Cyberlawyer

Ouch!! That would bloody hurt, especially on a tiled floor!!!

I try not to think about it…. In fairness I only bought one set of mags when I bought my first new MWS. The others came as part of used packages when I bought my other MWS. My main reason for keeping them is I figure If I ever sell up I’ll get more for each MWS if it comes with a usable amount of mags….. Well that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it…

Internet forum: How many mags do I need for my MWS? Me: Ummmmm…. Yes!

I briefly owned the v1 version of the WE Beretta and quite frankly it was terrible. The hop design was truly awful, definitely don’t buy one of those. I don’t have any hands on experience with the current v2 version (which was why I didn’t comment) but looking at the exploded digram it uses a Glock Style hop unit so should be better in that department. On the plus side for the Beretta it doesn’t have the tilting barrel design pioneered by the 1911 that most of the other pistols use (this is true of the real steel as well) so it should be inherently fairly accurate. On the down side the grip of the Beretta is properly large (again a feature it inherits from the real gun) so I don’t find it particularly comfortable to shoot (I’m a size large in Mechanix gloves just by way of scale). If you have hands like a garden gnome this will be a big problem if you are built like a silverback gorilla not such a big deal. Also the thumb safety is in pretty awkward place if you plan on doing any RS safety procedures.

My thoughts (and I have plenty of these guns to hand for first hand experience). If you are relatively new to skirmishing and that is going to be the main use for the pistol (as a secondary) then I always recommend the WE Glock 17 or 19x At £99 a pop from plenty of places you can get 2 for the price of a Marui with a spare mag and it is a decent performer with a metal slide and decent kick. You will get a spare mag, and if you drop it in the mud (and at some point you will) you can just swap to the other one rather than trying to clean off the mud in the safe zone (which never works properly). Cycling a pistol with dirt in the slide will shorten the life of the pistol. In terms of best performance out of the box the Marui FNX and Marui HK45 are head and shoulders above the rest. The FNX is slightly better due to bigger mags (more gas and BBs), but I prefer the HK ergonomics. The VFC licensed FNX is more realistic and satisfying to use (metal slide and better double action trigger), but performs no where near as well and mags are hard to find and stupid expensive. The Umarex HK45CT is a decent performer and is nice to use, but in reality shoots no better than the WE Glock for twice the money and is hard to find mags for (ordered mine from the US).

Not sure I fit into either category. If I had to pigeon hole myself with a catch phrase it would probably be “skills over kills”. I get way more satisfaction from a perfectly executed mag change or a slick weapon transition than racking up a massive body count, which probably explains why I only really use GBBRs all year round. I currently own 4 MWS builds for different purposes and a couple of gas MP5s and a gas MP7. I will probably add an the new Marui AKM just so I can practice my weapon handling drills on one. While that sounds like a lot it’s much cheeper than the revolving door of AEGs a lot of people seem to have.

True, the Lee Enfield 303 (British Number 4 rifle) had a magazine that was intended to be fixed in normal use and ammunition was loaded through the breach on stripper clips with the feed for the stripper built into the receiver, but that was a design choice that was common at the time and the magazines were made with this in mind to the appropriate quality. Ironically today’s AR style magazines (Magpul and the like) are relatively expensive compared to the cheep aluminium shells with a couple of moulded bits of plastic and the worlds cheapest spring that were standard British fare in the 80s and 90s and both economically and from a build quality perspective are totally appropriate for reuse. This wasn’t the case with the early SA80 mags that were originally specified to be disposable and then weren’t properly re-specified and re-engineered when this changed. Not sure the logistics are that much different between stripper clips and disposable mags. Obviously the ammo boxes would be larger and heavier (or carry fewer rounds), but I have never heard of any reported concerns about this, although the only actual conflict I am aware of where disposable magazines were standard issue is Vietnam (although I am happy to be corrected on this point if anyone is aware of any others).

Let's just say if your CQMS is good at his job he will be owed enough favours that he will rarely be buying his own drinks. Definitely a case of looking after the troops and they will look after you. Originally the idea was that magazines would be shipped preloaded and disposed off after use, so every ammo resupply would also replace the mags. The yanks did this in Vietnam where the ammo was supplied in preloaded mags in the bandoleers and the mags were considered disposable. The bean counters did away with this and we instead got stripper clips in bandoleers and plastic speed loaders. The biggest problem with this was that the build quality of the magazines was not significantly improved when it was decided they were going to be reused, hence the cheap springs that were originally going to be a single use item would loose tension following repeated reuse and cause stoppages. This resulted in the fairly common practice of only loading 28 rounds in each mag (or wherever possible stealing colt mags when on joint exercises with the US as they were far superior).

