We never grow young. That's what our mothers tell us when we reach adulthood. We have now gone past the recklessness and rebelliousness of youth. That's who we are now among the Operators of Popular Airsoft, wisdom tells us it is time to give the young their stage to shine. We have been looking for younger operators for a week now, and we shall introduce some of them in the next issues. These young operators give us the energy to do more, and at the same time we have young blood to inject youth in our stories. Optimus Prime, ever the slave driver, says that we should have new cannon fodder, but he was joking.

He has announced that he wants younger people to take more responsibilities in the magazine. And us, the pioneer operators, while still doing our own stuff, shall provide whatever wisdom and guidance we can impart to them.

In this light of old and new, we present airsoft gun reviews of the past, present and future; the new and not so new. We also have new gear reviewed, and we present to you the longest article written for the Magazine so far.

So to start with, we have Mamba, who sometimes you see that has an article in the magazine, and sometimes you don't. He has submitted his story on his devotion to the Kong Power battery charger and balancer. This is not a new story as his original draft was already posted at various airsoft forums, here and abroad. Though we carefully edited some of the portions to ensure there is some consistency without wrecking the spirit of his article.

Optimus Prime and Master Chief review two ACM items, a bag and a bipod. What's so special about these? For Optimus Prime, the ACM copy of the Maxpedition Remora bag is a well built bag that he can use as his camera bag when he goes on shooting missions, while for Master Chief some frustration with retracting the bipod tossed to him to review.

We also introduce the Raid Series Book review, starting the Raid on Entebbe, which is the famous Israel rescue mission and immortalised in movies. Optimus Prime does the review for this and expect more book reviews from the Raid Series as the books were farmed out to Migh2r and Master Chief. Lazy readers they are, Optimus Prime demanded that they develop a good hobby of reading, so now they have their assignments for three more issues.

Moondog, ever the prolific event organiser, reports on what happened with Operation Blooper..errrr.. Operation Moonlight. It was a night event with which even with night vision equipment, incidents of friendly fire happened. Read the AARs of who were there, quite amusing.

Optimus Prime then reviews the ESS Profile Airsoft , which is the optimised version of the ESS Profile NVG. Now you may ask, why would ESS still make eyewear for airsoft when the military versions would be enough? There is a good reason why ESS did a product for us airsoft players, and a wise decision at that.

He then presents to us Ground Zero 2009, which we have started to cover starting last year and we want it to be a tradition for us to write about every year. It's a massive 46-page story with lots of pictures and of course his recount of the event. It's a good one, and those who have been at this year's GZ Weekender, better don't miss out the chance of reading this. It is something to be remembered.

Now for the new and not so new. We have been privileged to be the first magazine to receive the new ICS L86A2 Light Support Weapon (LSW), and for Master Chief and Migh2r, it is something for them to have fun with. They've been raring to give this a go at a skirmish field somewhere we do not want to know about. They are mightily impressed with the what ICS has released so take note of what they have written about.

Optimus Prime, again, writing, but failing to do the takedown and instead asked the guys do it for him, as he already has his hands full for this issue, about the ARES CTAR 21. He is extremely happy with the latest bullpup rifle to hit airsoft, and he just hopes they will be better optics for it in the future.

Airsoft Elite Essex sent Migh2r a loaner gun in the form of the Viva Arms Sten MKII. A very frugal submachine gun that also became the iconic British gun in World War II. Even for its simplistic design, a rough shod manufacturing, the Sten gun was built primarily to spray and kill, not to let the Wermacht mock it for its thoughtless design. For those who have played Back to Castle Wolfenstein and Call of Duty 2, now you can play airsoft with a well-made airsoft Sten.

So what else can we say about this issue? Nothing more, since we have reserved more stories for the next issues. In the next issues, we let the young guns to start spreading their wings while we watch over them.

Hoping to exchange bbs with you,

The Writers
Popular Airsoft Magazine
Volume 2 Issue 4
24 September 2009