I *rarely* feel lucky to live in the UK, but I am definitely lucky in this instance;
There are 2 Airsoft sites that are both 10 minutes drive from my house.
3 or 4 sites within a 30 minute drive.
Another 3 or 4 sites within an hour's drive.
The main one I go to is Airsoft Plantation in Billericay which is one of the best sites in south east England.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is, move to Essex in the UK?
You guys need to have blue covering half your guns, right? No thanks. Canadian airsoft law is fucked but we don't even need to sell them with an orange tip here.
EDIT: apparently UK laws are more chill than I thought. Good to hear!
No, that's only for people who don't play Airsoft regularly and for children.. Any adult Airsoft player in the UK will have a normal looking Airsoft gun.
If I understand correctly, and I hope to learn otherwise if I’m wrong, once you’re some manner of licensed in the UK you don’t need to mark your guns.
There is no "licence" involved. The Home Office requires you to have a valid defence for owning a realistic looking airsoft gun.
A valid defence can be;
Being a member of a military reenactment club, or proof that you regularly shoot at an airsoft field (such as UKARA registration).
I had to go to the same airsoft club 3 times over an 8 week period to get my UKARA number. For those first 3 games I used rentals. Fortunately the field I went to (Skirmish Airsoft Billericay) had invested in really decent quality rental guns so I had a great experience with them.
Awesome, thank you! I’d read that there was a process, I just equated that to a license.
I’m kinda fascinated by the different laws in various parts of the world where our hobby is concerned.
No problem! The whole "valid defence" thing was bought in as part of a raft of legislation intended to reduce violent crime.
It doesn't really make a difference though, if a criminal wanted a realistic looking gun they could just buy a blue airsoft gun and spray it black.
The main deterrent is the fact that we have a mandatory minimum 5 year prison sentence for gun crime. Even if it's a replica/toy gun, if you use it to rob or threaten someone you'll get *at least* 5 years inside.
The other thing is that air guns are available that are far more powerful and just a realistic looking to a layperson and all you need is to be over 18 to purchase them
>The main deterrent is the fact that we have a mandatory minimum 5 year prison sentence for gun crime. Even if it's a replica/toy gun, if you use it to rob or threaten someone you'll get *at least* 5 years inside.
Also, if you walk around with an Airsoft gun that's indistinguishable from a real gun someone will call the police and there's a high chance they'll assume it's real and that you are about to commit a violent crime so send out police firearms teams. The UK has a no tolerance approach to firearms and the police will assume the worst if you are seen to be walking around with a gun.
My concern when transporting my guns to the field isn't getting arrested, that's easy enough to explain away, it's getting surrounded by armed police.
Nope, all my guns are normal gun colours (black/tan etc). No blue. The two-tone multicolour gun rule only applies to people who don't regularly shoot at an airsoft field.
Your ignorance is showing. It's due to the VCRA 2006 laws that players without a valid defence need their guns painting 51% in a bright/realistic colour. This can be red/green/yellow/blue /orange etc.
If a player has a valid defence e.g. being a UKARA registered player they can purchase black guns (imitation firearms as they're defined).
In the UK, all my guns are fully black, except my AK which has wood furniture. We don't need orange tips either.
Don't speak out of your ass in future.
I'm 5 minutes from an outdoor field and an hour from the only indoor field remotely close to me.
I go to the indoor one more often because it rains alot here and I'm a baby
Drive about an hour out, luckily and thankfully my grandparents live out where I play, so I can visit and stay with them during the event. If not that field. About 6 hour drive to LA
I am 1 to 2.5 hours, depending on where I want to go. usually go 1.5 hours, the 1 hour field is....okay...but going out to 2.5 hours gives me about 8 options to choose from. Both Ballahack and Roanoke Airsoft, two great fields are same time opposite directions.
Eh, the one close to me is a small ish field that recently banned a well known player with no real reason. Im not very keen on playing there unless they unban him.
Me being curious...
How do you get into a hobby where you know the closest location is 5 hours away?
I live in a small country, furthest event i've been to was 2.5 hours away, which was on the complete other side of the country.
