Leaderboard

Double Eagle B&T ACP 556 let’s start off with a little real steel history about the B&T APC. Brugger and Thomet from Switzerland also known as B&T produced the first Advanced Police Carbine (APC) in 9mm in 2011 followed shortly by other small arms calibre’s in .40 S&W, 10mm auto and .45 ACP. They have been awarded a contract with the US Army to provide the ACP9K for a reported $2.6 million dollars. Around 2019 B&T started to sell the ACP556 which is a 5.56mm version of the smaller 9mm ACP. The ACP556 can be bought with 4 different styled stocks and a couple of different barrel lengths. All use standard Stanag 5.56mm magazines and can be fitted with various rail accessories on the picatinny rails covering the gun. Moving on to the Airsoft version produced by Double Eagle and licensed from B&T we have a pretty accurate AEG with full trades. The features include a Falcon gearbox with built in mosfet (the same gearbox in their DE904 range which I reviewed a while back), 6.04mm tightbore barrel, quick change spring and comes with the PDW style retractable stock. The AEG is full metal apart from the polymer lower, stock butt pad and the side mounted picatinny rails on the front sides of the AEG. Most of the metal seems to be aluminium and die cast zinc. With an empty magazine attached the AEG weighs about 2.9kg (6.4lbs) so not heavy weight or lightweight either. I’ll talk about the box that the ACP is shipped in first before moving on to the actual AEG. The box is quite a nice little addition. It’s made from polystyrene and is foam lined. Inside the box you actually get a couple of handles to fit to the outside and it turns into quite a nice little carry case. It’s very light and unlikely to survive getting run over by a tank but I’d like to see other manufacturers doing something similar. The box ever has 4 catches to keep the box closed and these work well. Inside the box you will find the AEG, a copy of the B&T magazine and in this case a 180bb midcap. You will also find some paperwork telling you how to program the mosfet, attached the handles to the case and an exploded diagram of all the parts of the AEG. Also inside the box is the handles for the box plus a screwdriver to use to fit them, a deans to mini-tamiya converter, a spare deans for your battery and an Allen key. Let’s not forget the cleaning rod. Lets move on to the AEG itself. It has no creaks, wobbles or loose bits but lets start from the muzzle and work back. The flash hider is zinc cast and attached to the aluminium barrel with a -14mm thread and held in place with a grub screw that needs a 1.5mm allen key to remove. Once removed you can see that the inner barrel extends to the end of the outer barrel. The fake gas plug rotates 90 degrees’, just like the real thing if you were running a suppressor and if you rotate it 180 degree’s it can be removed from the gun. This serves no real purpose and I think DE missed a trick here as they could have had a 4.5mm Allen key in the end of the rod to remove the cap for the quick-change spring. The upper receiver is full metal and has picatinny rails along the whole top length, the whole lower portion before it meets the lower receiver, and the sides have plastic picatinny rails attached. The Iron sights are a copy of the B&T sights and move in elevation on the front and windage on the real as per the real thing. The rear also has 2 apertures for day/low light shooting The charging handle or cocking handle, whatever you prefer to call it, is swappable from left to right side. When pulled back the bolt locks in place to allow the rotary hop wheel to be adjusted and can be released by the ambi bolt lock. The magazine release and fire selector controls are also ambi. The fire selector controls have nice solid click to them when moved and the shape reminds me of the G36 fire controls. The upper and lower receiver have authentic markings, just like the real thing and there seems to be a serial number printed on the lower handguard but I’m not sure if this is unique. The lower receiver is solid and comfortable to hold and all the controls are within finger or thumb control. The pistol grip houses the motor and has a brass adjustment screw in the bottom if you feel the need to adjust the motor height. Moving to the back of the AEG we have the sliding stock and battery storage. The sliding stock is one of the 4 styles that can come with the real ACP556 and works very well. There is very little wobble when fully extended and can be pulled out with one hand and locked into 1 of the 3 available positions. The battery compartment is a nice touch. You press a lever on the back of the receiver and the cover flips up to reveal the battery compartment and the quick-change spring location. Inside is a deans connector and I have fitted a 11.1v Lipo inside without issues. The quick change spring is covered by a cap that needs to be removed using a 4.5mm Allen key and this allows the bearing spring guide to be removed using a flat headed screwdriver. Once removed you can swap out the spring for your desired FPS. Moving onto using the AEG I’ll mention first that mine is firing hot. I’ve got a M90, M95 and M100 winging their way to me now so that I can find the best spring to get it firing sub 350 FPS. I’m a bit of a fan-boy for the Falcon gearbox and this AEG is no exception. It fires really nice with a 11.1V Lipo and it has the same programmable settings which I raved about in the DE904 review. If you missed that review then out the box it has 3 trigger pull settings, variable burst settings (1 to 5 rounds or full auto) and has a Binary trigger. A binary trigger is when you pull the trigger backwards it fires and when you release the trigger it fires again. You don’t need any fancy boxes or app’s to set it up as it’s all done by the trigger. I’ve put a few magazines through the AEG now (more on magazines in a sec) and it hasn’t missed a beat. If you have used the DE904 then it’s basically one of those but in a different shell. I’m pretty happy with it to be honest and I’ll test out the range and accuracy with weekend. The Hop unit seems to be a plastic copy of the Pro-Win CNC hop up and works well. The hop rubber seems to be a cut down version so if you want to replace it you will need to remove some of the replacement to fit properly inside the hop unit. The inner barrel is 318mm long, with a 6.04mm inner diameter and has a conical cut in the last 10/15 mm of the sharp end of the barrel. I haven’t decided if I’m going to replace the hop rubber and inner barrel and this weekend I’ll see if they need to be swapped out. Okay, time to move on to the one negative I could find on this AEG. It’s not massive but needs to be mentioned. I’ve tried 11 different magazine makes/types and 8 work flawlessly, 1 takes a bit of fiddling to seat correctly but then works and 2 of them don’t stay in the magwell. The 2 that don’t work are midcaps. One is a PMAG with a capacity of around 85 and the other is a Midcap with a capacity of 120 rounds. Other midcaps fit and work perfectly. Strangly, I have a 85 midcap which looks exactly like the 120 midcap and it works and fits fine unlike the 120 version. I need to do a bit of measuring to figure it out, but I think it’s to do with the hop unit nozzle pushing down on the magazine and stopping the mag catch from engaging. For me, it’s not an issue as I have plenty of magazines that work in the AEG but you need to consider this if you think about buying one as you might need to buy some more magazines if the ones you have don’t work. I’ll add some more info to this review once I’ve used it in anger this weekend. Overall I’m happy with this AEG and it stands out from the M4 crowd.

