Airsoft Hacks

I’ve secured a supplier in Asia for manufacturing velcro-backed embroidered patches. Prices are very competitive and much cheaper than any manufacturer I was able to find locally in Ireland.

If you require patches for your team, email sales@airsofthacks.com and I will get a quote for your design.

Example of patches I’ve had made are below:

Na Fianna Patch Design	Na Fianna Patch, as Delivered.
Original Hawks Design	Hawks Patch, as Delivered
Click the images for a larger version.

Saw this released on rsov.com last week and decided on a whim to pick one up.

I bought my brother a Sig 226 about a year ago as a present because he was such a fan of the 24 TV series in which Jack Bauer uses a P226 in the first 2 seasons. He later moves to a USP (I’ll get that for my brother next christmas :))

That one was an all plastic pistol, but despite this had a very nice feel and shot well, however I personally felt the 226 was a very comfortable pistol to hold and have wanted one for myself since, so when I saw the ACM version I figured “Why not?”

It arrived today and upon initial inspection I was quite pleased with my purchase (well, except for the customs charges )
It’s got a nice solid feel, as you would expect from a full metal pistol and I personally find it a very comfortable pistol to hold.

The packaging is nothing to write home about, but protects it well for shipping.

Trades

Trademarks on clone guns lately seem to be getting much better lately, and this one has some very nice trades along the slide on the left side.

Trademarks are missing on the grip, which is disappointing when they even put trades on the magazine.

Some may find the 6mm Para on the inner barrel pointless, but personally I dont mind having the trades say 6mm instead of the calibre of the real deal.

Loading

The follower can be locked down to help make loading easier like most pistols magazines, but I found it was difficult to get it to stay locked back. Once the following is locked, you can load it with a speedloader, but if you have to hold the follower back with your head, it is much quicker and easier to load the BBs by hand.

Firing

Blowback is nice and crisp, however there does seem to be an unusual amount of gas which is vented from the back of the slide on firing. Probably wouldn’t notice this too much in a skirmish, but it is there.

Range and accuracy is good, about what you’d expect from an average GBB pistol. Hopup can be adjusted by removing the slide and turning the adjustment wheel underneath the barrel. The factory setting was fine for shooting at the relatively short range I have here at home, but nice to know you have the option to adjust.

I couldn’t get the slide to lock back on the last shot after emptying a magazine, but it did lock back just fine when the mag had been freshly filled with gas. This may be down to the relatively low (approx 10-12 C) temperature here this evening.

Conclusion

All in all, a good all round full metal pistol and for the price it’d be hard to go wrong. Extra magazines are now available too, which I would have stocked up on if they’d been available at the time I ordered.

Just one of several new things coming to airsofthacks.com soon, here are our custom, made in Ireland, mosfets.

There are two options to choose from, our standard mosfet and our active braking mosfet. Both will provide an excellent upgrade to your AEG, reducing wear and tear and improving performance. The active braking mosfet has all the same features of the standard model except the motor is stopped when you release the trigger or when the cut-off lever engages.

Also, we have our Auto Reset Fuse, this will protect your AEG just like a nomal fuse, but when it breaks, just wait a couple of seconds and it will reset itself. It’s also got a much lower resistance than a standard fuse, so if you were thinking of removing your fuse to lower resistance, now you can have the best of both worlds.

Airsofthacks.com products can now be purchased online directly via eirsoft.ie, full details on each is below;

Standard Mosfet (RRP €30)

• Our standard Mosfet wiring harness.
• Highly recommended for AEGs to promote longevity and essential when running batteries high than the stock 8.4v
• Replaces the stock wiring of an AEG
• Reduces wear on trigger contacts.
• Ideal for use with batteries of 8.4v and 9.6v
• Can help increase Rate of Fire
• Can increase battery life

Active Braking Mosfet (RRP €45)

• Upgraded Mosfet wiring harness with Active Braking.
• The same as our Standard Mosfet with added Active braking.
• Braking prevents the motor from overspinning when you release the trigger or in semi auto mode. This eliminates the problem of having 2 shots instead of 1 in semi auto commonly seen in high speed setups.
• Highly recommended for AEGs to promote longevity and essential when running batteries higher than the stock 8.4v.

Auto Reset Fuse (RRP €8)

• Direct replacement for your stock AEG fuse, breaks just like a normal fuse to protect your AEG.
• Automatically resets itself; no need to open your AEG and replace the fuse.
• Has less resistance than a standard fuse, making sure you get the most out of your AEG while still protecting it against shorts.
• Recommended for use with our Standard Mosfet and Active Braking Mosfet.

