Starting A Site

[Boltrig]

Im getting waaay ahead of myself I know, but I was taking about this subject over a few brewskis with a few mates of mine.

 

How would you go about setting up your own site? We live in a fairly rural area, although not so much as to be a complete *badgeress* transportation wise.

 

We came up with the hypothesis that starting an airsoft / paintball centre must be a viable option, since there are 2 paintball sites within a reasonable distance of us,(so they must be turning a profit) and the addition of airsoft can only increase potential earnings. (Surely!)

 

Really all you need to start off with is land and minimal insurance. You could then advertise walk-on days for airsofters and paintballers with their own gear. Once your depleted funds replenish, you start work on assorted site furniture. Again wait for the replenish. Then buy site kit and advertise to the public at large.

 

The advantage to this approach is that you get only folk that are really keen on the sports at the start of your sites life. In theory you get them to give opinions on what kind of buildings / barricades / vehicles would suit the site best. Meaning that once you open fully, you have the ultimate site!

 

Do you reckon a bank manager would sit down and listen to this kind of thing with regards to handing out loans?

 

I think this should be looked into without the beer goggles! What do you all reckon?

[alecamused]

Do you reckon a bank manager would sit down and listen to this kind of thing with regards to handing out loans?

 

i'd say your chances are 50:50.

depending on your appearance, age and the bankmanagers "mood" you will surely be able to convince him to 'invest' in your idea. especially when you buy land - it's not losing its value so the bank got a kind of implicit security.

 

then again.. with 2 sites within reasonable distance you might have a difficult start. especially with land only (without forest, buildings etc.)

 

what size of the areal are you considering? do you know how much it would cost you to buy the land?

 

how often and how many people do you imagine will come to your field in the first year? how much do you imagine you can earn from these players? from your figures, remove 2/3 (better to calculate worstcase) and then confront your income with your installments.

 

 

as with every business you want to start - consider it will eat enormous amounts of time, money and relationships.

[kerberos_]

Local sites?

 

Anyway, I am a great believe in more choice for airsofters, so any new site is good. BUT, why not push for CQB/Urban. We have THREE of Woodland sites around Glasgow as it is.

 

Good luck though

[Fin]

I'd say depends on the area, for example i have a old quarry (or pit) next to me. I could probably turn that into a airsoft site easy and it has perfect terrain (ACU players would find there camo working here). Living in essex there is also plenty of burnt out cars around me if i picked a load up i could make a burnt out convoy.

 

If you lived somewhere nice though however you wont have disused pits, burnt out cars and all kinds of dumped ###### that you could use. You want your inital start up to be cheap if everything fails.

 

Other problems you would have to face are almost certainly going to be health and safety and inurace.

[Boltrig]

Local sites?

 

Anyway, I am a great believe in more choice for airsofters, so any new site is good.  BUT, why not push for CQB/Urban.  We have THREE  of Woodland sites around Glasgow as it is.

 

Good luck though

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

S8 and ayrsoft. Ive not discovered the last one yet. Care to send a little enlightenment my way?

 

With regards to Urban and CQB, The old Royal Ordnance Factory in between Bishopton and Linwood would rock, but Id need an eccentric millionaire to give me a handout rather than a bank!

[xerxes]

More sites for Scotland = win.

 

Shame there aren't any opening up near Aberdeen...

 

Good luck with the venture though, thinking of going down a similar path myself in the not too distant future.

[Tom Andrews]

S8 and ayrsoft. Ive not discovered the last one yet. Care to send a little enlightenment my way?

 

With regards to Urban and CQB, The old Royal Ordnance Factory in between Bishopton and Linwood would rock, but Id need an eccentric millionaire to give me a handout rather than a bank!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Not neccesarily, the owners may not want to demolish/refurbish the buildings for some time. So they may be interested in receiving some income rather than nothing.

 

Obviously you would need to speak to someone who makes the decisions, not some underling who says 'no', simply because its one letter less than saying 'yes'

 

On each of our three sites we have managed to find out the actual owner and only spoken to him. Result? Instant answer, and minimal messing about.

 

Of course we have had a lot of refusals, but thats understandable.

[Boltrig]

Not neccesarily, the owners may not want to demolish/refurbish the buildings for some time. So they may be interested in receiving some income rather than nothing.

 

Obviously you would need to speak to someone who makes the decisions, not some underling who says 'no', simply because its one letter less than saying 'yes'

 

On each of our three sites we have managed to find out the actual owner and only spoken to him. Result? Instant answer, and minimal messing about.