Pencott Wildwood and MTW setup works well. I got some WW bits coming to finish the loadout.

Got new mask and a hat but rest of my order got messed up So still waiting for some pouches in pencott.

Mine's arrived this morning. I haven't yet sorted a battery (as I have no tamiya types), but initial fit and finish is as good as everyone says. Feels solid and well balanced. Very minor wobble with the stock extended, but that's coming from the arms, not the body and there's no way of avoiding that I don't think. Texturing on the lower receiver and fire selector is subtle but so much better than the old version. Fire selector is beautifully positive and trigger travel is fairly short and has reasonable spring resistance when pulling. The front grip is slightly rougher than a real one I have here and the seam line on the bottom is more noticable, but it doesn't feel cheap and there's not flex in it, so there's no urgent rush to replace it. Although the real grip fits, it doesn't fit in the same way and sits a little off (bit high at the rear). I'll try and get pictures later. It's still usable and I don't think it's going anywhere, but it's not quite as locked in as the Marui one. This makes sense when you look at the way they connect - the "hook" inside the foregrip is a different shape for both and it's sort of only partially hooking on with the real one. AEG stocks don't fit, the NGRS body is slightly wider than the old spec. Annoyingly my guarder MP5 suppressor also doesn't fit. I suspect there's just millimetres in it, but there we go. I shall investigate further and see if that can be sorted. The low profile rail mount I've got does seem to fit okay though, contrary to some other people's experience. Might be the mounting method, or it might be I just haven't noticed it's skewed yet...

32 Battalion chest rig, used in Angola. Nylon DPM and thic boi shoulder pads. Much more comfy than the standard pat83. Most examples are black and sticky from the weatherproofing, got lucky with this one.