I missed 58 pattern webbing by a long margin, but on my combat infantryman course, down the front of the smock was the SOP taught as part of the training. While not as much as a ball ache as 58 pat it was still much quicker than getting mags back in a PLC pouch. No idea what the actual training manual said, but the front of smock method was RSM approved and everyone did it. Our CQMS used to carry a bunch of ‘off the books’ mags so if you did drop one (there were a few losses every exercise) you could still sign in your full compliment of mags so you didn’t get charged for the loss.

The Warrior universal holster is excellent. I have 2 and they have been flawless. I have even modified one carefully removing the fabric molle attachment and screwing on a safariland QLS fork, which has worked brilliantly and means I can move it across rigs and attach it to a safari land low ride/mid ride adapter. IMHO it is the perfect holster assuming you don't want to use a pistol torch/laser. I know they are relatively expensive (but still much cheaper than the custom kydex holders I have had made for my light bearing pistols) but you only need to loose one magazine, or god forbid a pistol, and they suddenly look like a bargain. Also you need to factor in that no matter how many pistols you have as long as you don't want to mount a torch you can use the same holster for all of them (I have yet to find something that won't fit (mk23 maybe? but I don't own one to check)).

How new is the mag? I find the MWS mags all start off a bit stiff at first when speed loading. The extra mechanical advantage of the loading rod really helps for new mags.

Taking that part of the mag apart is easy, just remover the two hex head screws from the base plate and that’s it. Be careful though there is a small plastic piece at the base plate end of the feed spring that likes to shoot it’s self into orbit if you are not careful. while you have it apart check the bb follower for imperfections. I have had one mag with this problem and it had a small amount of extra plastic on the bb follower I had to carefully polish off. Be aware putting the feed spring back in is a PITA. The aforementioned small plastic ‘plug’ seems desperate to ping across the room and get lost behind the sofa of embed it’s self in your eyeball. I found a bbq skewer helpful to feed the spring on to before trying to jam it back in the bb channel. Have fun!!!!!

According to the news articles I have seen Lego have sent a cease and desist letter, however I suspect that this is more a public relations exercise by Lego than any serious attempt to get the manufacturers of the gun to cease production and I suspect they will just ignore it. Lego have already lost in court several years ago to prevent the production of Lego compatible building block (see Lego Vs Tyco) so as long as the firearm doesn’t reproduce the Lego logo (which is still a valid trademark) on the top of every bump as Lego do on their actual blocks the chances they can stop the production of a brightly coloured gun with a regular pattern of bumps on it is pretty low given they couldn’t stop the production of an actual building block with Lego compatible dimensions.

I’d have to go with the WE Browning HP mk3. Truly an awful and outdated design for a GBB pistol, but it’s an all metal Browning that looks really cool so I can’t help but like it. Just partner with a WE MP5 GBBR (which is as brilliant as the Browning is terrible) for the ultimate 1980s SAS load out…

No personal experience with firefly hop rubbers, but in general soft hop rubbers perform really well in DMRs they just have a relatively short life span. The modify tan itself is very soft, this is one of the reasons it is so ‘grippy’ and works so well. I often use a 50 degree maple leaf in my DMR, with great results, but a rubber will only last a handful of game days. I don’t spout on about it because I don’t feel it’s right to recommend something with such a short working life. One of the reasons I went to Maple leafs in my DMR was that the modify tans don’t last that long at DMR FPS and a while ago they became very hard to source. The availability seems to have improved now, but they are still a couple of quid a rubber more than the maple leaf which really adds up especially when l have to pay shipping on top when the MLs are available locally.

That setup would certainly work and I have run similar before. Personally I prefer the deception rubber for consistency, and as I will always be down tuning the FPS with my NPAs to get to site requirements I'm not bothered that it requires slightly more barrel intrusion to hop any given weight of BB.