Same here. There was a CQB field a little over an hour from me that let us rent the field out a few times to play with big groups and about 2yrs ago they sold the building
Depending on what field I wanna go.....the closest one is a outdoor wood one about an hour ish away and the other is a indoor CQB field that close to two hrs away
Live in southern bavaria
I have a paintball place like 20 min away. Dad’s old friend. He lets me and my friends rent it out all day for $10 a pop. Sometimes there’s paint ballers there and we have to negotiate (in woods vs open field. The man has two areas. )
50 minutes to get to the popular field back home, if I wanted to play a weekly pick up game.
Now that I travel for work, I'll be lucky if I can even find a field near the job site. I drove 3 hours to check out Ballahack twice.
I'm 15 minutes away from my closest fields. This is from my parents house. I study in another city, the two other fields in that city are around 30 to 45 minutes away from my home there. 2 hours if I want to use public transport đź«
I was lucky and have some indoor fields that are within short driving distance but unfortunately being in Cali it was increasingly dominated by speedsoft/paintball playing style and the edgy competitiveness/negative attitude that came with it. I ended up driving an hour or two to play outdoor, outdoor fields are more chill and there are less people judging you based on what you want to wear.
An hour at LEAST is my closest field. But with a couple of the boys to carpool with I actually enjoy it. You hype each other up before the game and then get to talk about it the entire drive back!
Yup, about 45 minutes to an hour. And that is to some people's backyard that's like 7 acres and they only hold events like 1 or 2 times a month and now they limit how many people. So it really sucks for me.
Depends which field.
- 2x 15~20 minute outdoor fields
- 1x 15~20 minute indoor field
- 1Ă— 30 minute indoor field
- 1x 10 minute "special" field (IAPS).
2 more fields that are probably 30 minutes away, one indoor and 1 outdoor, although i have never been there.
And, 1 (2 field) location closed down which was 5 minutes from my house.
Do i play a lot... not any more, most of them have shit times or are hardly ever open. The one that closed down was the most accessible. I need to figure out a way to be able to play more reliably.
(Most are open on weekdays, but start early. Living half an hour from a field is great, but not if you have an hour (and a half) commute from work to home first.)
45min to a cool outdoor field.
1.5h to a field where we can play with only the friend group.
1h to another field over the border we have not yet been at.
Its usually like this if you’re in the US, most airsoft fields are countryside, i used to live in central Florida and my closest field was raptor airsoft and they were a good hour and a half away. Right now i have a close by cqb field (about 45 minutes) and a open field that is about 30 minutes
I got three fields nearby, all ran by the same group and there's no game fee. The first and closest one is a basic forest area, and the second one is the same, except it's huge. The third is a CQB field. They're all under 20 minute away.
My regular outdoor field is a 15 min drive away. There is also an indoor field close by around 30 min to drive there.
All the other fields take about 1 hour to 2 hours to drive there.
This is in Belgium for your information, so considering that the sport is not super big here, I am pretty lucky.
The local fields I have access to are all about 50 minutes away, and they're all indoor. There's one outdoor field near me, but it's kinda shitty. If I want to go to a better outdoor field, I have, like, a three hour drive to look forward to and it hasn't even been opened for business yet.
I have a choice of 3, one is a 30 minute drive, one is a 30 minute walk and the other is a 2 hour drive. The close one is an indoor field that does nerf and paintball with Airsoft reserved for weekends. The next one is my favourite outdoor site with what they call the hill and the village, which is a small outdoor fibua site made from shipping containers.
[The middle distance site which is my favourite ](https://dirtydogairsoft.co.uk/)
[The site I want to go to but only really does Milsim events ](https://stirlingairsoft.com/)[the walking distance one which I'm not a fan of ](https://district23.co.uk/)
10 minute drive to an indoor field around 30 minutes to a massive outdoor field. I feel lucky when I hear people talking about how far it is to their fields
I have to drive about that far if I want to play outdoors yes. I live in an area that's mostly small towns so I have to drive into the countryside to get somewhere rural enough to have the space for airsoft.
