JsARCLIGHT

I beg to differ. Since 1960 the U.S. population has increased 41%, the gross domestic product has nearly tripled and total social spending by all levels of government has risen from $143.73 billion to $787 billion--more than a fivefold increase. Inflation-adjusted spending on welfare has increased by 630%, spending on education by 225%. But during the same 40-year period there has been a 560% increase in violent crime, a 419% increase in illegitimate births, a quadrupling in divorce rates, a tripling of the percentage of children living in single-parent homes, more than a 200% increase in the teenage suicide rate and a drop of almost 80 points in SAT scores. Technically (and sadly) previous generations complaints about the next one have been mostly right. America is in a slow decline and no one seems to be able to stop it. Kids today are statistically dumber, lazier and more problematic than the kids that came before them. Now you can argue that society and those in it that would turn a dime from such things are to blame... and they mostly are... for this decline. Why so much useless medicine and prescriptions? Because the pharmacutical companies want your money. Why so many new phobias, mental issues and syndromes? Because people prefer having an excuse as to why they are lazy, stupid, weak willed or fat. Why is little Jimmy flunking out of school with his knocked up jail bait teenage bride? You got me but it sure as hell has nothing to do with cartoons. The only way to stem the avalanche is to... well... I have no idea as we are in too deep at this point. Oh well, best live it up while we can before these current kids grow up and take over. And if you are one of those kids then dammit get off the freaking internet, do your homework, keep your rocket in your pocket, go to college like I did, get a good job and try to raise your kids in the best way you can. This is one of those problems that takes everyone's help to fix. How does all this relate back to panzie ass cartoons I have no clue as I'm lost in my own fillibuster right now. Parts of the above are sarcasm, others are not. It is up to the reader to determine which is which.

It is already playing a part. Look at all the retards out there mimicking TV shows and getting themselves killed or hurt. Is it just me or when I was a kid and saw crazy junk like that on TV even I at my young age with little worldy experience said "those people are nuts". The other massive drawback of the coming generations of spoon fed kids and spoiled brats is this: look at my generation. We grew up in a age of comfort and riches. No wars, no massive disasters, no social uphevals. And when we all got old enough we were frankly spoiled by the life we had led up to that point. We all went away to college and got our degrees and got our jobs and for some reason we thought we deserved all those nice things our parents had right out of school. Things like nice houses, cars, clothes and furniture that took our parents decades to afford we somehow demanded right away. College grads were upset they could not get that $40K a year job right out of the door, they were upset they could not buy that $50K SUV as soon as they graduated and they were dissapointed that they could only get a $1K limit on their credit cards. Most of my friends in college did not quite subscribe to all that but then again I went to art school, a place full of disillusioned melloncholly youth who want nothing more than to be "understood" rather than own that ten room house on the coast. Today's kids are even worse than our generation. They have their fancy clothes, cell phones with text messaging, fast computers and fast cars that mummie and daddums buy for them and pay their insurance. When I was in high school I had to work two jobs and save all the money I made just to drive a car. All this technology, all this easy living is spoiling the kids even more. Add to that their seeming misunderstanding of how the real finiancial world works and their stubborn belief that everything will be handed to them when they grow up because they are the "chosen ones" and that spells disaster. Our generation and the one before us are the credit card generation, most americans are in debt right now and a lot are in deep. We somehow got the notion that we could live beyond our means with these magic cards only to find ourselves up to our eyeballs in debt. The coming generation will be WORSE. Being raised on such riches and spoiled to no end they will perpetuate the cycle of borrow and spend which will take the whole country down a notch. Now to end yet another rampage: Parents, take the cell phone and pants away from your kids. If they want it, THEY pay for it not you. Teaching kids some financial responsibility will weed out some of them from the unending trap of credit cards and prevent even more from becoming a burden to the rest of us when they get older. Social darwinism has two victims, the idiot that gets weeded out and the masses of other people who have to pay in some way for the crimes of that idiot.

