Like a lot of things in life, successful endeavors can often boil down to good old fashioned communication. Tech work is very much reliant on good communication between the customer and the tech to facilitate a successful upgrade or repair path. We’ve all heard the old saying: “Never ASSUME, because when you ASSUME, you make an ASS of U and ME.”
So with that being said, here are a few items to take into consideration when you want a tech to fix your gun….
Be descriptive. You don’t go to the doctor and meekly say “I hurt!” without explaining to the doctor where you hurt. Least of all, you shouldn’t be terribly upset when said doctor slaps you with a bill for exploratory surgery in an effort to determine where exactly you hurt. Tech work is kind of like this too. It’s best if we know what problems you are experiencing in as descriptive a manner as possible without having to resort to exploratory surgery. I receive a lot of vague “it’s broken” repair requests. Well, there is a big cost difference between fixing a broken Tamiya plug in 5 minutes versus fixing a broken gearbox in an hour.
Let us know what you want done. This should go without saying, but a lot of people simply don’t understand this concept. Remember what was said about assumptions? We don’t read minds, and it shouldn’t be expected that we perform such requests because one of us will inevitably wind up unhappy with the final result. Define your expectations. Do you want something that will compete on the field or is this going to be strictly for CQB… or? They all have different requirements, and different upgrade paths depending on what you have.
Listen to what we are trying to tell you. YouTube has been a terrible, terrible influence on the airsoft world in my opinion. I receive a lot of requests to build this gun or that gun because someone saw some chode-monkey build it on YouTube. 9 times out of 10, folks don’t realize or fail to see the “small print” that’s often not included in those videos. They don’t realize that YouTube builder X has just dropped about $500 worth of upgrades into that gun – yet expect their local tech to make the same magic happen with a budget of $50. Most of the time we are trying to save you money, heartaches, and headaches. When we say it can’t be done with your particular gun, or would be extremely expensive, or a maintenance nightmare (i.e. this is also expensive), we generally mean it. We are also trying to ensure you can play at local hosted events with your guns too rather than being perpetually confined to your parents back yard. Few things in life come with a blank check, and airsoft is certainly not one of them.
Be upfront with us when you are spending someone else’s money. Kids, (and it’s almost always kids) I cannot stress this enough. If you’re spending your mom’s call-center money on tech work, be honest with us. There is nothing more annoying or painful for the parents when we hand your mom or dad a bill for $250 worth of upgrades that you “authorized” based upon your word that you were the end user funding this little project. Don’t be a tool or next Christmas Santa will be stuffing your stocking with Crossman .12g’s.
Provide a magazine. This is an important one. It’s erroneous to expect us to have on hand every single magazine for every single design of AEG out there. Without a magazine we can’t perform several crucial function tests (feeding and FPS measurements for a couple). Sure we can hook up a battery and say “the gearbox is making agreeable sounds.” But without a magazine we can’t tell you if it’s properly feeding or what the FPS might be. Additionally, we can also diagnose if your problems are purely magazine related or might be something more. A LOT of misfeeding problems are the result of bad or poor quality hi-cap magazines as an example.
A turd is a turd is a turd. Sorry, but it has to be said. There are a lot of turds out there. Almost none of them are worth working on because it will cost you more in tech work and parts than it would to replace this turd with a shiny new one. If it came from Wal-Mart, Big 5 or has interesting translucent polymer accents, it’s a turd. This falls in line with, “Listen to what we are trying to tell you.”
Lastly, be responsible. In this day and age, what you do can have ramifications for the whole sport. Don’t be those kids who wave an airsoft gun around the playground and not expect to get shot by someone with a CCW or by responding LEO’s. Similarly, don’t be irresponsible with your tech requests. I will not build you a 700 FPS “sniper rifle”, or a 100 RPS AEG because such things simply aren’t safe and it’s irresponsible to use them on the field. Your actions can reflect on all
of us who are involved in this sport.
There’s a good quote for this too: “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”