BigAl

Think yourself lucky I bought one of a guy called Bob Mould about fifteen years ago  It never arrived  and he vanished.

This AEG is loosely based on the HK 416A5 model and I go into details further down this review listing the things not quite right with it to make it a proper looking 416A5.
 
First up is the company Double Bell. Double Bell used to just be called “Bell” and I did a review on one of their AK47’s about 15 years ago (it was crap) so I think 15 years is long enough to revisit them and see what they are doing now.
The new name “Double Bell” came about when they bought the Dboys factory and toolings and started pushing out Dboys M4’s but have since up’d their game and are now making their own versions of weapons in AEG form.
They also produce about 300 different Glock pistols in different styles and I have a G17L which runs like a train and was cheap to boot so I’m hoping for good things from this AEG.
 
Full disclosure – I don’t know anyone form Bell or Double Bell and bought this AEG from Taiwangun for £197 delivered to my door.
 


 
I’d normally start with an unboxing picture but since it came in a plain brown cardboard box there didn’t seem to be any point.
Inside the box you get the full metal AEG, a Hi-cap magazine and a little Z shaped square key to wind up the magazine as the Hicap doesn’t have the traditional thumb wheel on the bottom to load the magazine. The only other thing in my box was a sheet from Taiwangun telling me it had been tested and 10 shots recorded with a FPS too high for all UK sites (420 approx with hop off). First thing I will do is change the spring to bring the FPS down to 340ish.
Going back to the magazine some people might like the realism of having a hicap without the thumb wheel poking out the bottom but I think I’ll end up loosing the Z key used to wind it so I’ll throw it into my spares box and use some other midcaps I have floating around. The Magazine doesn’t have any markings and the black paint seems thin. The Magazine is based on the Gen 1 Aluminium style magazine fist introduced with the HK 416.

 
Let’s talk about the HK416A5 and how this replica compares to the real thing.


 
Let’s start from the back and work forward.
The Stock – The AEG has a nice copy of the real thing and the back plate comes off allowing a battery to be fitted to the Mini Tamiya connector inside the stock tube. I can fit a 11.1V 1300Mah sized LIPO inside the stock no problem. The sock doesn't have the HK trade found on the real thing.

 
Stock Tube – The real thing is dark earth in colour and the AEG is black. A quick blast of dark earth paint should sort that out. The stock is tight on the stock tube but there is a slight wobble when locked into the 5 lock points on the stock tube. A lot of AEG’s suffer from this and it caused by the catch/rod that goes into the 5 position holes is too small in diameter for the hole

 
Lower receiver – The lower receiver on the AEG has the correct Ambi controls for fire selector, bolt release and Magazine release. All work flawlessly and when you pull the charging handle to the rear the fake bolt cover locks open so you can adjust the hop unit and closes when you press either of the bolt release levers.
I like the fact that the magazine release goes together like the real thing and the rod screws into the button and doesn’t use a screw to hold the button on.
The fire selector is black whereas on the real thing they are tan coloured (again a quick blast of paint will sort that out).
The rear body pin is captive and the front body pin has a spring and pin retainer just like the real thing. This is good as it stops you loosing the body pin if you have the AEG in half. You don’t need to take out the rear body pin to separate the upper and lower receiver.
My AEG doesn’t have the HK trades however I believe that the Far East versions do have the correct trades. Mines is limited to the markings for the safe-semi-auto around the selector switch.
The trigger guard is the correct shape (Half-moon) but it’s the wrong colour and should be tan/dark earth.
The pistol grip is nice and fits in the hand nicely but it’s actually at the wrong angle. The 416 family use a sharper angle on the pistol grip to improve point ability when holding the real thing but this AEG has a more traditional AEG styled slope to it. I have a spare VFC grip (in black) that I will try to fit to see if it’s possible but in all honesty,  I like the one on the DB 416A5 so will probably swap back.
The paint finish is in a nice dark earth colour and on the website I thought it looked too light but now that I have it in front of me I think it’s a good match. It seems pretty durable and doesn’t scratch easily.


 
Upper Receiver – there is a slight wobble between the upper and lower receiver with a slight gap between the two. I have a similar gap on some of my TM NGRS rifles so it’s nothing to get excited about. I think I can get rid of the wobble by adding a “Magic Pin” to replace the front body pin.
The rear sight is the correct type and correct colour (on the VFC A5 it’s Tan but on the real thing most pictures show it as black.)
The cocking handle is black and has a traditional latch whereas the real thing is either black or tan and has an enhanced latch. It should be possible to replace the standard latch with an enhanced one if you can find one.
The dust cover is plastic just like the real thing.
The fake bolt is so wrong. It should be black and have the HK trades on it. I’m not sure how this will hold up to being sprayed black as it will probably wear off quite quickly. I’ll be on the lookout for a standard AEG style fake bolt in the correct colour with trades.
 