I did not necessarily intend to imply that, because for those parents who fluff their kids into a haze of hugs and puppies there are always the parents like Graham and my father who bring their kids up to be tough, to "take what comes" and "take it like a man/woman" and confront issues and problems. I however drew up short of that because I found myself getting very emotionally charged on this issue and very political in my attempts to post my thoughts. My father being a disabled vet was one of the best teachers for what I saw on TV. I learned a lot about war, hate, anger, aggression, violence and "bad" from a young age, I knew that people that got shot on TV and the movies did not just get back up like they do when you play "guns" or "cops and robbers" with your friends. A lot of kids who saw those violent shows without propper context given by their parents could not properly process the information they were getting. Include in this all the negative enforcement you see in modern popular culture and you start to see what I'm talking about. A child growing up in a vaccuum of parental supervision in today's world turns to the rappers, the TV and movie stars and mass media for their influence. If you ask me Agent is right that the modern media is giving off "wussification" waves to young children that pacify them into a state of calm, manipulateable trance... but then when they grow older that same mass media is projecting the image of the lazy opinionated rock star or the "street cred" rapper to them as icons to live their life by. And more importantly for them to BUY that life for themselves. So in the long run the wussification of children's television is directly related to the lack of parental supervision in that the makers of wussbox TV for kids are weening them into good little consumers who have no rage, bile or other sense of personal pride or individuality they can fall back on. By taking down the positive influences on a child in the form of strong role models and tough, resilient and rebellious characters they are enforcing the child's own dependence on outside help to conquer problems. How do they conquer a problem if they themselves are too scared or ill-prepared to handle it? They BUY. They buy that pokemon game, they buy that yugiho card and they buy that barney tape because that is what gets them the popularity and the attention that they don't find from their parents. Then when they get older they buy those Gap jeans, they buy that Old Navy sweater and they buy that Sport Utility vehicle to get the same popularity from the people who they try to impress. All of that can be curbed by the propper parental influence at the right ages of their lives and development... but most parents of this generation are like me... the "MTV" generation who are the second line in the media control project that began with my parents the "Mickey Mouse Club" generation. And guess what... I own a company that lays out pet food ads and packaging so I am sort of part of that whole shebang... just for your pets not your kids. Ever wonder what makes certain cat foods so special?... yo. So to wrap up yet another rambling annoying speach to the big group of people that walked out of this thread a half hour ago... spend time with your kids, do what they like. Don't force them away from things they are interested in just because they are "bad". Teach your kids the reasons why and how things happen. Don't shelter them from the bad of the world and most of all DON'T BUY THEM THOSE DARN GAP JEANS!

Shonen Pepper? Dr. Jump? Where is Scott Bayo when you need him.

I like it that Far Cry is "too hard". I like it that the game has me frustrated on several parts, because when I get all worked up and angry at a game that is when it really gets rewarding if you beat that really hard part. For me it was that damn chopper on the deck of the carrier. Once I got passed that point I started playing the game a bit differently, I learned from the frustrating parts that kept pissing me off and as the Marine Force Recon says: I adapted and overcame. You have to admit though, if the game was easy you would hate it for being too easy. Also, Far Cry is one of the few FPS games out there in which stealth, tactics and patience pay off more than rushing people guns blazing. It's more realistic that way... if you discount the mutant hell beasts and super body armor that is.

