of my "finished" DMR pretty much a complete nightmare.

Slightly less than ideal aiming conditions

In all honesty, I now understand how people can get tired with their project guns. I've spent quite a few hours on the AUG so far, and it's still not doing what I want. But I will not be denied! I will have my DMR. Right now I'm thinking an IR-hop might be the answer to get me where I want, and even allow for winter games if I find a grease that works in the cold as well. It might be a while before I get the materials and the requisite interest, but it will happen. If not this winter then the one after.