Aug 20

Written by:
8/20/2003 10:05 AM 

First Impressions

After receiving this replica from Airsoft Atlanta ($9.99) we immediately noticed that is was almost identical to the gas blow back edition. The frame and slide are both made of plastic and seem fairly tough. Unlike some of the other HFC pistols, this replica has many of the parts made out light duty plastic. To belay the claim that this replica is one of their heavyweight editions, it felt more like a replica you might find in the toy isle at you local department store. It gave us the impression of being shoddily built right from the start. When we first cocked it to fire a dry shot, it felt weak and sounded almost sickly when the trigger was pulled. Some of the parts on the exterior of the replica were metal, like the barrel shroud, guide rod, trigger, hammer, and magazine release button. Though the amount of metal still didn't help the overall replica's feel, it did help a bit with the weight. Right at the start we were not very impressed with this piece at all.

 

 

Assembly

The replica came from Airsoft Atlanta already assembled (as do most pistols) so it was only a question of the field strip capability. When it came down to that we found that this replica was not even remotely designed to be disassembled. The slide release switch was removed and turned out to be nothing more than a small plastic rod holding the replica together. There were no screws or lockable mechanisms to keep the pin in place other than luck, habit, and a small amount of friction. During subsequent tests the pin became loose and had to be touched up with some glue to keep it in place. This is not a very easy safe replica to strip in the field.

  

 

Appearance

The basic appearance of this pistol was of a Sig Saur P229. The basic look was correct and seemed to match in most details. The safety actually acts as a hammer drop as does the real one. The replica can then be fired while in a manner similar to a normal double action replica. When is comes to weight, it was quite inadequate for being a "heavyweight".

 

  

Loading

The loading process was straightforward and simple. The magazine has a small hole near the bottom that allows rapid loading while in the field. A small funnel was used to make the process even faster. The rounds loaded quickly and smoothly from the magazine, and the firing rate could be kept up to a decent speed without a jam.

 

Firing Tests

The replica fit snuggly into the vice and fired the first few rounds (coated with oil) with no problems or jams. The first magazine was loaded and fired through the chronograph with no reading. We first thought that the chronograph was just not set up properly, we found out later that it was just that this replica just fired at such a slow rate that it would not even come up on the unit at all. The accuracy suffered just as badly due to the lack of round speed. The tightest grouping we could get was about 6-8" at 15'. So, sadly this replica rated horribly on our scale.

  

Overall

The only thing we could find good about his replica was the usefulness of the plastic body to fix one of our GBB HFC pistols since the bodies are identical. Other than that the price was low, but not nearly low enough to actually make up for this replicas shortcomings in FPS and accuracy. If you need parts for another replica then this is a good buy, otherwise this is nothing more than a showpiece.