 

Of course we have had a lot of refusals, but thats understandable.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

The ROF factory has already been earmarked for a massive (and i mean massive) housing development. It keeps getting huge objections from the villiage though because no-one wants the place to become choked with traffic, but I dont think the small businessman can compete with the massed ranks of housing developers!

[minimiman]

First you need some land, then a business plan to follow.

 

You should factor in:-

 

Written permission of land owner, lease and rent.

Insurance

Advertising

Planning permision

Admin

Building of a suitable safe zone

Building of suitable gaming areas

Car parking

Marshals

First aid

stock of BB's and pyro etc

Web site

Rental equipment, or somebody to supply it for you

accounts

VAT

 

There are probably a load more things I have forgotton, it's not as easy as it seems but if your determined it's entirely possible.

 

As for borowing, highly unlikely a bank would lend you any money unless you have a detailed business plan including profit and loss calculations etc. Even then, unless you have some form of security it's not likely.

[ViscountCharles]

There are probably a load more things I have forgotton, it's not as easy as it seems but if your determined it's entirely possible.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Toilets - at least a portaloo or two.

[kerberos_]

S8 and ayrsoft. Ive not discovered the last one yet. Care to send a little enlightenment my way?

 

With regards to Urban and CQB, The old Royal Ordnance Factory in between Bishopton and Linwood would rock, but Id need an eccentric millionaire to give me a handout rather than a bank!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Although technically advertised as a 'sand' zone, Drymen is up near start of West Highland way and is really just an old gravel refinery or something. Basically fields, hills, bushes.

 

My description of a 'woodland' area was probably inaccruate

 

Anyway, GO CQB or Urban!!!! We need one badly. If that got underway (which I've been looking at myself) I'd be happy to help best I could.

[Jack Bauer]

But Drymen am closed. Apparently, the AEG's were spooking the horses in the nearby stables

 

Anyway, I think the only way anyone's ever going to find a decent urban/CQB site in the west of Scotland is to win the lottery and buy (and renovate) a disused building/plot of land in a place like the Phoenix retail park to build a CQB warehouse before property developers move in and build houses. And to be honest, with S8 running one weekend and Ayr-Soft the next, there's probably no real room for another Woodland site.

[zeb]

Rent rather than buy for sure - sort out a pay land owner per person that is on their land or similar.

 

As Kerb says CQB/Urban is the way forward on the West Coast

[Boltrig]

Rent rather than buy for sure - sort out a pay land owner per person that is on their land or similar.

 

As Kerb says CQB/Urban is the way forward on the West Coast

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Jack Bauer made an excellent point. There are a ton of disused (at least I think they are) warehouses at the Linwood Phoenix retail park.

 

No doubt youd be able to secure the lease on / rent one of them for an achievable amount of cash.

 

Paisley train stations are handy, a few first busses run by there, cinema and snackeries in close proximity....

 

Damn thats a fine idea!

[cazboab]

Contacting the folk who rent out on the phoenix is easy enough and should only take a couple minutes googleing and a wee flip through the yellowpages.

 

ROF Bishopton however is owned by BAE. Contacting them is easy enough, finding the right department is probably gonna take a while though.

[Boltrig]

Contacting the folk who rent out on the phoenix is easy enough and should only take a couple minutes googleing and a wee flip through the yellowpages.

 

ROF Bishopton however is owned by BAE. Contacting them is easy enough, finding the right department is probably gonna take a while though.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Indeed. Plus as I said Redrow have got it pegged for housing development. I doubt they're going to listen to all the protests from the Bishopton residents, cause from what I hear they've spent a whole load of dosh removing hazardous chemicals and TNT seepage from the ground.

 

Would be entirely awesome if they did get forced out, leaving the bunkers and armouries free to be overrun with merry skirmishers.

 

On the subject of Linwood, I reckon ill maybe give them a wee phone this week....

 

Just to see prices....

 

not to make a commitment...

 

...

[Tom Andrews]

Chances are a reasonably sized warehouse in a useable state of repair would cost a fair amount.

From previous experience a warehouse of about 12000 sq ft floor space (but probably 30 ft high) was around £40K per year.

 

Although that was in the London catchment area I can't see something similar in Scotland being less than £20K. Thats 5K per quarter, if you play once or twice a week (weekends) thats 8 times a month, 24 per quarter. Say 25 for ease of maths.......

 

Thats £200 per game day, if you charge £20 per person thats 10 players minimum.

 

Some days you will get 20 some days only 5........

 

Plus you have all the other overheads that Minimiman mentioned, plus a few more.

[kerberos_]

To be fair, Drymen aint 'closed' - it' just the guy who ran the games there got fed up because there was a complaint or two about the horses reacting to the loud noises.