This is something I’ve been meaning to build for a while and only recently got around to doing, it’s only half-complete at the moment, but eventually each individual shelf will be lined with foam which will be cut out to the shape of the equipment the shelf is designed to store.

Guess who won…..

My tv was caught by a ricochet when chrono testing after a few upgrades tonight.

At the end of August, I built a display piece for the Irish Airsoft Association’s (of which I am technical adviser) PR tent at the annual Salute Military Show here in Dublin consisting of an AEG M4 with the body cut down and one side of the gearbox removed so as to expose the internal workings.

This greatly helped in explaining to people new to airsoft how an AEG operates and also allayed a lot of people’s fears of airsoft guns, in particular the myths relating to them being able to fire a live round or having complex workings capable of firing a projectile which could do harm. Once people saw the relatively simple internals, they had a much better understanding of their operation.

The original AEG for this display piece was donated to us by Eirsoft.ie and after seeing the finished result, the owner, Tony, asked me would I create another one for display in the shop. Finally got around to finishing it last weekend and brought it down to the shop yesterday for installation. Here’s some pics of it installed; (Apologies for the poor quality pictures, they were taken on a camera phone)

M4 counter display in Eirsoft

M4 counter display in Eirsoft

Airsofthacks.com would like to apologise for our temporary loss of service, normally programming will now resume.

Yea, sorry about that, looks like wordpress had a bit of a brain fart and disappeared on me, hadn’t noticed because I was away doing some sightseeing in europe again for a few weeks.

I’ll be back with some new and (hopefully) interesting posts soon, but in the meantime, here’s a map of where I was this summer:

The route I took while Travelling in September 2008

In one of my posts a while back, I talked about the various different airsoft gases, at the time, the only supplier I could find for the high powered Red Gas, was RedWolf Airsoft, I emailed them to inquire about shipping this gas to Ireland (it was costing over $100 to ship 6 cans worth $20 each) but never got a reply and a week later the gas was listed as discontinued on their site.

For a while I didn’t think any more about it, until a new variety of Red Gas became available on their site, it was still quite expensive to ship over so I decided I would wait and add it to a bigger order. In the meantime, Irish retailer AirsoftEire got the ET2200 gas in stock. I noticed this last Wednesday, prompted by a post on boards.ie’s Airsoft forum and decided to order a can. Many thanks to the lads from AirsoftEire for their great service, ordered late Wednesday night, shipped Thursday and arrived on my doorstep Friday morning, very well packaged too.

I set about testing the gas to see what kind of power it would put out, I’ve only tested it in one pistol so far (KSC Glock 18), so the results are by no means conclusive, however I will update later with results using a couple of different pistols.

To set a base line, the following are the results from normal green gas using 0.20g Excel BBs:

Testing with the ET2200 Red Gas gave the following results:

As can be seen, there is no significant difference in the power output when using the two gases.

Also noteworthy, in the “Technical References” information printed on the back of the canister, the main ingredient is listed as Propane, there is also no mention of HFC22 (which is what Red gas supposedly is).

Verdict: ET2200 appears to be nothing more than normal green gas, which is in turn, primarily propane. I’ll conduct some further testing in a few different pistols later today, however I am not expecting any differences between this and ordinary green gas.

A common problem here in the south of Ireland that makes us envy our Northern brethren airsofters is the lack of pyrotechnics which we can employ during an airsoft skirmish. A few flashbangs and a bit of smoke could really add to the combat atmosphere, especially for milsim events. Unfortunately under Irish law these devices are classed as pyrotechnics and require a licence and permission to import and use. Obtaining a licence for their use is not a simple matter either, even when importing pyrotechnics there is a raft of paperwork which must be filled out and you must specify the date, time and location in which the devices will be used, not exactly useful for airsoft use.

About a year back I created a small ventilated metal cylinder, about the approximate size of a hand grenade, into which you could place smoke pellets which can be bought in Joke Shops and Novelty Stores across Ireland. This worked moderately OK in a CQB environment, but ignition was always a problem. Even fuses are a restricted item in Ireland!! I had tried several experiments making homemade fuses from the sulphur scraped from match heads, some string and super glue, it never really worked particularly well and was far too time consuming to ever be a realistic option.