I tried to write my response to this three times now and every time I got really political... So to honor Agent One's request I will only post the following: Parents raise kids not television. Only bad parents limit their child's intake of the world due to fear they will get hurt or "learn something naughty". Good parents allow them to experience the good with the bad and they educate the child as to the difference between the two. We are living in a time of terrible parents, too caught up in their own greed and ambition to properly raise their kids. I myself do not plan to have children as my fiancee and I decided long ago that we do not posess the selflessness and dedication to raise good healthy children. Few people do and most of those who think they posess those skills are deluded. Television and movies do not raise your kids, you do. If your kids turn out good that is a credit to you as a parent and if they turn out bad then guess what? YOUR FAULT! People in America love to play the blame game on everyone but themselves. The hardest truth is the one staring you back in the mirror, folks. If you think someone else is ruining your kid that is because you are letting them raise your kid instead of you. Don't turn off the TV or video game, sit and watch with your children as my father did with me and educate them as to why things happen the way they do. Sheltered children go on to become the worst people on the planet as they have experienced little, know even less and are ill prepared to deal with things in the real world. Children raised by the TV tend to be cynnical and violent, not knowing the true reasons for the violence they just pantomime it rather than understanding it. Truly "raised" children, no matter how "smart", can and will understand the guidence of parents on matters like violence, right and wrong, sexuality and morality no matter how much "fantasy violence" TV they watch.

At least the idiots have guns... I remember back in the first thread about this movie that that was one of my main points of contention. Originally the plot was that "scientists" in an "arctic base" have fend off the Aliens and Predators... my mind immediately went to Alien3 mode where this group of "enlightened scientific minds" would have no guns, thus no means to protect themselves and you would have had basically a slasher movie. Guns people. Guns. The movie can not be that bad if the humans have the ability to shoot back. (...but the clip of the guy emptying his G36 all over the place makes me think we will get a healthy dose of "selective aiming accuracy" in this movie)

This is the end... Beautiful friend... This is the end... My only friend... the end... Of our elaborate plans, the end... Of everything that stands, the end... No safety or surprise, the end... I'll never look into your eyes... again... Seriously. I hate M7. Other people like it. We should just respect each other's positions and walk away lest we all die a war to end all wars. No one can convince me the show is the best thing since sliced bread and my arguments will not sway the die hards that the show is terrible. In the end, our arguments aimed at each other only hit the bystanders... people that have either yet to see the show or are forming their opinions on the show based on how well both sides insult each other on this topic. I am freaking sick to death of all this pitiful in-fighting and bullshot shenanigans. Take a good look at america right now, the country is split right down the middle and it is only getting worse because both sides keep upping the antie... Macross 7 topics are the same way. We need a third party here, someone to step in and shut up both radical sides. No pinned topic because I do not want to read a hundred pages of circular arguments between five or six people restating the same things over and over again. We all just need to wake up and read what we ourselves are typing about this show because we are all saying the same things we have said ten times before about it... guess what? No one listened or gave creedence to those arguments before so why bother repeating them again? As I end up saying every time I post in a M7 thread (and thus continuing my own circle): WE MUST AGREE TO DISAGREE and leave it at that. No "facts", no "truths" and no "he said, she said's" will sway the two polar sides so give it a rest. To prevent this from happening again I say we all just add this little tag to our siglines: M7+ For those who like the show M7- For those who hate the show But then we would start attacking people on sight because they had the other gang's "colors" flying. Human nature is a bitch, ain't it? Agree to disagree and move on with your lives folks, this argument is rip van winkle old and not getting any fresher and there are a lot of us out here in the ether that are sick of it coming up like vomit all the time and playing out the same way every time.

I got an 84% making me 16% Otaku... not too shabby considering anime is only one of my many hobbies. Now give me a guns or muscle car purity test and I will dominate!

I actually have the pokemon merchandising guide on my desk (next to my scooby doo, power ranger and yu-gi-oh ones) and I occasionally flip through it. Did you know pokemon has it's own typeface? and i thought i had problems. hehehe Oh boy, trust me if I did not have to have these things on my desk they would not be here. I'm in Marketing and Ad design you see and in order to make copy and packages for certain products you have to conform to the brand's "brand". In the case of pokemon, scooby doo and others the owner of the license (in this case nintendo and cartoon network/hanna barberra) dictate that you can only use certain colors, fonts, images, typefaces and layout elements. Ever wonder why everything "pokemon" or "star wars" made by different companies all have the same design elements in their packages or copy? Because every one of the makers has a thing called a merchandising guide that tells them what they can and cannot use for that brand. (just posting this so people don't think I'm a poke-dork)

I actually have the pokemon merchandising guide on my desk (next to my scooby doo, power ranger and yu-gi-oh ones) and I occasionally flip through it. Did you know pokemon has it's own typeface?