 

The last game he ran there, I brought along a female friend of mine who cares and looks after horses, says she was over reacting somewhat.

 

So Drymen is very, very much still available unless the land owner says otherwise.

 

Due to the lack of CQB/Urban sites here, I reckon you'll get the numbers EASILY.

 

Also, this is a totally non-biased view. Anyone who knows me will vouch for that. At Ayr-soft, we don't see other sites as competition as it financially doesn't affect us how many turns up or not.

[Sherlock]

If you want your site to be decent chrono everyone. Even your mates. And don't let them use their ammo. Use site mags and ammo. Chrono everything. Pistols as well. This is the biggest downfall of too many sites.

 

Anyone trying to chrono a gun that's hot gets a warning. If they've just built it and have no idea then they should state that before the chrono.

 

None of this +5% / +10% ###### either. Set a top limit and that's it. Not a foot over. 329 or 251 then tough. You ain't using it.

 

Not doing this in a proper way is making sites rubbish. And the I play here all the time and the site owner's my mate culture is getting out of hand.

[L4byr1nth]

Yeah, fair enough, they should be tough on hot guns, but there should be some leniancy, surely?

 

Ben.

[xerxes]

I wouldn't have said so... I'd prefer if all sites strictly enforced FPS limits and tested everyone before going into the game zone.

 

You do however have to allow small tolerances of around +/- 5% for chronograph innaccuracies; the players' chronograph may well have put the gun bang on your site limit, but due to lighting conditions, air temperature or any number of other random factors your chronograph may put it at above your limit.

 

If it was my site, you simply wouldn't get to use a weapon if it was hot; no minimum engagement etc., it just wouldn't be allowed to enter play. It shows a huge lack of respect for the site owner, the other players and the honour-based nature of the game to walk onto a field with a hot gun.

[Delfi]

It's also worth bearing in mind that FPS limits will almost certainly impact on the nature and price of the insurance that you get.

 

Insurance is now even more important of course because of the VCRA. Without it your members won't be able to become 'registered'.

 

D

[cazboab]

The trick with FPS limits (as an organiser, not a player) would seem to be lie. state a limit of say 330 (for a cqb site), but insure yourself up to the hilt (which is 380) that way if a gun skips chrono for whatever reason, its still covered until its found out, or if someone has there brand new gun that fires 331 fps you can use discretion if its someone you trust(NB, not the same as "a mate") its insured and won't really be much different, if its someone you don't trust or someone who's never played before(or who has and you know is an utter tit), its over the limit .

[Jack Bauer]

If you want your site to be decent chrono everyone. Even your mates. And don't let them use their ammo. Use site mags and ammo. Chrono everything. Pistols as well. This is the biggest downfall of too many sites.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I presume you mean have the marshall doing the chrono work load the magazine the players supply for testing with .2 BB's supplied by the site ? That's more or less how S8 and Ayr-Soft run their chronoing and probably what airsofters in the area he'd theoretically set up a site would expect.

 

And as both sites are woodland, they have tolerances over 328 because they make sure to tell people that it's not very clever to light up someone on full auto at three meters.

 

CQB however, to be an enjoyable experience, benefits from full auto and full face, and a strict chrono limit. Woodland can be looser because it's fought at longer ranges in most cases.

[Sherlock]

Yeah, fair enough, they should be tough on hot guns, but there should be some leniancy, surely?

 

Ben.

 

WHY????!!!!

 

A 328 or 350 limit is exactly that. Why call it a limit if there's a +10%.

 

Your leniency on 350 fps is 1fps +350%.

 

Limits need to be made limits and not judgemtn calls by site owners. Oh you're my mate and you've played here before. Have an advantage. ######s.

 

Why do people have such a problem with that? Why do they all whine that there should be a 5% or 10% margin?

 

It's not hard to get it right.

 

You do however have to allow small tolerances of around +/- 5% for chronograph innaccuracies; the players' chronograph may well have put the gun bang on your site limit, but due to lighting conditions, air temperature or any number of other random factors your chronograph may put it at above your limit.

 

I'm afraid I disagree. You state the chrono you will use and the ammo type you will use.

 

If the margin at the site is 350 and you're in doubt then set your gun up for 345.

 

Why should 'experienced', 'trusted', 'regular' players have an advantage over an unknown palyer or a noob. I'm amazed one site I play ever gets new players coming back when there are twats that bend the rules and get twice the engagement distances. I guess it makes them feel like big hard men though.

 

Anyway back on topic. Make your site fair to all. Common rules applied to everyone int he same even manner. No exceptions to the rules no matter who they are or how long they've been to your site.