It’s the final “daily” from Boycie, Li’l Stu and Steve, accompanied on the last day of SHOT 2025 not just by John P but also our good friend Franz from PTS BARRICADE, and it’s another sizeable chunk of intel!
Before we post up their notes from the day we’d just like to express our thanks to everyone at SHOT SHOW for making the AIRSOFT ACTION team so welcome (and including L’il Stu in the final day show reel!), to Trampas from the ARMED LIFESTYLE magazine for facilitating our team in Vegas (and for being am all-round good guy!), to those that have joined “Da Bois” pounding the show halls, and to all the manufacturers for being so open and engaging… this truly is what a good show is about, bringing great people together at one great event!
With that said we’ll hand straight over to Boycie for the final “daily”, but don’t forget to tune in to ISSUE 171 on 15 FEB for the full show report!
“Today we had the usual start in the Media Room and after 20 minutes our friend Franz, the owner of PTS Barricade messaged me to say he had arrived and was in the lobby. As Trampas was in a meeting, I decided to head down to greet Franz and bring him up to the Media Room. Franz had made it to Shot Show for the first time in three years and he was only able to join us for the Final Day. What was impressive is that he had flown in from his home in Jamaica just to attend Shot Show and was flying home on Saturday.
After breakfast, Trampas, Nora and Tyler headed off to a morning of meetings and myself, Steve, L’il Stu and John P took Franz under our wing and said that we’d show him around the booths and halls. We first headed for Altama’s booth so that he could try on their slip on boots. Franz was really impressed with the feel of the boots and is looking to purchase his own pair soon after the show. Heather, the lady on the stand handed us the patch of the day and thus we completed the set. After this we walked over to meet up with Skye at the Bushmaster Firearms booth again. Here I showed Skye the report from yesterday that had been published overnight and she was really happy to have been featured. We took the time to look over some of the firearms that we hadn’t had time to look at over the previous days.
We then walked to the Arcturus booth where we had a meeting with Daniel. Steve spent around half an hour being shown around the new products whilst myself and Franz had a look at the neighbouring booth being that of Operator XR. This is a VR training unit which features a VR headset and modified gas blowback replica. Each member of the team who had been taken through scenarios commented that it was really good as a training tool. When we asked for a cost of the unit they told us that for a set up including two replicas, VR headsets, laptop, tablet and operating system would cost around US$50,000 over three years. The system can support up to twelve users at one time and would allow someone in law enforcement to be able to carry replica items from their duty belt to enable them to cuff a suspect in the virtual world. Also it can be set up to allow the user to ‘deploy’ either a Taser or non-lethal spray on the virtual suspect. When you consider the cost or running the system it worked out at 0.05 cents per shot!
We then sat and had a coffee break and discussed the plan for the next few hours. Steve, L’il Stu and John P split off and I took Franz through the upper main hall, with the initial plan to go to visit Mossberg and see if Lena Miculek was there. Unfortunately she was not around so we decided to head round the corner to look at the Glocks. We were looking at the pistols when we recognised Katherine Glock and asked booth staff if we could say hello. Within a few minutes Katherine greeted us and we had a few minutes chat before being given one of the Glock patches and having some photos. As we said thank you and prepared to leave the stand, Katherine gave us a hug. We then picked up our bags and waved goodbye.
We then crossed over to the Staccato booth in the hope to meet Michelle Viscusi but she was not at the stand. We asked Xenia, who was at the counter, if she knew when Michelle may be back on the stand. Unfortunately she didn’t know at the time so Franz and myself had a good chat and explained some of the differences in firearms before collecting some stickers and having photos. Then we walked over to the Sky Bridge where we were met Steve, L’il Stu and John P for lunch at the Daniel Defense BBQ again.
