Rogerborg
Supporters
- Aug 22, 2017
- 9,190
- 6,048
Freshly purchased in a rather nice grey to use as the basis for a DMR.
View attachment 74668
The stock, grip and handguard are plastic, but everything else is alloy or steel. Buffer tube, receiver, outer barrel, delta ring, sights, sling mounts, trigger, fire selector, charging handle, forward assist, rear sight and its adjusters are all metal.
The receiver is a really good tight closure with no wobble there or in the barrel or grip, and there's not much in the stock. I've not had the gearbox apart yet, but there's blue goo lube in there, it's not too loud, and with a little squirt of silicone lube down the nozzle it's shooting at a respectable and consistent 1.07J / 340fps @ 0.2g on the M90 spring, so the air seal seems fine, as it should be with double-o-ring piston and cylinder heads and an o-ring nozzle.
It's got the advertised rotary hop which seems very similar to the ZCI plastic rotary which works well, although the adjustment wheel isn't as secure. The hop rubber is generic, but it's got a style of hop nub that I've never seen before, semi-circular on top, but flat on the bottom and extended front-and-back to fill more of the length of the hop window. That seems to make sense and was a pleasant little surprise - it should work well with the s-hop that I'm going to inflict on it.
The "enter and convert" QC gearbox is as described, the spring can be changed without taking the gearbox out, just get the buffer tube off. That's a bit of a chore to get off and back on, mind, and I'm just off to buy a properly long screwdriver. The wiring cable is stiff and doesn't want to coil up inside the buffer tube either, making shortening the stock rather difficult.
Being wired to Deans via a basic Gate X-ASR mosfet is a great idea, and it's practically begging to have a Gate Warfet or MERF dropped in for 3 round bursts.
The 275mm barrel is heavy brass and has no obvious internal blemishes, although it's not the neatest on the outside. It was well oiled internally and needed a thorough clean out using the supplied and usefully long cleaning rod.
It's not all great though. The handguard is very disappointing, being a hard, cheap feeling plastic that's wobblier than a politician's promise. It's slightly bananad and the halves don't want to close up tightly - you can see that even on PatrolBase's advertising pictures. The wobble is down to the halves not gripping the delta star ring securely. I've bodged it all tight with electrical tape around the barrel, between the guard and the star ring, and whipped around to hold the guard tightly together. It's fixable, but shouldn't need to be.
The tight interface at the rear of the receiver halves also made it a sod to get apart, I was looking for a pin that I thought I must have missed, but it's just the standard front pin. When it eventually did part company, I was using so much force that I managed to stretch the charging handle spring to an unusable length and snap the plastic part of the mechanism in half. My bad, fixable, and not a big deal. The secret is to lift the front of the upper receiver a faction, both during disassembly and reassembly. I can't really blame them for having achieved a secure fit.
The no-screws latch mechanism on the bottom of the pistol grip is nice in principle but in practice the pinned latch just gets in the way, and it's not an area that really needs quick access anyway - I might replace the grip with something less clever.
The Specna Arms "advanced" motor isn't that strong and the wiring is disappointingly thin. The motor height adjuster doesn't have a separate E-Z-Looze disk, which is a nice change. It's a good fit for the Specna Arms motor, but I had to do quite a bit of filing to get a slightly longer Big Dragon M140 to fit instead, and the bottom plate mechanism is unforgiving there, it either closes, or it doesn't.
On balance, it seems decent enough out of the box, just clean the barrel and hop, plug in a Deans battery and go.
I do have to flag up the poor handguard though, it's fixable, but that's no excuse.
Would I recommend it? Provisionally, yes, pending playing with it. I don't expect it to be either poor or magical. Puff is consistent, the hop mechanism looks decent, the barrel is probably OK, although I'll be replacing both of those anyway. At £140 for a metal body and a set of decent air seal parts that sharply reduced the size and cost of my followup AK2M4 order, the value proposition is what sold it to me.
View attachment 74668
The stock, grip and handguard are plastic, but everything else is alloy or steel. Buffer tube, receiver, outer barrel, delta ring, sights, sling mounts, trigger, fire selector, charging handle, forward assist, rear sight and its adjusters are all metal.
The receiver is a really good tight closure with no wobble there or in the barrel or grip, and there's not much in the stock. I've not had the gearbox apart yet, but there's blue goo lube in there, it's not too loud, and with a little squirt of silicone lube down the nozzle it's shooting at a respectable and consistent 1.07J / 340fps @ 0.2g on the M90 spring, so the air seal seems fine, as it should be with double-o-ring piston and cylinder heads and an o-ring nozzle.
It's got the advertised rotary hop which seems very similar to the ZCI plastic rotary which works well, although the adjustment wheel isn't as secure. The hop rubber is generic, but it's got a style of hop nub that I've never seen before, semi-circular on top, but flat on the bottom and extended front-and-back to fill more of the length of the hop window. That seems to make sense and was a pleasant little surprise - it should work well with the s-hop that I'm going to inflict on it.
The "enter and convert" QC gearbox is as described, the spring can be changed without taking the gearbox out, just get the buffer tube off. That's a bit of a chore to get off and back on, mind, and I'm just off to buy a properly long screwdriver. The wiring cable is stiff and doesn't want to coil up inside the buffer tube either, making shortening the stock rather difficult.
Being wired to Deans via a basic Gate X-ASR mosfet is a great idea, and it's practically begging to have a Gate Warfet or MERF dropped in for 3 round bursts.
The 275mm barrel is heavy brass and has no obvious internal blemishes, although it's not the neatest on the outside. It was well oiled internally and needed a thorough clean out using the supplied and usefully long cleaning rod.
It's not all great though. The handguard is very disappointing, being a hard, cheap feeling plastic that's wobblier than a politician's promise. It's slightly bananad and the halves don't want to close up tightly - you can see that even on PatrolBase's advertising pictures. The wobble is down to the halves not gripping the delta star ring securely. I've bodged it all tight with electrical tape around the barrel, between the guard and the star ring, and whipped around to hold the guard tightly together. It's fixable, but shouldn't need to be.
The tight interface at the rear of the receiver halves also made it a sod to get apart, I was looking for a pin that I thought I must have missed, but it's just the standard front pin. When it eventually did part company, I was using so much force that I managed to stretch the charging handle spring to an unusable length and snap the plastic part of the mechanism in half. My bad, fixable, and not a big deal. The secret is to lift the front of the upper receiver a faction, both during disassembly and reassembly. I can't really blame them for having achieved a secure fit.
The no-screws latch mechanism on the bottom of the pistol grip is nice in principle but in practice the pinned latch just gets in the way, and it's not an area that really needs quick access anyway - I might replace the grip with something less clever.
The Specna Arms "advanced" motor isn't that strong and the wiring is disappointingly thin. The motor height adjuster doesn't have a separate E-Z-Looze disk, which is a nice change. It's a good fit for the Specna Arms motor, but I had to do quite a bit of filing to get a slightly longer Big Dragon M140 to fit instead, and the bottom plate mechanism is unforgiving there, it either closes, or it doesn't.
On balance, it seems decent enough out of the box, just clean the barrel and hop, plug in a Deans battery and go.
I do have to flag up the poor handguard though, it's fixable, but that's no excuse.
Would I recommend it? Provisionally, yes, pending playing with it. I don't expect it to be either poor or magical. Puff is consistent, the hop mechanism looks decent, the barrel is probably OK, although I'll be replacing both of those anyway. At £140 for a metal body and a set of decent air seal parts that sharply reduced the size and cost of my followup AK2M4 order, the value proposition is what sold it to me.
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