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

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

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.

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.

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.

In the meantime, here’s a pretty picture of a pistol I put together today:

You can check it out on the IAA website at http://www.irishairsoft.ie/map/

No IAA membership or registration is requried to post your location.

So inspired by a thread by vtec over on the boards.ie Airsoft forum today, I decided to do a bit of research about various airsoft gasses.

This is what I found:

There are 4 types of gas you can use in an airsoft gun.

HFC134a/Duster gas: Known as duster gas because you can commonly find it in computer stores to be used for blowing dust out of computers and other electronics without damaging the components. A relatively low-powered gas which is mainly used in Japanese airsoft guns.

Green Gas/Propane: As alot of people know by now, Green gas is basically propane without the smell and with some lubricant added, buying a propane adapter from airsoft-innovations.com allows you to use propane cans bought from your nearest hardware store instead. Most gas guns will easily take this gas with no problems.

HFC 22/Red gas: A very difficult gas to find, the only retailer I could find with it in stock that I know ships to Ireland is RedWolfAirsoft, at $20 for a 2000ml can, it’s not too bad a price, but like all gasses it can only be shipped by surface mail. Red gas is significantly more powerful than green gas and should only be used in properly upgraded guns which can handle it, using it in guns only designed for green gas or duster/hfc 134a will do damage to the gun and could be dangerous.

CO2: It’s a whole different ball game really, co2 cannot be used unregulated and can normally be found in small little 12g canisters but requires guns designed specifically for use with co2 gas.

There is also rumoured to be a “Black Gas” but I can’t find any definitive information on this and alot of information suggests that it is merely a name for CO2 as it is stored in black canisters.

While I was searching around, I found some excellent information from airsoftcanada.com, in particular these two diagrams below showing the composition and pressures of the various gasses:

And secondly, a graph of Red Gas, Green Gas and HFC134a pressures at different temperatures:

(Click the images above for a bigger version)

Pretty soon after, I got my hands on a Scott Paintball Mask, this was a great mask, nice big mouth guard which was not too close so as to restrict your breathing and also extended back to protect your ears. Eye protection was provided by the in-built goggles which have thermal lenses which have never fogged on me and the mask has a nice peak to provide a little bit of protection from the sunlight. It’s a truly great mask however it has one major flaw, it’s big and black, many times people were able to spot me hiding in a bush merely by the mask, I needed something smaller.

While on holiday during the summer, my prescription sunglasses broke, so I bought a pair of SH+ RG4200 sport glasses with the intention of using them for airsofting when I got home, they came in a nice case with a couple of pairs of spare lenses (Clear, Amber and Grey) and a head strap, the head strap unfortunately broke during my first skirmish but I continued to use the glasses as they stayed in place fairly well without it.

Recently though I wanted to get a pair of glasses with a foam backing due to a certain site owner making me paranoid about the tiniest little gap around my glasses and the possibility of that gap enlarging in awkward positions, a very slim possibility of being in the wrong place at the wrong time but I’d rather buy a new pair of glasses than get hit in the eye.

So just last week, user JonAnderton on the boards.ie Airsoft forum posted a pair of brand new, never used Guarder C4 glasses for sale, I snapped them up straight away for €25, they can also be bought from ehobbyasia.com for the same price. I got them a day or two later and my first impression was good. The glasses come in a soft neoprene type carry case which contains the following: Frames, Blue, Grey, Amber and Clear lenses (all anti-fog), soft drawstring bag, foam frame backing and headstrap (a cleaning cloth would have been a very nice touch, but can’t complain).

The glasses on their own sit quite comfortably on your face with or without the foam backing, which simply pops in and out. The lenses similarly are very easy to change, just pull the frames slightly away and pop the lense out. Without the foam backing, there is only a small gap around the frames, with the foam backing, even less, however for absolute security, it’s best to attach the head strap.

To attach the head strap, the arms of the glasses unclip via a small button on the side of the frame and the head strap clips in, this provides a very secure fixing for the headstrap and turns the glasses into goggles. With the headstrap in place, you can adjust it by a buckle on the back which is easily reached while wearing them if you find they are a little too tight or loose during a skirmish.

I wore these at a skirmish all day yesterday for the first time, and they did not fog once on a very rainy day. They are comfortable enough to wear for long periods of time with the head strap and foam backing in place, so much so, that I even found myself leaving the glasses on while in the safe zone between games, it just never occured to me to take them off.

Just as an extra re-assurance to myself, I tested these glasses by firing at them at close range, a single shot at point blank range left a bit of a mark on the lense with some possible slight deformation lines around the point of impact.

Close-up of the impact point.

A burst at 15ft left a good few marks across the lens, not as bad as the single shot, but still enough to leave a bit of residue on the lense and a slight mark, however the mark cannot be seen while wearing the glasses.

Burst shot close-up.

The short burst also popped one of the lenses out of the frames, so it is very important to ensure the lenses are secured properly when changing them out.

All in all, these are very good glasses/goggles, the only thing I could fault them on is the fact that you they do not have a prescription lense insert, however there are other options available if you require these and I am comfortable playing without prescription lenses.

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