Dan's Airsoft Journey: From Borrowed Kit to the Fujin Community
Dan has been playing airsoft for four to five years now. It started at Strike Force in Gloucester, before he found UCAP Vendetta, which has been his go to site for four years since. Over the last two years he has been getting deeper into milsim and battlesim, travelling further to play at Defiant events and try different sites across the UK.
How It Started
Dan first came across a Kicking Mustang video and started looking into the sport out of curiosity. Around the same time, an old friend of his had already started playing. Dan joined him for a few games and was hooked from there.
His first ever game was played in jeans and a hoodie, using a borrowed Evo Scorpion until he could put his own kit together.
Finding His Feet
The hardest part early on was not cost or access, it was confidence. Turning up alone to a game he had never played felt like a big step, and having someone who had already been there made all the difference.
These days Dan runs different setups depending on what he is playing. For CQB he is still often in jeans and a top with a micro chest rig. Outdoors he tends to wear M81 trousers and top with a matching chest rig, with separate kit built out for milsim and battlesim events.
Finding Fujin
Dan first noticed Fujin through people wearing the hoodie at UCAP Vendetta. At the time he assumed it was just a team. It was only a few years later, meeting more people across different sites, that he understood what the community actually was.
What changed for him since being part of it was the people. Being part of a team in airsoft was not new to Dan, but being part of a community, he says, is a completely different thing. He has met people who go out of their way to help wherever they can.
The Kit That Made A Difference
Dan had always run a chest rig, and it made sense for his loadouts. Recently he swapped over to a Fujin plate carrier and says it was a genuine step up. Being able to customise the mag pouches between M4 style and SMG style, while keeping the whole setup lightweight, meant it never felt like the bulky plate carriers he had tried in the past.
Asked what he would want to see more of from Fujin, Dan was honest that he could not fault much. If anything, he would like to see a wider range of GBBR parts, so Fujin becomes even more of a one stop shop.
What Fujin Has Actually Changed
For Dan, the biggest shift has been meeting new people he now considers good pals, and being pushed to try new sites to meet more Fujin members across the UK.