... and all those naive kids and teens who bought all that stuff and got burned have become the jaded toy collectors of today. How many of us here got burned by the Star Wars crash? How about the comic book crash or the baseball card crash? I myself got hit by them all and it taught me to buy what I want and screw the "collecability" or [burke] Substantial Dollar Value [/burke] that might at one point be attributed to something. If it wasn't for the crooked sellers, dumb collectors and crashes then we would not be where we are today. Something like the Star Wars toy craze of the mid nineties can never happen again but there are still some dumb people out there keeping everything they own mint in box for the supposed day it will magically become gold. If everyone collects what they think will be worth something when the future does turn on us all that stuff will be worth just what you paid for it. True collectables are the things that originally no one wanted or did not survive because no one kept them. It's also the generation sweeping fads that turn into the collectable of tomorrow... I predict in 20 years Pokemon and Power Rangers will be the hottest things and today's 7 year old (now 27) will be paying $200 for a loose, beat up talking Meowth missing an eye to recapture his youth.

But they where... moreso they were "rare collectable" starved. When those new kenner Bulk Wars toys came out on the market they were the first toys released in decades to a fanbase used to paying hundreds of dollars for beat up original toys, which instantly made the new toys hotter than hades and "instant collectables". But when they started to saturate the market with them the scalpers and toy nazis needed to keep people's interest in paying them ten times more for an off the shelf toy so they manufactured demand by pointing out all the changes to the toys that people would never have noticed and started charging more for them. The buyers, sick of not being able to afford that $400 A-Wing from the original line were stoked to get a $40 left hand suzuki method Greedo (as Haterist put it) and thus they bought more and more often looking for the next great varient. Heck, at one point price guides were even printing "fake" varients and "same thing" varients in the price guides until someone told them they had it wrong. Collector's were swimming in product but they were "collectable starved". None of the new toys were really rare or hard to find until someone started counting the stripes on leia's belt or noticed kenner changed a toy for safety reasons. A few short years later the Star Wars toy empire collapsed in on itself under the sheer weight and suck of the new movie's marketing blitz. It became too hard for the average fan to keep up with all the toys released in droves of reissues and varients and the casual toy buyer (the kid or the parent who buys for the kid who the toys were designed originally for) moved on to the next big fad. The same thing is happening to Macross toys right now. When no new toys were out we were all pissy and moaning over how to afford that $1,200 strike valkyrie. Then the boon of new toys came and we were overjoyed and all too eager to just buy anything that came out... price guides even started listing the toys at inflated prices to relfect the demand (I still have an issue or two of Toyfare that lists the Yamato 1/60 first four as having a "Street value" of $120 each). Then as more and more came out and the market volume increased our demand started to slip. QC issues started being the hot topic and not "what's next?". Now we live in a world were a new 1/48 toy comes out like the Max and Milia and people say things like "nope" and "pass" and "not intersted" and prefer to bag on it rather than buy it. Without some scalpers telling us about the rare super expensive "Max 1/48 No Stripe on his right calf, Crooked skull, nose ring" varient the fervor is slowing. Collectable toys require both a buyer and a seller, and most of the time the fever starts with the seller and not the buyer. We are just lucky no one in the macross scalping arena has started the varient disease yet (although they did get the low vis pox going quite well).

