Airsoft Hacks

Update: Got a chance to try these out in a skirmish today at hrta, can you guess what happened? Nothing, zippo, nada… got some nice white foam spurting out of them, but that was it. CrazyRabbit suggested the use of plumber’s tape around the threads to improve the seal and stop them leaking, so I’ll pick some up and give it a try, if the problem with the seals can be fixed, these may yet turn out a bit better than my initial tests showed.

About a month ago, myself and some other’s on boards.ie’s Airsoft/Paintball Forum were discussing hand grenades for use in Airsoft, someone posted a link to airsofthandgrenades.com and I had a look at it, they make hand grenades for airsoft (Duh!) but they are slightly different to the usual gas type and significantly cheaper too. The basic principle is a chemical reaction between citric acid and bicarbonate, when these two chemicals mix (along with some water), they produce CO2. The chemicals are harmless (except maybe if you get citric acid in your eye, it might sting a little!) and the reaction is similar to mixing vinegar and bicarbonate soda (search youtube if your curious).

I read through the site, found out what information I could about them and watched the video’s, I decided to order some.

The grenades have an amount of citric acid powder in the bottom, which you mix with water. Then in the detonator section, you place some bicarbonate and put a small cap over it, when you press the plunger, these mix and the reaction begins, but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here…

The AG-01 Grenades

Unfortunately explosive grenades can’t be purchased in the Republic of Ireland due to restrictions on fireworks and I liked the idea of these hand grenades compared to the expensive gas versions. For a pack of 6 grenades, it’s just €24, which is alot cheaper than the gas versions.

I placed an order on their website and was told I would receive a shipping quote the next day. I did not. It was a full seven days later that I received my shipping quote, I decided to forgive them for this and figured maybe they have never shipped to Ireland before and had to do some research on shipping costs. I paid the full amount straight away via paypal, shipping was €12 by the way, bringing the total to €36.

In the shipping quote, I was told I would receive a tracking number within 24 hours. I did not. After two days, I decided to email them and find out what was going on with the order, at this stage I wasn’t too bothered, but I didn’t even receive anything to say they had received my payment and so I thought maybe my payment had gone missing.

There was no reply to that email and another two days later, I emailed again asking what was the status of my order. Again, there was no reply.

The weekend passed and on Monday I decided I would atttempt to contact them once more before getting onto Paypal or my credit card company to cancel the payment. This time I decided to use the contact form on their website, I politely informed them I would like a tracking number in 24 hours or I will have to contact Paypal. The next day I finally received a reply, oh what humble apologies and excuses lie within?

Hello, this is the reference number: xxxxxxxxxxxx www.ups.es

Best regrast

I was not impressed, at the very least some form of excuse would have been nice. Thankfully I had the intelligence to work out that I should visit the ups.es website and input the given reference number to find out where my package was .It still hadn’t left for Ireland. A day or two later, the ups website updated and the order was scheduled for delivery on the 24th, woohoo, finally!

The 24th came…. and went, checked the tracking website that night and apparently

“The Package Was Missed At The UPS Facility”

Silly UPS, oh well, they’ll deliver it tomorrow…or maybe not, the next day it was:

“The Receiver Is Not Listed On The Building Directory.”

I’d like to know exactly what building directory they expect to see at a residential address? So this was Friday and I was pissed, mildly annoyed that I wouldnt have them for Saturday’s skirmish in HRTA. No big deal, can always use them next week. So Monday came along and I checked the tracking again around lunch time to see if my package would be delivered, apparently they managed to leave it at the UPS facility again, my poor package must be getting lonely, at this stage I was quite annoyed at UPS and decided I would go collect the bloody thing myself. Arranged to go and collect it at their depot (on the opposite side of the city) and did so this morning, Tuesday 29th, a full 22 days after I placed my order online, if the package was coming by ground from some obscurely named city in Russia, I might expect this kind of delivery period, but Madrid?

So granted the mix up with UPS when the package left Madrid was not the fault of airsofthandgrenades.com and I realise this, but even before it was shipped, their service up to that point was terrible, no replies to emails, promising things in 24 hours and then taking a week to do them. It’s just not a sign of a good retailer, but alas.. they may be redeemed yet if the product lives up to the hype on their website.

I’m sorry to say it does not, the downhill slope of this review just continues from here.

So I picked up the package on my way to work this morning, when I got into work I opened it up and had a look, 6 grenades body’s, 6 little bags containing the components for the detonator, 6 small bags of bicarbonate and 2 Power Boost tubes (more on these later). The box is nicely presented, made of recycled brown cardboard and has some various images of the AHG-01 on the outside. There are also some instructions in English and Spanish which explain how to put the whole thing together and some diagrams to go with it. I put one together and left it on my desk for the day, unfortunately I dont think exploding grenades go down so well in an office environment, although I was very tempted :).

