Greetings from a new UK member

Hi there!!

I know a lot of people make their intro thread as is is a required pre-requisite to posting elsewhere on the forum, but although I have nothing thread-worthy yet I wanted to introduce myself as a mark of respect for the massive amount of information and advice I have gleaned from your site in an incredibly short space of time.

I would go as far as to say that whilst there are literally thousands of airsoft forums, this is THE definitive place for learning about the sniper speciality.

I'll do the brief intro first for the sake of those who are easily bored:

Name: Pete

Occupation: 2nd officer on a North Sea based AHTS (Anchor Handling Tug Supply) vessel

Callsign: Tarmageddon

Country: UK

Experience: In airsoft, nothing but excited anticipation. A friend has asked me to join his club and offered to lend me his Cyma G36C until I buy my own equipement.

Military: None

Marksmanship:
I was taught to shoot by my father using a .177 break-barrel air rifle.
Whilst in the air Cadets I obtained an ATC marksmans badge using a .22 bolt-action and an RAF marksmans badge using the 5.56mm L98 Cadet GP.
I was the coach of a county league air rifle team shooting in the standing 7-metre discipline but unfortunately my work came in the way of that.
I also do rat-catching for local residents.

Guns:
My first was a Gamo PR45 .177 target air pistol which my father bought for me for my 13th birthday.

I now also own these:



The top one is my Feinwerkbau P70 (ALU) target rifle that I used when I was shooting league, I guess you could say it's my pride and joy. The sights are non-lensed diopter sights and the foresight has an adjustable iris (meaning you dont have to change the glasses)
The bottom one is a Weirauch HW77K .22 spring air-rifle that has seen most use nabbing rats from peoples back gardens. The sight is an AGS 3-9x40.
(I hope you dont mind me posting a pic but we all like pictures of shineys, right?)

Hobbies: Amateur mechanics and engineering (messing about with cars)
Computer gaming
Scuba diving
Music, beer, dance all those good things
Hopefully to add airsoft to the list... I really miss shooting since I left the target league and hopefully this will be what I am looking for.

Now, thats the brief version. For those of you who are interested I want to write a little more about myself and my motivations.

I am afraid having read your forum FAIRLY thoroughly (it would take me all year to read it all!!) that I am going to conform to some rather unfortunate cliches that I see recurring in your pages. I want to be totally up front about them, but also give a little by way of explanation... kind of like a new point of view if you will?

So, as I said, I am afraid I tick quite a few of your face-palm boxes!!
1) I HAVE chosen that I want to go down the sniper route, even before any time on an AEG
2) I WILL be using some kind of clone (A Well MB01 is what I have my eye on)
3) I WILL be upgrading said clone WAY before I am good enough to take advantage of those upgrades
4) I DO play call of duty

But before you ban me, I just want to offer up a little insight into why, despite reading all your advice telling me that all of the above is BAD... I am still set on going down the route of being a sniper...

1) Sniping before AEG: You can see from my marksmanship background that my main interest when it comes to shooting is accuracy and marksmanship. The sniper discipline is THE marksmanship speciality when it comes to airsoft, so why would I want to do anything else?

2) Using a clone: What I REALLY want is the Ares CheyTac M200 Intervention, but I can't really justify spending