Airsoft accuracy tips
I am now airsofter, but I already have few month of experience, which I I would like to share with others, these are my tips, how to improve shooting accuracy with your airsoft gun.
tip#1 Safety first
Always wear safety goggles. If you will injure your eye, that will definitely degrade your shooting accuracy!!
Place for your ad?
tip#2 Wash your hands
Always load magazines with clear hands (or use gloves or speed loaders). It's best if you don't touch BB with your skin at all. But definitely don't eat popcorn or chips before you load the magazine ;-) If you touch BB with oily fingers, then effect of the hop-up will variate, depend if it contact the oily part of the BB.
tip#3 Set up the hop-up
Hop up is very important part of the shooting on distance. If you are shooting up to 10 meters, hop-up don't have important effect. But if you want to accurate shoot to 20 meters or more, you must setup the hop-up properly. How to set up the hop-up? Setup the hop-up to maximum and shoot into far distance. If BB fly to the sky, reduce the hop-up effect. Repeat this until you get closely linear line as long as possible. If your BB fly not only up, but to side (and it's not effect of the wind), your hop-up bucking is twisted or at an angle.
tip#4 Use inner barrel spacers
If your airsoft gun has long barrel, and it is supported only at two ends, use Spacers barrel, to reduce for the banding (steel barrels are more resistant to banding than copper barrels).
tip#5 Use heavier BBs
Heavier BB are less sensitive to wind. You can shoot more accurate, BUT your airsoft gun must have enough power to shoot these BBs. For example 0.4g BBs are recommended only with snipers with 450 standard FPS (fps with 0.2g BBs).
tip#6 Upgrade
I don't have experience with AEG or Gas airsoft guns. So, this tip is mostly for spring powered rifles. To get more power (FPS of the BB), you can change the spring. But don't forget that your other parts must be enough robust to handle this power. For example, you must change cylinder from Alumina to Steel, piston and spring guide from steel, stronger cylinder head etc. For extreme strong powers, you should replace trigger too.
Inner barrel also has direct effect to accuracy. If you primary aim is to shoot targets up to 10 meters, where hop-up effect is not important, use 6.01mm precision barrel. If you want to shoot higher distances (20+m), you need more air between BB and barrel, so it pushes less air and can spin, as effect of the hop-up. 6.03-6.05 is recommended.
I personally replaced inner barrel to 6.01 mm (in my CYMA M24), and according to tests, I got 20% better accuracy. Not much (if I consider, that barrel cost half of the gun price), but better than nothing.
If you have any other idea how to improve airsoft shooting accuracy, please share it with me, so I can add your tip here to site.