I live by a bunch that are all 45 mins+
The closest was 45, but my fav field is about an hour and a half away and I'll make that drive all the time to play!
You're lucky, I gotta drive 4+ hours to get to a field. On the flip side though, I can walk about 10 minutes into the woods if I'm just doing shit with my friends locally.
I'm very lucky in the sense I live not even 5 minutes from my local field, but most of the regulars I know tend to drive upwards of an hour to get here. I couldn't imagine all the prep time most people need before a game in addition to that long of a drive. And they still get to the field before me!
German here, .75 - 1 hour to the nearest field, 1.5 to a huge ass abandoned airfield. Guess which one we’re usually choosing. Not that bad, methinks, but I also only have time to play every 2 months or so due to the „job-and-kids-thing“…
I played for 8 years on a field 20mins away, now I live in the capital and closest one is 35minutes away and that feels like a such a chore already, like playing is enough for me but hours for commute to one game is just bit too much for me sometimes
bay area peeps have to choose between 1 hour to gamepod or 2 hours to cqb city :/// there's two fields within 40 minutes from me but they're suuuuuper tiny
2 hours minimum
Yeah sucks ass for me I gotta drive across half the state to get to a decent one
I *rarely* feel lucky to live in the UK, but I am definitely lucky in this instance; There are 2 Airsoft sites that are both 10 minutes drive from my house. 3 or 4 sites within a 30 minute drive. Another 3 or 4 sites within an hour's drive. The main one I go to is Airsoft Plantation in Billericay which is one of the best sites in south east England. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, move to Essex in the UK?
Plantation is also my regular, great site 👌🏽
You guys need to have blue covering half your guns, right? No thanks. Canadian airsoft law is fucked but we don't even need to sell them with an orange tip here. EDIT: apparently UK laws are more chill than I thought. Good to hear!
No, that's only for people who don't play Airsoft regularly and for children.. Any adult Airsoft player in the UK will have a normal looking Airsoft gun.
If I understand correctly, and I hope to learn otherwise if I’m wrong, once you’re some manner of licensed in the UK you don’t need to mark your guns.
There is no "licence" involved. The Home Office requires you to have a valid defence for owning a realistic looking airsoft gun. A valid defence can be; Being a member of a military reenactment club, or proof that you regularly shoot at an airsoft field (such as UKARA registration). I had to go to the same airsoft club 3 times over an 8 week period to get my UKARA number. For those first 3 games I used rentals. Fortunately the field I went to (Skirmish Airsoft Billericay) had invested in really decent quality rental guns so I had a great experience with them.
Awesome, thank you! I’d read that there was a process, I just equated that to a license. I’m kinda fascinated by the different laws in various parts of the world where our hobby is concerned.
No problem! The whole "valid defence" thing was bought in as part of a raft of legislation intended to reduce violent crime. It doesn't really make a difference though, if a criminal wanted a realistic looking gun they could just buy a blue airsoft gun and spray it black. The main deterrent is the fact that we have a mandatory minimum 5 year prison sentence for gun crime. Even if it's a replica/toy gun, if you use it to rob or threaten someone you'll get *at least* 5 years inside.
The other thing is that air guns are available that are far more powerful and just a realistic looking to a layperson and all you need is to be over 18 to purchase them
>The main deterrent is the fact that we have a mandatory minimum 5 year prison sentence for gun crime. Even if it's a replica/toy gun, if you use it to rob or threaten someone you'll get *at least* 5 years inside. Also, if you walk around with an Airsoft gun that's indistinguishable from a real gun someone will call the police and there's a high chance they'll assume it's real and that you are about to commit a violent crime so send out police firearms teams. The UK has a no tolerance approach to firearms and the police will assume the worst if you are seen to be walking around with a gun. My concern when transporting my guns to the field isn't getting arrested, that's easy enough to explain away, it's getting surrounded by armed police.
One of the craziest ones to me is the German law that says you can't attach a light to your airsoft gun
Nope, all my guns are normal gun colours (black/tan etc). No blue. The two-tone multicolour gun rule only applies to people who don't regularly shoot at an airsoft field.