I have Crazy Jets in two of my longer barrel builds and have found them to be pretty good, but If you use them you really need to pair them with a maple leaf rubber and omega hop nub to get the best out of them, and the hop rubber needs a millimetre taken off the tab with a razor blade so it seats in the hop unit properly. If you use the brass nub and modify tan rubber which is well regarded in these parts then the Crazy Jet will be mediocre at best and there are several barrels that feature in these pages that are a better bet.

So I haven’t sold my NGRS to get an MWS as I still have it as a safety net, but I can’t remember the last time I used it in anger. I have a number of MWS and they are so reliable all year round that the NGRS doesn’t get a look in. I actually started a thread about selling it and it will be on the chopping block as soon as I can dig out the box. That being said I personally would never go to a skirmish without a backup rifle. I’m time poor so don’t get to go to as many games as I would like so it would suck if a mechanical failure ended my day early. But that is as likely with electric as gas.

You know you could just keep one. It would probably be cheeper.....

In My I have had a WE Mp7 for a while and it has been pretty reliable despite having a lot of rounds through it. I'm not really sure where the 'they break a lot' vibe has come from, but in my experience they are just as durable as the Marui, and when they do break something (and all full auto GBBRs will break somthing eventually) the parts support is much better. The bits that tends to wear first are the bolt catch and the trigger sears as they are made of finest pot metal. Personally I'd replace with stock parts. RATECH steel bits are available, but require time and effort and some careful filing to get to work nicely and given the cost aren't worth the effort. In my opinion the reason they come up for sale so often is they shoot like crap out of the box, nothing that isn't too difficult to fix, but it needs some work to shoot well. A couple of things to look at: 1. Out of the box they are covered in tones of shipping grease that needs to come off. Clean them out with some engine degreaser and then re-grease with a light spray of silicone over the bolt and a smear of grease on the runners and the gas efficiency will be much better (yes you still get some cool down, but you will at least get through the whole mag). 2. Before you judge it too harshly put 1000 or so gentle rounds through it (semi or short bursts) and then clean and re-grease it. The parts need a while to lap together so they run smoothly over each other. 3. The hop is totally rubbish as the hop arm fowls on the hop window in the inner barrel so you can't add much hop. You need to either file the bit of the arm thinner or enlarge the hop window (or some combination of both) to be able to apply more hop. I haven't done it on mine, but a crazy jet inner barrel may also fix the issue as they generally have a larger hop window.

I completely agree with this sentiment. I got an MTR used so I could use the ambi lower on my competition gun. Good job I got a good second hand price as the only bits that survived were the lower itself the buffer tube, charging handle and the silver bolt (which makes no difference to me). All the remaining parts were replaced. I even went as far as using a standard MWS upper receiver so I could still have a functioning forward assist. I used the spare MWS lower and MTR upper to make a, 8” PDW build where the forward assist deletion makes much more sense for concealed carry.

So where the hell did all of these Mags come from..... So sorting out some stuff the other day as I am paring down my Airsoft kit. (Keeping all my GBBR stuff, but going down to 1 NGRS AEG as a final backup) and I discovered (to my surprise) that tucked away in various corners I have 20 (Yes TWENTY!!!!) MWS Magazines. Some of these I purchased myself so I had a skirmishable number of mags, but the others came as part of various used bundles that I used to build my current fleet of 4 MWS. 3 of these are the short Vietnam/MTR style mags the remainder (17) are all TM v2 mags. All are fully working and gas tight. 13 of the 35 rounders have silent fill valves fitted and have had the silver tube cropped just above the fill valve, the other four are stock (and actually look brand new, not even any scuffing round the magazine catch). On the one hand I'm thinking I should just distribute the mags around my various loadouts so they are all 'grab and go' ready rather than just faffing about switching mags around, and it does mean if I ever sell my collection each gun will come with a usable amount of mags. On the other hand I am secretly crying inside at the amount of cash I have tied up in MWS magazines that I will never need to carry in one go....

Barrel length/bore size and an NPAS are all you really need to up the power to any level you can use in the UK. A couple of my MWS also have an angry gun v2 piston head and an after market rocket valve spring, but that was just because the OEM parts had started to wear and it’s much harder to get new OEM parts than the after market ones (and they work fine).

@paradoxum where did you get that FAST helmet mandible from? I’m really after one just that style. Thanks D

@Hypokondrikern I have no idea how she performs yet as I stupidly broke the bolt catch when manhandling the trigger box. I have just received and fitted a new one, but it was too late for any testing. I will shoot it for the first time tomorrow so will report back offer that.