 
The rail – The rail is the newer 416 style with a front sight built into the top at the front of the rail. This pops up under spring tension but on the AEG the spring is pretty weak and it doesn’t take much to knock it back down. I’ll look at this in more detail to see if I can improve the spring tension but for since I’ll probably run some sort of optic I can’t seeing this being a problem.
The rail is held onto the upper receiver in the traditional HK style with a large barrel nut with 1 slot for the bolt to pass through and hold the rail into position. The rail is a free-floating rail for anyone interested. It’s also worth noting that the bolt that holds the rail to the barrel nut changed to a slotted screw type head on the A5 but on the DB 416A5 it uses an allen bolt.




 
Outer Barrel and gas Block – This is probably the area that suffers the most for being unlike the RS 416A5. On the real thing the Gas Block is now adjustable for “Normal” or “Suppressed” whereas on the AEG version they have used the older vented style. There should be a plug sticking out the front of the gas block which in real life is used to adjust the amount of gas going to the piston.
The DB 416A5 is meant to be the 14.5 inch barrelled version however the barrel profile is wrong. The DB has a traditional M4 styled outer barrel but it should have a solid 1 piece outer barrel with bayonet lug and pop up front sight.
Now if this bugs you as much as it bugs me then all is not lost. The outer barrel is 2 piece and the front part that goes from the flash hider to the front of the gas block screws off (-14mm threads). One surprise for me was that the inner barrel goes all the way through the 14.5 inch outer barrel so if you want to run the AEG at 11 inches then you will either need to cut the inner barrel or fit a smaller length one.
If you decide to run a mock silencer then having the longer barrel might work for you as you can just thread the silencer onto the gas block and have a full length barrel.

 
Gas piston – This is a traditional 416 style gas piston housed inside the front rail. I noticed a slight rattle coming from the front rail and when I removed the rail I seen that the gas piston doesn’t plug into the upper receiver properly and is just kind of sat there. I think with a bit of heavy handling this might come loose so to fix mine I’m going to cut the piston slightly so that it fits into the upper receiver.


 
The real thing

 
The flash hider is a traditional bird cage type with -14mm threads held onto the outer barrel by a grub screw. This will allow you to put on whatever flash hider takes your fancy.
 
The internals
Popping out the front body pin allows the upper and lower parts to be separated. This gives you access to the hop unit and inner barrel.
The hop unit is a 1 piece metal unit with a traditional adjustment dial on the right hand side. Looking down the inner barrel I can see that it works as intended however I did notice that the inner barrel was dirty so if you buy one of these make sure you clean the inside of the barrel.


 
I'll cover the gearbox and lower internals in Part 2.
 
How does it shoot?
This is probably the biggest question and in all honesty it fires fine. It doesn’t have a Mosfet so will seem sluggish when compared to a Specna Arms M4 with a Gate Aster fitted and when using a 11.1V LIPO it fired a bit snappier.
For CQB ranges it’s going to run fine and if you want to reach out and touch someone at a Woodland site then the normal upgrades would apply.
Range now is about 45 meters so not unusable but could be improved.
 
My plans for this AEG is to make it look a bit more like the real HK416A5. This includes swapping the Gas Block for a VFC one (£18), removing the 14.5 barrel extension and fitting a smaller one to take the barrel length to 11 inches.
I’m going to fit a Gate Aster and S hop the inner barrel which will also be cut down the inner barrel to the inside of the flash hider.
I’ll probably try and find a spray paint that matches the Dark Earth colour and spray up the black parts that should be Dark Earth.
 
Once I rip out the gearbox I'll post up part 2.
 
 

While waiting for the VFC gas block to tuen up I decided to have a go at doing the trade marks.

 

 
I also added a end plate sling point.

 
Trades were cut on a vinyl cutter and then spray painted. Once almost dry the vinyl is pulled off to leave the trademarks. The the whole thing is given a coat of matt varnish to stop them wearing off.

added the rest of the trademarks



 
currently 3D printing a fake gas plug as I'm impatient.

Think yourself lucky I bought one of a guy called Bob Mould about fifteen years ago  It never arrived  and he vanished.

A true British legend - the world will be a lot worse off.
 
 
When I mentioned this to my Misses she told me that Tom was getting slated/trolled on social media for taking that holiday last year which was gifted to his whole family by BA............. some of these snowflakes would have never survived the ‘40’s 
 
 
God Bless Sir Tom (Cpt. ret) you can now stand at ease sir !
 

