Travelling to games in Europe

[ColBurton]

Hi folks,

The long and short of it is I'm looking at travelling to Split in Croatia next year for a milsim game called 'operation Pathfinder'.

However I have never travelled abroad with my airsoft kit before. So any advice or information is greatly appreciated.

At the moment the options I can see are:

1) Fly to Split, walk/public transport from there.
However I know that the airlines won't allow tins of gas or batteries (maybe just not Lipo's). Which therefore presents a problem.

2) Drive from the UK to Split, which is a really frigging long drive especially to then do a 3 day milsim before turning round to do it again.
Plus it would mean driving across many different countries with different regulations on airsoft including Germany which is restricted to Semi auto only.

3) Drive from the UK to Ancona in Italy and take a car ferry to Split. This will cost more but would take about 1000 miles off the journey making it a bit easier.
However it would still mean crossing France, possibly Switzerland and Italy before crossing to Croatia.

Has anyone played in Croatia before?
How did you travel and transport equipment?
Any advice on which of the above would be my best option?

Many Thanks

[Ells]

Re: Travelling to games in Europe

1) You could always ship your stuff there, might be expensive though, you could try getting in contact with someone there and placing an order for a lipo, just use it for the weekend and sell it to someone there (sort of a waste of money, but i geuess if you can afford to travel across Europe to go airsofting losing £5 on a lipo probably isnt too bad!)

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_issues_in_airsoft I wouldnt take it as up to date but it is a better starting place than 0. So for example here (Netherlands), this says "On the 20th of December 2012, the NABV announced the completion of the first great airsoft journey, and that starting January 15, 2013, airsoft would be legally regulated in the Netherlands.[18] The NABV is slowly releasing more information about the new rules, and the most important one is that one needs a mandatory membership of the NABV which can be acquired only with a certificate of good conduct equal to that required for sport shooters." would mean you would need to register your RIF, something I imagine you would need to be a registered citizen for, and yes of course going thorugh germany you would only be allowed semi auto and no lasers/lights/silencers scopes etc, so this might not be so good if you use these things!

The rest of your post i have no advice for, hope that helps a bit though!

[ColBurton]

Re: Travelling to games in Europe

Thanks for the info will have to look into the idea of shipping kit over and/or acquiring batteries etc there.
Am flexible on costs as have until June to get everything in place. Also it's a bit of an adventure for my 30th birthday so hence the grand plan lol.
I think I am leaning towards the UK to Italy and ferry across option unless as you say I can ship my kit over & fly as that would be easier if more expensive...

[HuntR]

Re: Travelling to games in Europe

Shipping RIF's is the easy part. It's the batteries that pose an issue. As far as i'm aware there is a blanket ban on "loose" lipo batteries on commercial flights. I use the word "loose" lightly. As I can't find any more information on it. I'm assuming it means batteries not in use, IE a mobile phone would be fine as it's housed inside something that needs it for it to work. Whereas you can't leave one in the RIF. That definitely won't go down to well. You'll also need a lockable case. And I don't mean a cheap one you can buy from a market stall. It has to be lockable in a way that if one lock were to break off, you can't physically open that part of the case to take the RIF out. It has to be very secure.