The days of the rampant varient toy collecting are gone. Much like the dinosaurs and '80s Yuppies the collectable toy varient caused it's own demise in the market thanks to scalpers peddling "manufactured collectables" and other painful lessons learned. Only in America would a tubby coffee stained Dr. Who t-shirt wearing 40 year old virgin pay $80 for the same toy he just paid $4 for just because there was a "factory painting error" on it or because the parking meter said 5 cents rather than 10 cents. Also, the whole "half circle, right hand" and "short saber, long tray" phenomenon was almost totally contained to Star Wars and a handful other american toy properties... I would even go as far as to say it was an "american thing". When Japanese toy companies make a varient, they go whole hog and noticably change aspects of the toy. I have never really seen Japanese collectors interested in subtle manufacturing changes in toys to the degree of their american counterparts. If that was the case then the first release of the Focker 1/48 with the crooked skull would be gold. Then we would be seeing people listing Yamatos for sale like "Focker 1/48 Crooked Skull, No Velcro". Manufacturing varient collecting is a symptom of a product starved collector's base... I think there are enough Macross toys stuck in our craw right now for this sort of thing to not manefest itself for a few more years... if it even ever does.

You're out of uniform, airman. No sir, this is cretin camoflague... when you absolutely need to blend in with a bunch of drunken Greeks there is nothing better.

The price I keep seeing for this stand is +/- $42 US. $42 is a lot of money for a simple plastic stand. I have 9 loose 1/48s I might want to display on these stands... but that is freaking $380 just for nine of those stands... and that is just for that part of my collection. I have even more 1/60s loose that would "need" stands not to mention the Q-Rau to match the others in the display cases. IMHO the stands are a tad overpriced. Sure they might be sort of neat but they are rather ungangly looking. I'm usually never one to complain about price but this time is just way disproportionate to what you are actually getting for your money. $130 1/48? Acceptable. $120 Q-Rau? Toes on the line. $40 plastic toy stand? Over the line, smokey. And for those putting their MPC's or Bandai's in the stand... the stand might just end up costing more than the toy it holds! Looks like all my boys stay on the tarmac.

Some fighters and planes dump their casings out the bottom away from their intakes, others like the big suckers the casings just fall loose into the weapons bay or into a hamper. You also have to remember that all modern planes are made to take bird strikes as well as hits from enemy weapons so clipping a 20 or 30mm spent cannon casing in flight would be like hitting a soda can to the plane. The real threat is to the folks on the ground who might get a nice shower of shell casings from a passing plane overhead. Caseless ammo is sort of still "in the works" for modern weaponry and not quite ready for prime time yet.

Delays are not always tactical plans by companies... for all we know there is a problem with the toy they just not discovered, there might be a strike at the production plant or with the drivers, there could be an issue with the packaging that they want to change (most of the time companies just slap a sticker over the thing they want to change anyway) or any other number of strange and unusual things. Releasing collectable toys seems to be a bit of a counter-logic process for most companies. There is no pattern or planning that can be applied as these things are not mass market driven. There is no pending TV and print ad campaign that is moving forward or any lucrative short time tie-ins to be had. The toys just come when they come it seems. Sometimes if you are not in a rush to get something made you can save some money at the production point... that might be what they are doing so they can eek out another 7 to 10 cent profit on their already high margin they might make on this toy. Plus from what I can tell outside of one or two crazies like myself most people are standing with the opinion of: "I'll buy it months after it comes out and gets discounted" so it's not like it being delayed another month is any skin of their noses. For all we know Toynami read some of these responses in past threads here and elsewhere of people being "Willy Price Watcher" rather than "Gus Gotta Buy it Now!'s" and decided to make us all sweat another month to creep up people's drug addiction cravings and cause some of those waiters to jump the fence and buy.