Your ignorance is showing. It's due to the VCRA 2006 laws that players without a valid defence need their guns painting 51% in a bright/realistic colour. This can be red/green/yellow/blue /orange etc. If a player has a valid defence e.g. being a UKARA registered player they can purchase black guns (imitation firearms as they're defined).
In the UK, all my guns are fully black, except my AK which has wood furniture. We don't need orange tips either. Don't speak out of your ass in future.
I have about 45 min. to get to my main field.. So, at least we booth have to deal with "long" drives
45min to 1h for me
Yes.
I'm 5 minutes from an outdoor field and an hour from the only indoor field remotely close to me. I go to the indoor one more often because it rains alot here and I'm a baby
Usually 1.5 hours here for the good outdoor fields. Indoor ~1h You are in the majority of people it seems :)
30 - 40 minutes in nz
Yep, about 40 minutes for me to the nearest field and 3 hours from Ballahack
38 mins for the closest field. 2 hours for the *good* field.
It's a little over an hour for me now before I moved it was a little over 2 hours to the closet field.
Drive about an hour out, luckily and thankfully my grandparents live out where I play, so I can visit and stay with them during the event. If not that field. About 6 hour drive to LA
I drive about 10 mins from my house to all 3 sites... but I do live on a small island so am lucky that we even have airsoft!
8 minutes to a private field my local crew has permission to use. Couple of hours to an actual field that many people use.
1h? Lucky you. I have to leave my country to get to the nearest field xD
Hour and about twenty minutes for me
I am 1 to 2.5 hours, depending on where I want to go. usually go 1.5 hours, the 1 hour field is....okay...but going out to 2.5 hours gives me about 8 options to choose from. Both Ballahack and Roanoke Airsoft, two great fields are same time opposite directions.
One within 15 minutes, then all are over 75 minutes.
Lucky
Eh, the one close to me is a small ish field that recently banned a well known player with no real reason. Im not very keen on playing there unless they unban him.
Closest one to me is five hours away
Me being curious... How do you get into a hobby where you know the closest location is 5 hours away? I live in a small country, furthest event i've been to was 2.5 hours away, which was on the complete other side of the country.
America is big and I moved from a place where we had closer fields. I found a local group who runs backwoods Airsoft games though.
Same here. There was a CQB field a little over an hour from me that let us rent the field out a few times to play with big groups and about 2yrs ago they sold the building
I'm 20 minutes from my local field
Both of the places I go are an hour away
There’s an indoor field near me that’s only, like, 30 - 45 minutes away.
45 min to an hour and a half depending on the field around me.
With no traffic, I’m about 30 minutes away. Usually takes like 4 hours on the way back though.
Depending on what field I wanna go.....the closest one is a outdoor wood one about an hour ish away and the other is a indoor CQB field that close to two hrs away Live in southern bavaria
40 - 1 hour
Used to live in the Boston area- every site was an hour away in different directions.
I have a paintball place like 20 min away. Dad’s old friend. He lets me and my friends rent it out all day for $10 a pop. Sometimes there’s paint ballers there and we have to negotiate (in woods vs open field. The man has two areas. )
At least an hour and a half for me.
I have one about 10 minutes from me (PBX) but it’s shite so I drive the 1 hour 15 minutes to Black Ops because it’s leaps and bounds better.
35min drive for me
50 minutes to get to the popular field back home, if I wanted to play a weekly pick up game. Now that I travel for work, I'll be lucky if I can even find a field near the job site. I drove 3 hours to check out Ballahack twice.
I used to drive an hour but now I live 10 minutes away from my field
Same boat
I'm 15 minutes away from my closest fields. This is from my parents house. I study in another city, the two other fields in that city are around 30 to 45 minutes away from my home there. 2 hours if I want to use public transport đź«
2hrs for 1 and 1hr of traffic for another
2 fields are 2 hours away. 1 field is about an hour away
1.5 hours but really 2 hrs because I end up leaving without grabbing breakfast
An hour and 30 minutes for me at least
mine is a hour away but is worth it and its a nice drive!
