I had an early appointment with James Chan, the Managing Director of WE Airsoft and it turned out to be a three-hour conversation about company and also airsoft in general. First, I asked him why WE took the effort to set up Europian office. James told me that WE wants everyone to know that they're not simple “mold-makers” anymore and they can take care of their customers.

WE Europe gives 3 months of warranty on their products through the retailers. Constant flow of parts will be assured by the European office. The repairs will be carried out by the retailers using stock WE parts. The other reason being here is to eliminate doubts who is an official WE partner and who isn't. Right now there are several webshops claiming to be closely associated with WE but in reality they buy WE products off the streets of Taiwan and drop-ship it to Europe. I don't think such retailers will carry out a repair for us so this needs to stop.

The Katana series got everyone's main attention when visitors looked at the displays and some people just missed the fact that WE had two SMG8s on display. I will deal with the SMG8 in detail this week, for now I will just mention the fact that currently this is the only 1:1 ratio replica of the MP7 on the market, and I hope I can prove it to you later. The replicas on display are 99% final versions (near production prototypes), and will fire BBs out at a speed of 350 FPS from a 50-round magazine.

WE got the first feedback from the retailers and gamers worldwide regarding their Katana System so now they will offer the upgrade of a full steel teeth piston out of the box. This could be interesting to someone who plans further upgrades on the Katana-like aftermarket gears or motor. The other change WE made with the KATANA is the new pinion gear which has a 15- teeth pinion gear instead of a 14 teeth one. This will reduce the stress on both motor and battery. If these were the only issues with the Katana then we can be all happy. I am sure we will see mad mods and upgrades from the community on this platform. The Katana will be available with three cylinder types, the BLUE is the 90, RED 110 and the GREY/Titanium will be the 130. The blue cylinder version will ship with a Marui 700 equivalent motor while the red and titanium will have a Marui 1000 equivalent motor. WE recommends 7.4 V LiPo batteries for the blue and 11.4V for the red/titanium versions. The upper gearbox is Systema/Celsius compatible in the inside while the parts inside the lower half stayed Marui compatible. Hop-up is standard AEG chamber/barrel combo so that means almost all the parts inside the Katana already have an aftermaket version and there's no need to wait for custom shops to catch up with the market.

After we got through all the technical details we were able to talk about upcoming products from WE, but unfortunately James asked me not to write about these although later he revealed one on the Airsoft meetup: The SMG8 will have a 22cal version. The rest remains secret for a while but we can expect lot of great stuff from WE in the next two years.

The 2nd Airsoft Meetup was a huge surprise for us, because a lot of people showed up and we had no available seats left by the time our conference started. Ronald of NLAirsoft did a great job of organizing it again. I would also like to thank everyone who showed up, everyone who did a presentation and everyone who wanted to watch the live feed, but unfortunately that didn't happen because of a technical issue. We have somewhat of the footage, and other airsoft media guys also recorded the conference so the minute we upload our footage and track down other existing videos we will share it with you guys.

After a short intro from Ronald I handed over awards to RedWolf Airsoft, Gunfire, KWA, Airsoft Innovations, Border War, and Ronald for NABV. They are were of the winners of the Popular Airsoft 3rd Airsoft Players' Choice Awards. Of course these are only the winners who were present at IWA and the rest of the winners who were not present will receive their awards by mail.

With the awards “ceremony” over, the presentations started. First RedWolf talked about their current and future projects, WE Airsoft talked about the SMG8 and the Katana then LACS introduced their IR based tag system for airsoft games. SRC talked about the Tokarev and the nylon fiber colored M4 series. Gunfire introduced their plans and projects and a nice video of an airsoft game that they sponsored, nice footage shot in a snowy forest. Voodo Tactical brought some of their products up for a presentation, explaining the idea and quality behind the brand. At last CAA Airsoft Division introduced their latest products.

More photos of the Airsoft Meetup are available at the Airsoft Community Europe Facebook Page.

Next year we will try to make the Meetup even more professional, with a celebrity host and better technical background. We might even need a bigger conference room as well.