Sparked by a recent thread on boards.ie about legal options for smoke grenades I decided to do some searching on ebay. I was initially looking for industrial grade smoke pellets which I could build a new holder around and I came across these ph Smoke Matches, could these be a potential solution to the ignition problem? They appeared to light just like matches and had an extended head which would give off smoke when burned.

These arrived today and I immediately decided to give them a test, lighting one by hand at first, I didn’t expect much from a single match but had hoped that perhaps lighting several would provide a decent amount of smoke. A small amount of smoke was produced which was quickly blown away by the moderately light wind which is blowing in my back garden.

I then decided to try a whole box (12) at once. This gave off a good deal more smoke but still not enough to ever be considered a really viable alternative to pyrotechnic smoke grenades. Perhaps in an indoor CQB environment they might prove slightly more useful perhaps with using several boxes of them simultaneously, but care must still be taken as when lighting several together, there is quite a large flame which burns for several seconds.

I’ll let the video speak for itself on how they looked:

So that’s it for those, back to the drawing board for a legal alternative to smoke grenades in Ireland.

Hands up if you’ve ever wondered about the difference in different weights of BBs? Accuracy, range, wind resistance? Well, here’s another factor which I never considered until recently. I read a post on arniesairsoft.co.uk in which the poster mentioned that using heavier bb’s could potentially increase the power output (i.e. Joules). Essentially what it boils down to is that heavier weight bb’s stay in the barrel longer, therefore get more time to accelerate than lighter ones.

To test this theory, I grabbed my favourite AEG (TM P90), which fires at a fairly consistent .95-.98J and some Excel brand 0.2g and 0.25g BBs, testing with the different weights gave the results below:

Theory smashed? Yea, that’s what I thought too, I decided to test it out with another device, conveniently I had my KSC G18c to hand which I loaded up with some gas and BBs, results are below:

Haha! That theory seems it might have some grounding in truth, well, to be a bit more sure, I tested with 2 more pistols which I had handy, a Meister Glock 17 GBB and a KSC Glock 19 GBB, yes I know, all Glocks, you either love them or you hate them and in my case it’s definitely the former, but don’t judge me on that, I own several other pistols which aren’t Glocks too :).

The Meister Glock 17 achieved power outputs at:

And the KSC Glock 19:

So, what exactly is going on here? Well, the key difference is that the P90’s barrel is 247mm long, whereas the pistol barrels are only about 100mm long. The fact that the p90 has the same output power with both the .20’s and .25’s shows that the physical size of the BB is not playing a part in the extra power output, infact I measured a sample of both .20g and .25g BBs and found them all to be the same size (5.88-5.90mm).

The extra length of the P90 barrel in comparison to the pistol barrel gives the BB ample time to accelerate using the energy of the gas behind it (in this case, the air which is pushed by the AEG’s piston), however the pistol having such a short barrel causes much of the energy (in the form of gas) to be expelled out the end of the barrel after the BB has already exited the barrel. Using a heavier weight BB means that the BB spends longer in the barrel of the pistol and has more time to be accelerated by the expanding gas behind it, thus a greater amount of energy is transferred from the gas to the BB.

So not only do .25g BBs have greater resistance to wind, they actually make more efficient use of the energy expelled by the GBB, but in the case of the P90 with a barrel of 247mm, it made no difference. I’ll conduct some further tests on AEG’s with different barrel lengths, but I’m fairly sure that anything with a barrel of around 200mm or more will not see any difference in power output with different BB weights.

It is also important to remember that here in Ireland, the legal limit for any airsoft device’s output power is 1 Joule, using 0.25g BBs with a device which fires at 0.99J on 0.20g BBs may actually increase it’s power to above 1 Joule, care must be taken to ensure that you are compliant with the law at all times.

Thoughts/Comments/Suggestions? Feel free to click the comment button below.

*Update:

I repaired my Cyma Glock 18 AEP last night and re-wired it with an external battery, so this morning I decided to conduct a few more tests, below are the results using .20g and .25g BBs as above.

As you can see, there is no noticeable increase as with the GBBs, infact with the .25g BBs in the AEP, the power output decreases. Theory busted? Well, no, not really, the Glock AEP has a much smaller gearbox than an AEG and a very small piston/cylinder to compress air in, so in this case, the volume of air in the cylinder matches the volume of air required to propel a .20g BB efficiently down the relatively small 100mm barrel. Were this a full sized AEG gearbox with a 100mm barrel, then quite likely the expected results of the energy level increasing would be seen.

I’ll be conducting a few more tests with this theory to try and get the most conclusive results possible, so check back for more updates soon.