Double Eagle B&T ACP556 PDW. newest model from DE using the Falcon gearbox. I'll probably do a review soon.

small update: Fitted a Guarder M90 spring gives 310 FPS ASG SP95 give a FPS of 330 Guarder M100 takes the FPS up to 370 Sticking with the ASG for a run-out this weekend. I need to try and run some heavier weight BB's through it to see what it can and can't hop.

I tried to buy this and politely asked what his best price was, highlighting that the new retail was around the same…. The response was a rant that he didn’t buy these to lose money on ….and why should he reduce the price when it’s still brand new….

@GoopGoop I understand what you mean, however the DE M904R from Taiwan Gun if bought directly would be... £98 for the rifle. Approx £15 for the shipping. Approx £20 for the VAT. Handling charges from UPS of say maybe £30. ... so we'd be talking approx. £163 in total vs £170. Now, if Patrol Base themselves don't slap on any outlandish charges of their own the difference is not that great, plus you get the comfort of knowing that the Home Office Border Force hopefully won't sit on the delivery for ever and UPS won't leave it in a warehouse for months. I suppose until we hear from someone who's used the Patrol Base service we don't know for certain the outcome (and if by mid-October 2021 Patrol Base themselves don't get a re-stock of DE rifles I'll be asking them their exact costs for at least 2x DE M904E's).

My current project.

This looks compelling at first glance, however, Patrol Base are slapping their classic extortionate mark up on the products. For example, on their new TG x PB featured product page: Double Eagle M904R via Taiwan Gun = £98 Double Eagle M904R via Patrol Base = £170 PB is x1.75 more expensive in this example, a bunch of other products i cross referenced where the same if not worse. Most of us order from TG over PB for 3 main reasons: TG is drastically cheaper PB never has items in stock TG has far greater selection Of the 12 TG x PB featured products on their site (maybe even the only 12 items in this new offering, i dont see more?), only 1 is in stock. So in all, this looked great at first glance, but sadly it means pretty much nothing for us.

Looks really nice. It's refreshing to have something new on the market that isn't an M4. The only tiny critism is the markings on the mock bolt. I'm not sure what 'Col 5.56' is supposed to mean, but it should be 'Cal 5.56' But that's me being super anal.

£230 RIF. Two tone. Self described as badly painted black. Add some random Nuprol and 8Fields vendor trash. No warranty or even a claim that it actually functions. Worth £400 all day long, mate. (Plus shipping and fees, I have no doubt)

It's almost complete. I need to swap the wilcox for a black one, dremel the BCM gunfighter foregrip to fit on the rail properly (PMM rails), figure out how to get a battery in that stock, get a better torch, and modlite buttons for the torch/dbal. Total cost on this gun so far is around £3k With a warhead motor and good shimming it's quite tap tap tappy.

Yet another outstanding review good sir ! I freely admit I’m absolutely enamoured of my 904 especially as I bought it on a whim ! and first gameday it had i basically used it the entire day I was that impressed with it , mine was also a tad ‘fruity’ out of the box but after lopping a couple of coils off and re-shaping the cut end of the spring it’s doing a very satisfactory 342-45fps . Have to say I’m on the fence about the look of this one but if they carry on using the ‘Falcon’ system in their new guns I definitely would be happy to buy some more of them .

Collecting for quite a while now, still happy as a child, when I get my hands on something rare - in this case, the happyness is accompanied by something like awe, as it doesn't get much rarer than this Tanaka Colt SAA Casyopea (which already is rare as hell in and of itself, as these were banned in Japan together with their Casyopea counterpart, the S&W M500) with a Prime CNC Brass Kit (possibly the only brass kit for Casyopea in existence, either a mod of a Pegasus brass kit, or Prime has begun to build one of these, but stopped when the Casyopeas were banned in Japan). The loading breach is black, as are the hammer and the trigger. Might be, that Prime stopped production midway... or maybe a modder lost interest to go full monty... So this might be a real one-off, in this configuration possibly the only one of its kind. Build quality is extremely high, of course, and it has a very nice, authentic weight of 1.030g. The Casyopea shells are a lot of fun. Really pretty enthusiastic about this one ?

That looks Awesome !

Done that to mine. So I'm looking forward to seeing yours.