Don’t know about you guys but really boils my piss when you see an add and think “oohh sounds interesting?” You go to said advert and when you open it it’s got blurred photos , too dark or too much light in the picture or best of all upside down photos ! 🤦‍♂️
Seriously ? you want people to part with there hard earned beer tokens and you can’t be bothered or haven’t even got the good manners to put up a decent Picture in your advert for them ! 

Christ...imagine there being three years until your 18th Birthday. Even after that you've got another 15 years of being spritely and only having one day hangovers....errmm, I mean welcome to the forum!

Yeah modded mine too. Just annoyed the correct trades didnt come out as well as I was hoping. I did set it up as a Mk3.... but then a few pics arose of the Mk2 type. And was surprised to see still using the looped hammer. So thought I'd stick with the early mk2 until the WE mk3 came out. 


 

Can always mod the the Leif sight one , what I did .👍

A JAC AR18

A JAC Hi power mk3.

Yeah no shit, kind of ironic stance for someone who collects tons or mega expensive tacticool kit to then actually out of choice choose an inferior stabilisation device designed to get a round a daft US law.  Braces would not exist in the current form or be even vaguely popular if it wasn't fir the whole Pistol / SBR nonsense.  Still as I said its airsoft, when has sense ever applied and each to there own anyway.

TM HK416C with 3D printed stock pad as I don't really like the short stock pad that comes as standard.

tSeems to be a lot of people putting gawd awful US Pistol Braces on there guns. Sorry but I just don't get it, Why?

Externally my AUG is now how I want it. Asside from changing the barrel to a longer one every now and again and the 9mm adaptor I have..
 
New Rail for my AUG from 3D crafts. Based on the one used by Kalid in Rainbow 6 Siege. (I have the 9mm conversation too just not with me)
Parts list..
ASG gearbox (330fps)
JG body
Custom 16 inch barrel
PTS flash hider.
Platatac F88/AUG stock mag pouch (rare)
3D printed front tail
Valken grip
FMA mini Peq
Guarder Aimpoint and mount.
Rail sling mount
FRV tailoring Sling
ASG Scorpion EVO sights
I have a clone scout light for the front too.

Take one £63 plastic fantastic Cyma AK47 And with some real wood parts and other spares parts bought from the forums a bit of silver paint and some wet&dry it can be changed , for around the 100 mark in total I think it looks a bit better than it did . Hope you agree .

Welcome!!
 
Find a local site to near you - book in and hire some of the sites gear and see if you do really like it before you drop any cash as if you do like it the your wallet and credit card won’t ever be the same again
 
site wise do a search on the tinter-net or have a look in the site reviews lower down in the forums, but I’m sure within in a few hours lots of people in and about Herts will be suggesting sites

From my understanding as they only really cater for the Japanese market, they don't worry about the licencing side of things. Compare that to WE who make theirs with blank slides and WE logo's on the grips. Not to say TM's trademarks are always 100% accurate of course.

I don't blame the police for taking what some view as a heavy handed attitude, what people forget is the police ultimately will come across firearms, likely misused ?, a lot more than the man on the street, that in turn will then feature in their training & approach in the future, a literal snowball effect !.
 
Maybe we should be really questioning the stupidity of ANYONE the brandishes a rif/if in public view, even if your stood on private land ?.
I'm 52, grew up playing "cops & robbers" etc on our estate, our toy guns were in some cases very realistic, but times were different so nobody gave us a second look, & the use of firearms in crimes was very rare indeed, & forget young "gangsters" taking pot shots at each other, unheard of.
BUT, nobody under the age of 30ish knows those times, they've all grown up in a society where gun violence is almost a daily event, & the authorities have very publicly had to raise their response to exceed what they face, so anybody that gets jumped on by the plod usually only has themselves to blame, it's not naive, it's pure stupidity, borderline suicidal.
But of course, common sense doesn't sell newspapers, so I expect we'll see many more cases like this reported with obvious bias just for dramatic effect or political point scoring 😏

Its ( Ruger MKI ) based on the Japanese Nambu.

Could be a good base for making a replica Logan's Run Sandman gun??
 
(Showing my age yet again!)

This is just a copy of the one Steyr arms makes one for their A3... I guess pose the question to them?
 
To Aug fans, (I run the AUG owners club on FB) its had a great reception.

Wow straight in with a cool high end gun.  Enjoy.

Thanks mate already got in with the local team and was lucky enough to get my ukara membership and the ladd was selling this. Got a really good deal @BigAl