I have a wee amount of training and conversion experience with Simunition FX gear so I might be able to help you out a tad... not a whole lot though as my experience with it was only one day. For what it is worth there are two types of Simunition, the FX marking bullets and the CQB bullets. As logic would suggest the FX marking bullets are the "paintball" rounds whereas the CQB jobbers are basically hard plastic "mega airsoft" rounds meant as a safer close quarters substitute for wadcutter ammo. If you are going force on force or encounter training then you really want the FX marking kits. From what I could tell the pistol kits were nothing more than a barrel and striker swapout, you use your exsisting slide assembly. Changing out the striker can be a bit of an issue if you are not used to shop stripping your weapon and as you can guess the switchout is not as fast as it might seem. You just use your normal magazines to load the rounds and the Simunition barrels are necked down so you can't accidentally chamber a live round. Rifles and carbine kits actually replace the entire upper receiver (as the FX marking bullets only come in 9mm and .38 special). My personal experience with FX marking ammo was once again with the SLCPD at their training facility. They had dedicated weapons already built out with the kits so I did not have to bother with setting up anything. They had heavy vests, helmets and face guards for the FX munition training as those things hit with paintball ferocity and at close range getting nailed with a burst is not fun at all if you would not be wearing the kit. Guns function just as they would running normal ammo. The loss in range from the CO2 power rather than powder is not noticable as most police action training using FX munitions are within 20 meters. The only thing that I might see as a "limitation" to FX munitions training is that you need a different color for each shooter so you can know who shot what. When you are doing ERT training (like what the SLCPD uses those kits for) you only have four to six guys at a time plus the tangos (tangos use all one color as no one cares about who shot who for the bad guys). From what I saw colors came in the primary and secondary lots... blue, red, orange, green, yellow, purple, pink, aqua and a few others. So you are sort of limited in your training as to how many colors you have in your ammo box. For what it is worth my minimal experience with FX munition training let me see that it is indeed a very, very useful tool in training. If you go the conversion route it would be even more useful as then you would have the shooter using their exact duty weapon which would eliminate any possible "unfamiliarity" with the training gear.

I also think it would behoove Yamato to go ahead and finish out the single seater line first before moving on to the twin seaters. Give me my Cannon Fodder then move on to the 1D and DYRL twins. So far they have made a 1/48 for every 1/60 they have (with the exceptions of the low vis and 1S Hikaru) I really don't see why they should stop now... Except for one thing: how are these toys selling in the main market? I keep hearing stories of the Macross toys not selling so well in Japan, and as we all know they are the primary market (and the people Yamato listens to, not us)... so if there is a downturn in these toys I'd say no twin seaters then.

Airsoft are nice for toys and for "recreators" but for honest real world training they are not so useful. Most of them are too fragile and underpowered to be used for actual police training and add to that tiny plastic BB's simulate neither the recoil or over the top sensation of being hit. Training with... I hope no one takes this as an insult... "toys" is not the best way to go and may in fact give your boys the wrong training or reinforce incorrect shooting and manuvering tactics. Nine times out of ten there is no substitue for live weapons training. The local SLDPD here in my area has a special training site set up outside of town that has a ton of neat things built out of wood like a modern hogan's alley, a gauntlet, ERT entry training and other ranges and shooting positions. They found out a long time ago that not much simulates the actual act of discharging a weapon so all current officers train with their duty weapons in "realistic" environments. Of course this site was built over the course of a few years with a substantial dollar value attached to it that went right to the taxpayers so it sounds like that is nowhere near an option for your boys money wise. I myself would say wait and buy the Glock simulators, or if you need to train with rifles buy your team some of the RAM paintball markers. You need something that will be as close to an actual firearm in feel and function as posible... airsoft usualy comes close in looks but as for fucntion and feel 90% of them fall very short of their real world brothers.