Played at a new site yesterday. It started off not so great, my h8r decided it doesn't want to keep the CO2 in anymore and prefers to spew it all out of the valve immediately leaving me without a sidearm (not the end of the world but sad as it was it's second time out and I've just sorted a holster for it), we started with a bizarre escort mission where one of your team couldn't die but had to sit in a wheelbarrow and be taken up a road, teams were really unbalanced with us having lots of rentals and the other side a lot of guys with snipers/dmrs and ghillie suits ended walking to safezone with my mate's brand new g3 that decided to just stop working. Came back out to defend and the guy in the barrow for their side decided to full auto me in the face under 10m with an ARP9, I have to admit I was starting to think an early home and spend the afternoon relaxing with a beer at this point. He also had to have his riot shield taken off of him as it made it near impossible to take out the guy pushing the barrow. they eventually won and there was a lot of grumbling from our side about sportsmanship and the fact that they were wiping the floor with us. next game went a little better ARP9 guy was off sulking (his gun broke and he wasn't allowed his riot shield). Again teams were unbalanced but as they were defending on limited lives we were slowly cracking through them so it felt a little better and not just like being a target on a range. Lunch came and went and ARP9guy got called a few choice words (not by me) when he declared that "I don't aim, I just spray people" I didn't see him after that point he appeared to pack up and leave as he wasn't at his table after the next game. Afternoon games were both pushback and teams had been mixed up leading to better balance, both games were intense and highly fun to play. we started on the attack and clear communication and tactics pushed us through their defence with our snipers able to one counter-snipe but two provide cover so that we could push up and get in their faces, my squad led a huge flank on the final objective meaning the defenders had to fight on four fronts and quickly folded. Second game we managed to hold them off for a decent amount of time picking off the ones that got into range and calling targets for our boys with longer range, they slowly picked us off one by one but you could tell we were tiring them out, as the attacks got slower and the amount of full auto going up, second objective we setup around the castle with sparse defenders inside the castle, they had done a lot of flanking on the first objective so we expected attacks from multiple angles and that's what we ended up with they never got behind us but they hit us from 3 sides but they struggled to gain ground and eventually their attacks petered out with a lack of smoke and suppression they seemed to give up the assault as I assume they were also running low on ammo leading to the marshals to call it early we went back and packed away the atmosphere was better in the afternoon and with people bantering more. My new Specna Arms 416 performed beautifully with a lot more range and accuracy than I expected from an out of the box gun and overall my squad had a lot of fun despite being covered in bramble cuts, we're getting our gear together and improving my shopping list now consists of more mags, fixing my pistol and a scope so I can see my targets a little better

Mine is off having full trades engraved at the moment, can't wait to get it back !

Had another fantastic day at Worthing yesterday. The m21 still performs amazingly, and the camo and concealment fieldcraft is still working better than most full ghillie snipers. Had a great game where me and my friend (who actually introduced me to airsoft when we were 14 and still at school) decided to hold a flank away from our base and came under fire. Everyone else who came with us got shot and had to head back to respawn, so it was just us, a pair of snipers, against the world. No ghillies needed, just solid camo and concealment practices and teamwork. He held the front with his VSR, while I covered his flank with my m21 (as I had no MED so anyone who got too close to him I could generally hit out). The other two guys we were on comms with came up after a while and we held the flank for the whole game, with only one of us getting hit and it was to friendly fire since even our team didn't know we were there. Speaking of comms, we were all testing our new earmors, since 3 of us are heading to ai500 and ear protection inside is advised, and I love them. I can hear absolutely everything around me, while shielding me from loud bangs that would damage my hearing and the comms setup itself is lovely and super clear when it comes through. The PTT is super solid to clip onto my rig and then find with minimal movement when I'm lying prone. Totally worth the £90 or so. Also managed to test and set the hop and zero the scope for my spring VSR after setting it to 1.1J last week, since I was getting annoyed at the 2.3J setup. It was firing past 60m easily, and I could hit the 60m target literally 10/10 times, so I'm incredibly pleased. 1.1J means no MED, and reaching out to that distance with that accuracy is exactly what I wanted. All in all, the day was a complete success and it was a great Sunday!

