Hatchet

Filed down the gearbox, fitted it ok. I have the high speed (which is the middle of the range). It is ridiculously fast even on standard gears and I should probably have gone for the standard. Well, it was fast, until the grub screw on the pinion unscrewed and started gouging the gearbox shell... Back to the drawing board, and also the shops to get green loctite

Was it Redcap again? (I may be showing my age here)

And, whilst you don't get quite the same benefit as you would with a semi-spamming build, having a motor that runs longer without getting hot and is more power efficient isn't a bad thing. In all honesty, it's curiosity rather than a specific need that's prompted me to get one, but we're here now, so...

Well, it turns out it doesn't fit the M249. The position of the spade connectors relative to the back of the bell housing (I might be making these words up) is different and it won't clear the gearbox shell. Fortunately as I was being super careful for once, I discovered this without snapping anything off. There's not a huge amount in it, so it might work with some filing of the gearbox. A job for the weekend I suspect. One benefit I have enjoyed already is not having all my screws/tools/belt buckles fly towards it whilst installing like they do with the current motor.

As said, the PTS EPS gives you a lot of options. You can get a 7.4v 2900 35c brick in there, or pretty much any stick type battery (will fit 11.1v titan too).

What he said. I usually run a couple of HSGI's on the belt and top up from chest rig. The emdom MM dump pouch has always worked way better for me than the standard flappy ones. If you really don't want to go down that route then HSGI's do still meet the original objective of being easy enough to put mags back into, but it's an expensive way to do things and will take up a lot more real estate.

From what they're saying the performance on the BASE won't be as good as the Black, but still better than standard brushed. I guess it's comparable to the upgrade from HDD on PC's to SSD's. Even the slow SATA SSD's are better than the HDDs. I'm not entirely sold on the Titan batteries. Some articles seem to suggest they're not up to the job. But if they work for you, fair enough. I always favour the largest brick with the highest C I can get in there, but Ak's... not a lot of choices I guess.

As an alternative to ammo boxes, these Bat Safes might be worth considering. I've got one, although obviously I've not put it to the test (and hope never to have to).

This video on it is very interesting, particularly the amp draw and energy efficiency parts. Spoliers, 5800 shots out of an 1000mah battery on the Warhead, vs 1000 on a Lonex A1...

Is there any chance of battery storage in that? (assuming they can be found anywhere...)

Ah, I ran my AT2000R for the first time at the weekend and had the flashing whilst not shooting happen to me. I had assumed it was due to low battery (had done maybe 3000+ rounds in the morning) but then off/on seemed to resolve it. One to watch perhaps.

Bunch of possibilities, but hard to say. L85 has a slightly different grip angle, further forward and also takes M4 mags, so worth a look. Some of the AK variants possibly (LCT AK12 maybe?) Other oddballs like P90 might work. Or, get a HPA based M4 and stick a 15 degree pistol grip on it.

Be interesting to hear more about this. If it's a recall it's very quiet (nothing on any of their official channels, or on any of the news sites). I could see why they might want to keep something like that quiet, but surely must know that'd be impossible as soon as dealers start phoning people up. Odd. Or it's an elaborate ruse to thin out the competition for guns/spare mags.

Like others have said, could just be a duff battery. If the specs on the battery are accurate then they should be sufficient. First thing I'd do would be to change the connector out. If you're good at soldering, change it for the MR30's, if you're average then just change the adapter/converter from Tamiya to deans (or mini-deans). There are a couple of battery options posted earlier if you do want to try another one and they should only be around £15 - £16. Yeah, those SOPMOD batteries weren't great. Conceptually a cool idea, but not well executed. Then again, we know the new Marui one will be a lipo. And will undoubtedly be designed to fit perfectly. I'll be interested to see the specs, but I'll confess I don't understand why it's going to have the third wire or exactly how that's going to work. I mean, you can already get voltage monitoring on the Gate mosfets and they only have the battery pos/neg running to them. Electrics not my speciality.

I'm kind of tempted, although I'm guessing it's actually a solid, solid stock and thus no good for batteries? Interested to know the results. Unsurprisingly their torch is out of stock (like almost everything else in the world right now)

Yeah, I got the notification and there were 54 on there. Gone before I could get any (at work)

You could do, although you'd have a "spare" wire and then presumably not be able to take advantage of Marui's battery when it comes out. I'm not sure what the third wire would be used for but I'm guessing at battery cell monitoring of some sort. Probably a smarter choice to just make up a connector though (as Jebus has illustrated)

First game day today and it ran well, despite my attempts to dig a trench with the magazines. I need to build a more MP5 specific rig. Hicaps ran well enough, trigger response and accuracy good, although I really feel some sort of micro red-dot would aid in the first round hits. Was surprised by how fast I burned through the mags. Not the ideal gun for going prone, of which there was a lot today. Also, only used about 50% of the battery, which I felt was pretty good considering how much I was shooting. Spoke to another user who says a small titan brick will fit and who'd got a slightly stronger spring in. There was a noticeable difference, but I didn't feel compelled to rush out for upgrades just yet. The site was Green Ops, which is basically rhododendron jungle fighting, with a couple of slightly more open areas, so a good test environment. It might have struggled more in open woodland. 3rd burst is still brilliant.

What are people doing for batteries? Best fit I've found so far is this - I've rewired it to MR30 connector (badly, I am utterly shit at soldering) and it does fit. 16AWG wiring, which seems the right sort of size. Some of the others have 14AWG, but then that's just thick enough to stop everything fitting. Dimensions on this are 86Lx33Wx15H. There are probably nunchuck style ones that people are fitting in instead, but in terms of relative ease (once you get rewiring done) these should be simple enough to swap out at lunchtime. If you need the connectors you can get them here. You might be able to get everything fitting using the adaptor that's included, but I prefer to free up the space by not using it.

Got round to getting some pictures of the front handguards. First off, a comparative shot of the two different mounting mechanisms. You can see that the TM (left) mounts slightly differently and is also lower than the RS grip, to allow more battery space. Additionally a top down shot of the TM and then RS grip shows that in the area behind the attachment hook, the TM version cuts away almost immediately whereas the RS gradually tapers down - again meaning the TM has more battery room. Finally, you can see the difference in how the TM and RS grips look. There's not a huge amount in it, but note that the RS rides up a bit at the rear end (see how the rear corner almost touches the rail mount on the RS, but has a defined gap on the TM) and also you can again see that the RS grip is shorter by comparing where it sits against the magwell.

Well, this should be a bit more viable than using the one mag that came with the gun. £70 in total, shipped from Impulse101 and about a week from ordering to arrival. Not bad...

Getting a battery in seems to be the biggest pain with this, curse my fat fingers. I have ordered some new connectors (Amass MR30) so that I can at least get rid of the adapter to save some space. I'm wondering if the SD conversion has any more room @SonnyMP5 , and I'm also wondering where I can pick up a solid stock to convert. Or, I guess, I could just have a bit of patience and wait for the inevitable aftermarket support, but that seems unlikely. Ordered a couple of high-caps off Impulse101 to tide me over until the standards come back into stock anywhere. No idea when they might actually turn up though.

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...

You can always take a look at the UV-9R. Much the same but allegedly better water resistance. I don't think there's much in it in terms of price, although the connections for accessories are different - which may be relevant if you/your team already have a bunch.