AirSoft Practice...

For our anniversary last year, Julie gave me an airsoft gas gun modeled on a Glock 17. (Note: our anniversary occurred while I was at the Area 3 shooting competition, and Julie didn't shoot me for being busy on our anniversary---which tells you a lot about the tolerance of my wife.) I have a holster and rig for it just like I use for my Glock 34 in competition, and since it is a blowback style, it actually recoils. The sights are a little bit different, but not enough to really make a difference.

So I've been practicing with it. It isn't the real thing, but with winter around here, the "real thing" is also a "really cold thing" if your range is an outdoor one.

At that same Area 3 last year, I noticed that Tom Drazy of Drazy Metal Works had some plate racks and poppers for sale for use with AirSoft guns---smaller versions of the ones we use for USPSA. After some thinking about it, I ordered 10 plates and 4 poppers about a month ago. Cost about $120. I then went to Menards, and about $35 later, had what I needed to create some stands for individual plates, poppers, and two 3-plate racks.

Here is what the individual plates look like:

Next time I'll probably make the wooden attachment to the plate a little bigger, so I can use a larger hinge. However, I think this will work pretty well for quite awhile. When I shoot them with the gas gun, there isn't much strain on the hinge---more occurs when the plate fall over and hits the back of the stand.

Here is a stand for one of the poppers:

You can see that I've put some thick sponge on the back of the stands to absorb some of the bounce of the plate/popper when it falls---I'm hoping this minimizes the torque on the hinge caused by the falling/bounce of the metal.

Here are the 3-plate racks I made:

Ended up working out pretty well, I think. Those small plates and poppers really take some aiming, particularly at 10 yards---so it'll be good practice for me. Here's the whole set:

...and here is a short video on the same thing.


What with the reset trigger on the real gun, and this practice with the gas gun, I hopefully should be able to get in some good practice.

I also note that a major part of the decision to buy these plates/poppers is that I can use them for firearms training classes---people can start with the electric ones that we have, for practice on paper, then work a bit with the gas gun (being much louder and actually having a tiny bit of recoil) before we take them out to the range to shoot a real firearm.

Good way to install safety discipline, I think. And for people who aren't ready for the real thing, some "steel challenge"-type stages will be fun. I can take these targets to my dojang and set them up for a fun diversion on some Saturday---matter of fact, I may do that at the end of this month during open practice. Hmm...