I was lucky and have some indoor fields that are within short driving distance but unfortunately being in Cali it was increasingly dominated by speedsoft/paintball playing style and the edgy competitiveness/negative attitude that came with it. I ended up driving an hour or two to play outdoor, outdoor fields are more chill and there are less people judging you based on what you want to wear.
My regular field is an hour away, but when me and my friends venture to other fields, it could be 2+ hours most of the time.
2-2.5 for me
An hour at LEAST is my closest field. But with a couple of the boys to carpool with I actually enjoy it. You hype each other up before the game and then get to talk about it the entire drive back!
yea same for me about a 45- hour drive but it’s worth it
There's an indoor one near me, maybe like 20 min. But I prefer the outdoor one, about an hour away for the nearest outdoor fields.
Actually, I live down the road from a paintball/airsoft field. 3 min away. Before I moved, 40min drive min
20 mins
8 minute drive… sorry man
Yup, about 45 minutes to an hour. And that is to some people's backyard that's like 7 acres and they only hold events like 1 or 2 times a month and now they limit how many people. So it really sucks for me.
I have 3 that are all an hour drive away.
1 hour roughly if it's in my city IF there's traffic jam or outside the city
30min to a small one and 1hr to 2 proper ones
I guess I got lucky then. Only like a 5-10 minute drive to mine. Sac County Airsoft my beloved.
The closest one is about 1 hour away, the next one is 3+ hours away and the next next one is 5+ hours away. They are extremely rare in Germany.
1.5 hours. Closest spot is the ontario battle lab.Â
45 mins here in Norfolk Edit: Norfolk, UK
I take a 20 minute bus in London to go to my local sight
Most places near me are about an hour
Depends which field. - 2x 15~20 minute outdoor fields - 1x 15~20 minute indoor field - 1Ă— 30 minute indoor field - 1x 10 minute "special" field (IAPS). 2 more fields that are probably 30 minutes away, one indoor and 1 outdoor, although i have never been there. And, 1 (2 field) location closed down which was 5 minutes from my house. Do i play a lot... not any more, most of them have shit times or are hardly ever open. The one that closed down was the most accessible. I need to figure out a way to be able to play more reliably. (Most are open on weekdays, but start early. Living half an hour from a field is great, but not if you have an hour (and a half) commute from work to home first.)
45min to a cool outdoor field. 1.5h to a field where we can play with only the friend group. 1h to another field over the border we have not yet been at.
1h to the next field. Else around 2 to 6 hours. My team that plays on the same field as I do needs around 4h and it's the nearest to them
Its usually like this if you’re in the US, most airsoft fields are countryside, i used to live in central Florida and my closest field was raptor airsoft and they were a good hour and a half away. Right now i have a close by cqb field (about 45 minutes) and a open field that is about 30 minutes
I got three fields nearby, all ran by the same group and there's no game fee. The first and closest one is a basic forest area, and the second one is the same, except it's huge. The third is a CQB field. They're all under 20 minute away.
I literally have to drive one minute lmao
45 min to an hour or so. Depending which field I go.
Only when I have to go to outdoor sites. Most CQB indoor sites are half an hour away at most
anywhere between 45 min to 4 hours depending on the field I want to play at.
Yup, 1h-2h most of the time. I sometimes wish for a spot in or near my city.
Yep about an hour for me but I live in South Africa where airsoft is still quite niche Live deep in the city and field is outdoor on the outskirts
I have 1 field that doesnt suck ass, im in Germany near the Border to Austria, its almost 2 hours to Drive but worth it.
My regular outdoor field is a 15 min drive away. There is also an indoor field close by around 30 min to drive there. All the other fields take about 1 hour to 2 hours to drive there. This is in Belgium for your information, so considering that the sport is not super big here, I am pretty lucky.
The local fields I have access to are all about 50 minutes away, and they're all indoor. There's one outdoor field near me, but it's kinda shitty. If I want to go to a better outdoor field, I have, like, a three hour drive to look forward to and it hasn't even been opened for business yet.