The only "fake wood" Marui I have seen in person is the AK-47 they made years ago... it looks real from about ten feet away but holding it and feeling it says "plastic". I'm very interested in what the airsoft M-14 will look like as I'm a bit of a fan of the real guns (getting ready to buy one this summer) and they are just so... meaty... that I'm wondering how far Marui can take the illusion of "real" this time. Using the zinc based metals they use in their metal parts really make their guns look accurate but the weight is always the dead giveaway... the wood on the other hand is going to be a hard one to handle as the "true" M-14 carries a fine finished handlaid Hardwood stock. I'm wondering if they are not going to take the easy road and make the gun a fiberglass appearing stock and give it a SWAN rail like the modern M-14 rifles... because one of the big features of the real '60s M-14 is that heavy Walnut stock. Also, how are they going to handle the action? I've never seen a classic bolted airsoft to know how they do that sort of thing. Will the bolt be able to be cycled or will it just be a large fixed facade mounted to the internal air action? Anyone have any pics or articles about this thing? I'm all interested now.

I've always seen it that the Valkyrie is a cross-breed of a 1980's carrier based fighter and a super modern robot soldier. Those influences are seen clearly in not only the design of the Valkyrie but in it's weapons as well. The GU-11 is clearly modelled after period external gunpods like the ones on F-4 Phantoms and it plays the same role... when in robot mode it becomes a rifle for the unit to use. Melee weapons like swords and knives are outdated in modern combat and usually only kept on hand for dire emergencies when your main weapon is empty or malfuncitoning. To me, the emergency back up weapon on the Valkyrie are the head lasers. I think of them as the "field knife" of the Valkyrie soldier unit... low on range, low on power, really only good to cut holes in things and open your C-rats. Also, knives and swords require quite a good degree of dexterity that the Valkyrie in battroid might not be able to pull off all that well to most common pilots. Look how clumsy Hikaru and even the ace Max seemed to be in Melee combat with their gunpods as clubs. Britai still managed to work both of them over quite well unarmed, perhaps the UN Spacy knew of this advantage the Zentradi would have and decided to push their doctrine to more of a "don't bring a knife to a gun fight" sort of end. It's a lot easier to shoot someone than stab them... I'd imagine it is even harder when that person is 50 feet tall. Also keep in mind the seeming focus of the Zentran war machine on enegry weapons and heavy bombardments. The tactical doctrine of the Zentradi speaks to massed attacks, orbital thrashings and heavy artillery support... not the sort of place for a knife or sword. I think the weapon loadout of the Valkyrie speaks rather well to the supposed military doctrine of the UN Spacy at the time of the Zentran attack. If I knew I'd be going up against giants with lots and lots of big guns I'd want big guns too.

An M-14 airsoft? This I gotta see. I know Marui does a great job making plastic look like wood but there is an awful lot of wood and steel on an M-14... I wonder how they are going to pull it off and still keep the "semi-real gun" feel they try to give most of their stuff? M-14's are monsters compared to the small arms they normally make like M16's and AK's.

The old A1 series are much lighter and easier to handle than the newer heavy barreled meatwagon A2's... when the military upgraded to the A2 series the rifle added like 2 pounds and lengthened the trigger pull range. To me, the A2's are like shooting the A1's fatter, uglier sister. Actually it is sort of both. Seeing as real XM177's are near impossible to find for under about $10,000 I decided to build my own. The upper is a real 1968 XM177E2 barrelled action with the special moderator/grenade launcher ring pinned on the front (the moderator is gutted and pinned in place as per ATF guidelines to keep it legal for me to own). It's wearing an original XM177 metal three position telestock and pistol grip as well as a colt bolt assembly and guts. The only thing non period colt on the entire weapon is the lower receiver which is a early '80s Pac West Arms (also known as PWA) "Commando" pre-ban lower. I had the lower ingraved with US Military markings so it looks just like a real XM177 lower except no prancing pony and no COLT AR15 markings, instead it has the oval PWA logo and says XM177E2 COMMANDO on the receiver along with a PWA serial number series. As for her big brother above that is 100% colt, Harvey Aluminum build 1967, exact M16A1E1 configuration. Both took me years to track down all the right parts and restore them to pristine brand new shape, the Commando just being finished this year. The A1 series being out of issue for more than a decade and the seeming hatred gun people have for the A1 parts it is getting harder and harder to build out or restore a nice old A1...