Due to a recent bug in Wordpress and my real life commitments preventing me from fixing the problem, I had to take the site offline for the last week or so.
It’s back up and running now with a default Wordpress install, some images may be missing, but I will repair these over the next few days and get a nicer looking theme up.
I should also have a complete relaunch of the site coming in next couple of months.
This is the other military computer I picked up at War and Peace that I mentioned recently.
It’s been modified with a modern 7″ digital photo frame installed into it capable of doing photo slide shows, video and mp3. It also has a built in battery so doesnt even need to be plugged into mains.
It’s currently about 50% complete with the final steps being to finish moving the SD Card reader (currently using USB only), re-wire the unit so that mains or battery power can be used (mains only currently) and building a new IR unit which will take input directly from the original hardware keys.
It is working enough for now to display images and videos from USB and can be controlled using the original remote control and will be on display at the Salute show this weekend on the airsoft information stand.
Bates military computer with photo frame modification
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;
Active Braking Mosfet (RRP €45)
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.
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:
| P90/0.2g | P90/0.25g |
| 0.96 | 0.96 |
| 0.96 | 0.96 |
| 0.97 | 0.97 |
| 0.95 | 0.96 |
| 0.96 | 0.97 |
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:
| G18/0.2g | G18/0.25g |
| 0.85 | 0.95 |
| 0.85 | 0.93 |
| 0.87 | 0.91 |
| 0.88 | 0.94 |
| 0.89 | 0.93 |
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:
| G17/0.2g | G17/0.25g |
| 0.66 | 0.72 |
| 0.64 | 0.73 |
| 0.66 | 0.71 |
| 0.65 | 0.69 |
| 0.64 | 0.72 |
And the KSC Glock 19:
| G19/0.2g | G19/0.25g |
| 0.78 | 0.87 |
| 0.8 | 0.89 |
| 0.8 | 0.87 |
| 0.81 | 0.85 |
| 0.77 | 0.83 |
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.
| G18AEP/0.2g | G18AEP/0.25g |
| 0.32 | 0.31 |
| 0.33 | 0.29 |
| 0.33 | 0.3 |
| 0.32 | 0.3 |
| 0.32 | 0.31 |
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.
I recently had the opportunity to strip and upgrade a TM Sig 552 belonging to a fellow airsofter so i decided to take some pictures while i was at it and post them here with his kind permission.
Firstly, to start off here is the Sig 552 itself with the top part of the foregrip removed, and also the battery tray has been removed:
Remove the motor plate from the bottom of the grip by unscrewing the two screws either side, you can leave the allen key in the middle alone, this is the motor adjustment plate and unless your motor isn’t meshing correctly with the bevel gear, doesnt need to be touched.
Once that’s done, unhook the wires from the motor itself and remove the motor, watch out for the small metal disc on the bottom of the motor which will no doubt fall off and can sometimes stick to the side of the motor due to magnetism
next, have a look into the grip and you can see two screws which hold the grip onto the gearbox (brass here, but some aegs they are painted black and very hard to see)
Note the two motor wires go through the same hole in the grip
Fold the stock and remove the screw at the top pictured here
Then remove the two screws on either side of the body just behind the selector switch
the entire stock can then be slid straight off
On the underside of the selector switches is a small allen head grub screw, unscrew these halfway (so you dont lose them) and remove the selectors
underneath the selector is another piece which attaches to the selector gear assembly on the gearbox, unscrew these and lift them off, note that the one on the left hand side has a small spring and plastic piece which click into place when you turn the selector, be careful not to lose these. Also the one on the right hand side has a longer screw
Now remove the screw inside the mag well
And the two screws on either side (at this point you should have removed the bottom half of the foregrip too)
Next remove the screw just forward of the mag well
at this point you should be able to lift the upper half of the body forward and up away from the bottom half, note that it will be necessary also to remove the cable ties holding the fuse holder in place
The gearbox can now be lifted out of the rest of the body
note the position of the gears outside the gearbox which are controlled by the selector switch
right side
and left side
The larger of the gears will simply lift straight out, the small one on either side requires a screw to be removed on the left side and then slides out
Once you remove the gears on both sides, the black plastic piece underneath needs to be remove on the right hand side, simply pull it slightly down towards the trigger and it will unclip, underneath this there is also a small metal piece which sits partially inside the gearbox to block the trigger, unfortunately i havent got a photo of it, but you’ll know it when you see it
This is the positioning of the selector plate and other components, you dont need to remove anything here, this is just for reference
Inside the gearbox with all the original parts installed
Systema High Speed gears, 1 Joule spring and metal bushings installed, also gears were re-shimmed
Now just stick everything back together in reverse order 
The 9.6v custom battery being test fitted without the top half of the foregrip, note the position of the connector and the orientation of the battery with particular reference to the side which only has 2 cells
When the battery is correctly position as above, the only modification that needs to be made to the inside of the foregrip is to dremel away a little bit of the protruding area of one of the nuts/screws that hold the side rail on
and your done, this particular AEG now runs at a nice 19-20 rounds per second and has a nice crisp trigger response, havent had the opportunity to chrono it yet but with a systema 1J spring i would expect in the region of 300-300