What mystical treasure lies within?

The grenades in their packaging.

Got home and tested them out, first you pour some water into the bottom of the grenade body and mix it with the citric acid, once you have the detonator assembly put together, pour in some bicarbonate and put the cap on, when it’s all put together, the grenade looks quite nice.

The assembled grenade.

So here we go, camera ready and recording, pull the pin out, give it a shake and throw it onto the patio outside. And hiss… splutter… gurgle… not quite the boom I expected. Turns out the detanoter wasn’t screwed tight enough and the CO2 was just escaping through the top. Their is an o-ring to seal it too, but obviously this wasn’t working.

Take 2: The detonators are re-usable so I cleaned it out and put some more bicarbonate in. Got a fresh grenade body and added some water. Here we go again, being sure to tighten the cap as tight as possible this time. Pull out the safety pin, press the detonator, shake, throw and………………..nothing. No boom, no hissing air escaping either. I waited a minute to see if the pressure would build and then maybe it might blow, it didn’t. I hesitantly approached the grenade and unscrewed the top, only to let out a gust of CO2. Whoops…

Take 2.5: At this stage I was getting worried I would run out of citric acid and decided to try using vinegar instead, this didn’t go so well either and I just ended up with more hissing and gurgling, only this time it smelled like vinegar too.

Take 3: Ok, this time it’ll work, this time it better work. Same procedure as above, shake it, throw it and…… nothing again! WTF?!?!? God Dammit, I walked away for a minute and wondered would it blow as I turned my back, no such luck. I walked over and picked it up, it was pretty solid with the pressure built up inside, but no boom, so I stepped back and threw it on the ground….. BOOM!!!!!! Finally!! Woohoo!

There’s actually quite a nice bang of these, especially for something that is just a very basic chemical reaction. The entire body of the grenade was blown to pieces and spread out over about a 10ft diameter, definitely not re-usable, add a few bb’s into the body and you could definately use these for room clearing.

But I still wasn’t happy, the video on the AHG website shows a AHG-01 being placed on the ground and it detonates seconds later, no throwing it hard against the ground, just wait and boom. I wanted to replicate this. I decided to try again.

Take 4: Guess what? It didn’t work again, the seal wasn’t tight enough, so I thought maybe the detonator had been damaged and decided to try yet again.

Take 5: Built a fresh detonator this time around, but yet again, I got plenty of white foam and hissing and gurgling, but no boom.

I decided I had wasted enough for today and put the grenades away. I now have 1 grenade body left with citric acid still in it, 4 body’s with no citric acid, 4 unassembled detonators, 1 broken detonator and 1 working detonator.

The one time they worked, I was actually quite surprised by the noise of the grenade going off and would have definately gotten a few kills had I put bb’s in and used them in a skirmish. The second time I tried it, when I released all the gas by mistake, it would have actually blown up had I thrown it on the ground, but like I said earlier, this does not replicate how they are shown in use, having to throw them against a hard surface may not work in the middle of a skirmish.

Unfortunately, I dont think the AHG-01 is going to revolutionize the airsoft grenade industry the way it’s creators envisioned. It’s a great idea in theory, and when it works it’s impressive, but the hit and miss nature of the product coupled with their rather bad customer service has left me rather dismayed. I really would have liked to see this product work since gas grenades are so expensive and explosives cannot be used in Ireland, but I think I’ll be putting my money into a gas grenade now instead.

Update: Managed to get replacement gears for this today in The Model Shop on Capel St, Dublin. The new gears seem to be much stronger, however they came with a rotor shaft already attached to one of the gears and so I replaced the rotor shaft too, this was a little bit shorter than the original and required a bit of tweaking to fit, along with a bit of epoxy putty to hold one of the rotors onto the shaft. Tested it earlier and seems to work, but I think I jumped the gun as the epoxy hadn’t quite dried and came unstuck when I crashed (still haven’t had a chance to practice my flying skills), I’ve re-fixed it and it should be completely dry by morning.

Ok, so this isn’t quite a hack, or directly airsoft related, but trust me, It’s all part of a larger plan.

I was browsing rsov last week, and ordered a few bits and pieces for myself and some friends,while I was there, I noticed the new “Radio Control Toys” section, now as a child, I was a big fan of radio control toys, my favourite has to be the Tyco Fast Traxx, absolutely loved that thing, unfortunately it broke several years ago and I never got around to fixing it, I must dig it out some day and see. So I had a look and there’s some RC helicopters… specifically an Apache-style one that caught my eye, so I figured, ah sure why not, throw it in, for £12.99 it’ll be a laugh.