After lunch we made our way over to the Ceasars Center and headed first for the KWA booth where we introducted Franz to the world of airsoft/6mm training replicas; needless to say he was impressed with the recoil impulse on both the gas blow back and ERG platforms. We also got to see and dry fire the new TAC-9 GBB SMG. Expected to be out in retailers stores somewhere around the middle of 2025 this looks like it will be a popular item in the KWA stable. Just before we left the KWA booth I spotted friends Callum and Connor from Magload in the UK; Magload produce a large range of competition accessories in the UK for shotgun and firearms.
After KWA we went back to the Axon booth where we looked at the various options of Taser that they offered. The Taser Master Instructor explained about the latest options in the Taser range. It was after leaving the Axon booth that Franz and I broke off from the main group again and we headed off on a whistle stop tour of the Ceasars Halls, collecting a few patches, stickers and other cool swag as we made our way around. We got the opportunity to sit in the door gunner’s seat on the fuselage of a UH-1 Huey on the Ohio Gunworks booth and have a few photos taken.
At the other side of the OGW booth was a stripped-down vehicle which bristled with machine guns, so of course we had to have photos in that! I went up to stand in the top gunner/cover position and Franz took the drivers seat. By now it was almost 1430 and only having around 90 minutes left of Shot Show we made our way back to Hall 2 where we saw Rebecca on the main Mantis booth. Franz was really taken with the new and soon to be released Mantis Titan X training pistol. This range has the X10 module fitted inside the frame and is charged by a USB-C port. Another great feature of the Titan X is that it comes already cut for a red dot. A nicely weighted mag allows the replication of a fully loaded real magazine thereby meaning that the user can carry out more realistic drills like a magazine change etc.
I then went over to the EVIKE booth again in the hopes of linking up with Alek and Piotr from Specna Arms. Unfortunately I couldn’t find them to have a chat about new products; I’d been trying to link up with them for a couple of days but always seemed to manage to have missed them, but everything that I saw from them looked highly accomplished! Not to worry as I know Bill and Jase are seeing them at IWA, so maybe next year gents! Rounding off the day we made our way down to the lower hall in the Venetian Center where I wanted to show Franz a couple of booths namely the O Light and O Sight ones; I showed Franz the innovative way that O Ligt and O Sight charge their products, along with the performance from such small units.
As we headed back to the hotel, we stopped off at Walgreens store for a few needed supplies. It was as we approached the tills that Franz realised his wallet was missing. Not panicking we decided to retrace our steps back to the last couple of places we knew that he had had the wallet in his possession. Just as we got to an escalator to head back to the Venetian Center, Franz received a text saying that someone had handed in his wallet and that it was at the Security desk. Relieved, Franz and I made our way back to the Venetian and re-claimed his wallet. As it was now past 1600 and Shot Show was closed we walked back to the hotel and met up again with L’il Stu, Steve and John P to enjoy a much needed and well-earned adult beverage before heading back to our room to write this daily report.
We would like to thank everyone we met and spent time with, for the explanations of their products, the give-aways (swag!) and their interest in Airsoft Action Magazine. A special mention to the Shot Show Official Team as they had asked if they could use our photos in their social media feeds, which we later found out they had done when L’il Stu popped up in one of the End of Shot Show montages!
Next a huge thank you to the guys on the Altama booth as they had found Franz’s wallet and got it to the Security Desk. Thank you once again to Trampas for allowing us to be part of the family of writers covering Shot Show for both Armed Lifestyle Magazine and Airsoft Action at this prestigious event all those miles away from home. My thanks as well must got to Steve and L’il Stu; this was Steve’s second Shot Show and L’il Stu’s third with me. Without their support and hard work I would find it a lot harder to provide as much coverage as we do.
Lastly thank you to the readers of Airsoft Action for following our coverage; we look forward to writing the After Show Report and it is going to be huge! The team have covered around 60,000 steps or about 25 miles around the show to bring the coverage of Shot Show, so it’stime for us to rest our weary bodies, before packing and tomorrow beginning the long journey back home.
Adios muchachos, see you back in Blighty!”
