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.
