It’s a slightly early start to the weekend here as we start to wind things down at AAHQ, and this weeks image of Ben sums things up perfectly as it’s been a tiring but ultimately successful slog through the first quarter of the year; after a show season that’s been busier than ever for the AA Crew, we’re all ready for a bit of a “spring break”!
ISSUE 172 is out in the wild, ISSUE 173 is completely ready to go to design… and “chill-t-f-out-time” is almost here!
Regular readers and followers of AIRSOFT ACTION will know that at the end of the first quarter of the year we now traditionally shut down AAHQ for a couple of weeks to get our own downtime in, get “in-house admin” sorted for the coming year, as well as updating our website server to handle the increased traffic that builds year on year… and having happily left META largely behind the majority of our traffic comes via the website, so we need to keep it squeaky clean…
So, we’ll be offline from tomorrow, FRIDAY 21 MARCH thru to MONDAY 7 APRIL…
But of course, “airsoft work” continues unabated; ISSUE 173 for 15 APRIL is already well-advanced, and as always the AA Crew are out, about, and busy-as-ever enjoying the spring sunshine (or rain if you’re in Taiwan like Stewbacca!) and getting their game on!
A somewhat waterlogged Stewbacca told us “this week, we will be mostly playing at our newest site that’s still somewhat of a secret. As it was we binned Sanzhi last week due to very low turnout and miserable weather. Hopefully the weather will be nicer this week, I’ll take that VFC FNC out for a spin as I intended last week I suppose.
All worked up for a while on review things and other articles, aside from some further down the pipeline stuff, but my side projects are always ticking over too. Next week is a full weekend of [redacted] training with another group I’m involved in around these parts, and the week after that is the “Tomb Sweeping (not raiding) Festival” and children’s day so we have a long weekend where me and some of my old ex-colleagues from my first posting here who are still good friends will go on a road trip…”
Miguel said “this Sunday we are hitting our field again. Plans are still being made, but we are probably going to practice mission scenarios and check some field parts for our upcoming 17th birthday event”!
Ben is out too and commented “this weekend I shall be doing some tweaking to my kit and gun set up, then I’m playing CQB at Manston Airport which I’m looking for too, it being their first gameday! I’m expecting the normal, and whilst playing I will be thinking about how a better layout on cover and game flow routes for future gamedays would work best… so I’ll give my suggestions throughout the day, and then hopefully I’ll pop back at a later date to see if any improvements…you never know, it may very well be laid out fine, and the thing is with CQB less is more… it’s just finding those spots where a little bit of something helps the flow from either side…”
We look forward to carrying reports on both events from Miguel and Ben in due course!
Meanwhile Dan told us that “I’ve got a buddies Echo1 240 in Lima kit that I want to give a little tune up on so it’s good for the coming year. It’s probably had an untold number of BB’s put through it by now, so I’m betting it needs a little clean up and TLC. We’ve also got one of the ultra-rare steel 50 round magazines for it too that I need to get fitted. As well, also with some 3D printed guts for the interior. I need to figure out what kind of servo will fit inside of it, as well as where to stash the battery, if at all possible. Should be a fun project though!”
Boycie said “I’ll be spending some time writing articles and also sitting and planning a bit more of a project. Likely I will also have some chat and banter with Li’l Stu as there are so many projects we work on together…” whilst Jase and Bruno are “working up an article together on something pretty special optics-wise from the good people at PARD that we met at IWA”
Bill rounded things out by telling us “it’s AA-biz for me as during our spring shut-down at AAHQ we’ll be updating the website server and all the publishing platforms… people are kind of used to this now, and it sets us up well for a busy summer!
The server update is more important than ever as I’ve effectively moved us away from META; the website is getting even more traffic thanks to the direct push-notification signups (thank you all, keep ‘em coming!), so we keep upgrading it… but with more and more traffic it’s a never-ending task… we have to do it twice a year just to keep up with the ever-increasing traffic… not a bad place to be if I’m honest…
So, basically we put the website into “holding mode” for a couple of weeks while things go on behind the scenes; that way if we screw it up nobody knows and we have time to rectify it haha!”
Sadly we still have a number of the AA Crew down with the “seasonal lurgy” at the moment, so we hope you’ll join us in wishing them a speedy recovery, and if any of you are suffering too then get well soon!
So that’s AAHQ signing off for now; we’ll be back up and running on 7 APRIL, but in the meantime we hope that you’ve all got a lot of airsoft planned and as always we’ll leave you by saying that if you’re out in-game then Play Hard, Play Safe, and above all… Play with Honour!