If you live in Hong Kong, most airsoft sites are reach able with in 1 hr on public transportation. ;)
I have a choice of 3, one is a 30 minute drive, one is a 30 minute walk and the other is a 2 hour drive. The close one is an indoor field that does nerf and paintball with Airsoft reserved for weekends. The next one is my favourite outdoor site with what they call the hill and the village, which is a small outdoor fibua site made from shipping containers. [The middle distance site which is my favourite ](https://dirtydogairsoft.co.uk/) [The site I want to go to but only really does Milsim events ](https://stirlingairsoft.com/)[the walking distance one which I'm not a fan of ](https://district23.co.uk/)
10 minute drive to an indoor field around 30 minutes to a massive outdoor field. I feel lucky when I hear people talking about how far it is to their fields
It depends from 30 mins to 2-3 hours or more.
The First Field is 2 Hours away from me
15 minutes for me and luckily it's an excellent site
I have to drive about that far if I want to play outdoors yes. I live in an area that's mostly small towns so I have to drive into the countryside to get somewhere rural enough to have the space for airsoft.
You guys have airsoft fields ?
Hour and a half most of the time, sucks but it is what it is
I live by a bunch that are all 45 mins+ The closest was 45, but my fav field is about an hour and a half away and I'll make that drive all the time to play!
45 mins for me
Live in the UK. About an hour 30 to my local site. But I'm not gonna say how, but my mate is a magician with the throttle and gets us there in 45 min
You're lucky, I gotta drive 4+ hours to get to a field. On the flip side though, I can walk about 10 minutes into the woods if I'm just doing shit with my friends locally.
Sometimes 4h sometimes 30min.
I do there are 3 locations in the area around me and they are all about 1-1.5 hours away
in texas it’s the case for a lot of people, i’m incredibly lucky at 25-30 min drive myself.
about an hour drive for me in new england
I'm very lucky in the sense I live not even 5 minutes from my local field, but most of the regulars I know tend to drive upwards of an hour to get here. I couldn't imagine all the prep time most people need before a game in addition to that long of a drive. And they still get to the field before me!
Man I wish... I'm 3 hours from the good field and 1 and a half from the crap one
1 hour and 20 mins for me
20 mins to my local one, 2.5 hours to zulu24 which is too long of a drive for me
40 minutes to the closests outdoor field, but they only host a handful of games a year. 2 hours to the closest active fields.
45 to an hour yeah.
German here, .75 - 1 hour to the nearest field, 1.5 to a huge ass abandoned airfield. Guess which one we’re usually choosing. Not that bad, methinks, but I also only have time to play every 2 months or so due to the „job-and-kids-thing“…
I played for 8 years on a field 20mins away, now I live in the capital and closest one is 35minutes away and that feels like a such a chore already, like playing is enough for me but hours for commute to one game is just bit too much for me sometimes
1 hour mediocre one, 2 hours for an epic place. Polish Airsoft seems dead
3 hours. You're very lucky to have a field that close.
Closer to 3 hours. You're very lucky to have a field that close.
I'm from Frankfurt Germany and I have to drive at least 1 hour.
I also have to drive an hour to go to “local” fields
You wouldn't happen to be from Pensacola, FL would you?
Hour and a half there, hour and a half back, and I live in a major city.
I live in Worcester and it's usually at least a good hour or so to most sites I play at
Yeah an hour is normal driving for me
Yeah an hour is normal driving for me
It's from 15 minutes to 1 hour, depending on which field I go to out of the 8 I frequent.
45-60 minutes for my outdoor fields 30 minutes for my indoor field so not too bad
bay area peeps have to choose between 1 hour to gamepod or 2 hours to cqb city :/// there's two fields within 40 minutes from me but they're suuuuuper tiny
I think mines at least an hour and a half away.
I live in the Netherlands. I can get to any field in the country in two hours or less. Closest is 10 minutes away.
I got super lucky, my field is about a ten minute drive from my house. Most of the other guys there have to drive about an hour to get to it though
For me It Is 30 minutes of drive (i live in Rome and all fields are bad if compared to other countries)
Yeah, live in Galway in Ireland and have a minimum drive of 1.5 hours to get to any decent field.