An extremely gratuitous few purchases, but ones I’m over the moon with: Ferro Concepts FCPCv5 Ferro Concepts Assault Cummerbund Ferro Concepts Strap Socks (I reckon these have been updated with a bit more padding than the last set I had, big fan) Ferro Concepts TEAR Front Panel AXL Advanced Admin Zipper Esstac KYWI 5.56 Full Size Spiritus Systems Small GP Pouch Trident Gear Training Plates - Swimmer Cut Extremely comfortable, breathes nicely, the cummerbund is superb and the front panel might be my favourite looking one to date alongside taking mags very nicely without feeling like I need to attach the bungees.

Several test prints later, and a few changes were made. The screw hole has been enlarged for the bolt to pass clean through the base, and halfway into the shell. This makes it flush inside the assembly and actually serves as a pin between all 4 parts. I have also decreased the outer sides of the Inner parts by .02" all around (.5mm), as it would require a pneumatic press to actually get the two inner halves into the shell. Just the cm or so I shoved them together to test the fitment took a hammer to remove. So far I have 2 of the latest bases done, a possible "production" print of the shell done (I have three options to print it: First, I can do it with the top horizontal, and support material as a wedge. This is what I did for the shell I have printed. It worked, but did have some errors along the base and had to be sanded flat. Testing with the inner parts after theyre done will determine if this is a problem. Its also the longest print - at 80% speed it takes a whopping 14 hours: Second is to print it with no supports at the bottom, leaving the top as a slant. This has the plus of ensuring a flat base, but gives a layered top: Third is to print on its side. This is the fastest method at only 8 hours and change at 100% (approx 12 hours at 80%), but does use the most material and cost the most. To be fair its about 3 Euros per shell vs the 2.70 Euros or so if printed in either vertical orientation, so not exactly an important difference. Cleaning all that support material out is gonna be a PITA though, and itll leave the face-down side a different texture due to my textured print bed. ), and I am working on printing the two inner halves now. Heres what it looks like mostly assembled, still missing the two inner halves:

must say i am going for the mags in the pocket option

Got another 1911 Also some cheap wood grips. I was going to get the MEU but then I saw the night warrior version ?

This is my planned loadout for Sunday. Nice and simple, Arktis chest rig with my magazines, Safariland for the Glock. Will be the first run out of my NGRS Mk18 too! Only things I might add are some belt mounted pistol pouches and an LBX sling if it arrives in time.

This is like a reenactment of the world's longest dick measuring contest, with the usual spats over top-or-bottom, shaft-vs-balls. Incidentally, none of these rules/guidelines appear to be listed on the Guinness site. https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/96291-longest-airsoft-target-shot

to be honest I'm not going to chase UPS, as I have a account with them for work. If they get around to sending an invoice then I'll pay but I don't think that will happen as the time spent by UPS sorting it all out will outway the actual amount. I spoke to Pawel from TWG quite a bit during thr lost/delayed parcel saga and he is quite happy as he got a full refund. Just to recap on the whole thing: Taiwangun were really good Parcel force were good but slow (staff shortages are pretty well documented in Parcel Force in the media currently) UPS were terrible. UPS support wasn't very helpful and continued to promise updates that they never delivered. Am I going to chase UPS just to give them money when I used up all my patience chasing them to sort out my delivery. well no is the simple answer.

Recently picked up a E&L AKS-74un MOD C, pretty pretty gun

Couple of pics of myself from the Stirling game this weekend at Catterick

The honourable thing to do would be send the payment back to TG. Its situations like this that convince them not to sell to UK anymore...

New addition

The family

Someone with a camera that doesn't suck took a picture today. Yes, the tacticool rail system is pointless because I not only don't mount anything on it, but I also cover it in rifle ghillie, but style > substance! Was my first day using it with the new HPA setup and oooooooooh boy was it stupidly good.

Lunberg!!! I f**king love that movie, not seen it for years, need to go watch

That's the bit that really winds me up, that we get spit-roasted with the VAT (and duty) at the point of import, and for the fee to calculate and pay it. If TG (and other retailers) charged the State mugging at the point of sale, then we could at least avoid UPS going in dry as well. And the downside to Patrol Base being able to get stock in this way is that if they're the only UK retailer to be able to get stock, then they can charge pretty much whatever they want. I'd prefer to see some competition - hopefully someone else will partner up with GunFire, or step up and start getting large enough orders direct from the Orient to start bringing their prices down towards TG/GF levels. But now we're in the sunlit upland of dreams.