Fast Traxx (mine was Yellow )

The order arrived today, and I quickly took to setting it up and having some fun, the battery that comes with it is a 7.4v Lithium polymer affair, which I was quite surprised at as I expected to have to raid the house for batteries when it arrived. The battery also comes with a charger (2-pin) which shows a red light while charging and a nice convenient green light when it’s done, a nice little touch considering most chargers that come with clone AEGs dont even have a way to tell you when the battery is charged, so this ensures you dont overcharge the battery and damage it.

Also in the package is the remote unit, for this I did have to scavenge for batteries, it takes 8 (yes, that’s right 8 ) AA/LR6 size batteries, thankfully there’s a rather large box of them lying around which I was able to take from. The controller itself is large enough considering it only has two control sticks and an on/off button, but sits comfortably enough in your hands all the same. The antenna for the control is a telescopic type which is packaged seperate in the box and screws into the top of the controller.

There’s a set of spare rotors in the package too, which I thought was a nice touch, the rotors themselves seem to be decent quality and not likely to break all that easily, but helicopters do tend to crash alot more in the hands of newbies.

There’s a manual in the box, which is about 20 pages or so, half the pages are in Chinese and the other half in English, with a reasonably good translation of the instructions, not too much engrish here. The instructions are reasonable, going through the steps of installing batteries and the usual malarkey, you’ll also find a full exploded diagram of how it all goes together and a separate sheet with a list of available parts.

A.C.M. radio controlled ‘Apachi’ style helicopter (6780 - camo)

Onto the main event, the helicopter itself is about 10 or 12 inches long, it has two rotors on the top and a stabilizing weight bar. The entire thing is made out of a reasonably soft plastic which you can flex easily with your hand, this helps during what will likely be many crash landings it will experience. Out of the box, the rotors which are installed onto the helicopter are not secured, you must align them so that they are straight and tighten a screw in each one, again, another nicety here is the inclusion of a mini screwdriver to do this job with. This doesnt really take long, at first I was trying to be insanely accurate about the rotors, but I later discovered that once they are reasonably straight, you should be fine. If you crash into anything while flying, the rotors will move and you’ll need to straighten them out again before flying.

By the time I finished finding that big ol’ box of batteries and straightening the rotors out,I figured the battery probably had a semi-decent charge in it. I placed it on the floor of my living room, and brought the throttle up to a nice idle speed, there’s a fair bit of noise off the motors and the amount of air movement it generates is actually quite impressive. There are two small motors inside which each drive one of the two rotors. So I ramped up the speed a bit more and could see it wanting to move, at this stage it’s starting to move a little bit on the ground, so I gave it a bit more throttle and up she went, then down, then up again, then down again, and finally a not-so-graceful landing back onto the floor. Once the heli is up, it’s fairly tricky to get it to hover, so far I’ve crash-landed it about a dozen times or so, this will take some time to get used to I’d imagine. One thing I’ve noticed is that it tends to fly backwards a bit, and the controls only allow for left/right rotation, so not sure how to effectively get it to move around the way I want it yet. I spent a bit of time playing with it and even tried it outdoors. In today’s reasonably mild and not very windy weather, it held up fine, aside from a minor run-in with my garden fence in which the (albeit non-working) tail rotor broke off, a quick dab of super glue and this was remedied however.

At the moment I’ve yet to master the controls, but I’m sure with a few hours practice I could probably get it to hover nicely and have some form of control over it. Unfortunately, I didn’t get those few hours off practice as I think a couple of my crash landings may have misaligned some gears, the two motors mentioned earlier are connected to the rotor shafts by two gears, one of these gears, which is attached to the bottom of the two rotors, no longer has any teeth, it seems that at some pointed the gears became misaligned and stripped all the teeth off.

I’ve taken the working gear out of the heli and hope to pick up a replacement part tomorrow in Maplin, Peats or a Model shop. Hopefully replacement parts shouldn’t cost me more than about €5, if they do, I probably wont bother replacing them since it didn’t really cost me that much in the first place. Not sure what happened with the gears but I would still say these are definitely worth picking up, however try not to crash them too much.

ps. I’ll post a few pictures up later on this evening, for now, I’m back to studying for my finals.

Welcome, this is airsofthacks.com, here I will be posting about the various modifications, upgrades and general hacks performed on my airsoft toys and anything else semi-airsoft related that I get up to. Feel free to leave a comment if you have any suggestions or even just to say hello.

At the moment, I’m finishing off my final year exams in college where I’m studying Computer Science, but once they’re done, Ill be starting work on some mods and such that I have in mind.

First up will be a complete modification and overhaul of a Cyma Glock 18c (after I review it of course) and then after that I should have some interesting things to play around with.