Most Glorious WE makarov

[Adolf Hamster]

Figured seeing as i've seen a couple of reviews up on here and the makarov isnt one of them i'd put in my tuppence about the last 6 months of ownership.

 

Make/model- WE Makarov Pmm

 

Fps- 0.7-2.5j (i'll come back to that bit later)

Hop up- proprietary design but takes standard marui style rubbers no problem.

Mag capacity- not much, haven't counted directly but "theoretically" about 15 rounds

Full metal construction with plastic handguards.

 

So this little beauty is a bit of an oddball and odds are if you're buying this it's more than likely as part of a russian themed loadout and you're not a fan of the tokarev.

 

The good news is that in the lottery of oddball pistols this is one of the ones that's actually a good shooter in its own right.

 

In the box you'll get the pistol, mag, suppressor and a barrel extension, now much like the mk23 if you drop that barrel extension on or swap to a longer inner barrel beware that you're gonna get some raised eyebrows at the chrono as this thing is set up really for a short barrel. I guess if you're mad you could make a pocket sniper. Mine didnt come with the barrel extension but from what i've read thats no bad thing as it pushes your fps through the roof and your accuracy through the floor.

 

The suppressor is standard we threading so you can drop it on most of their other guns easily.

 

Internals wise it's standard enough, 15mm bbu which on such a small lightly sprung slide means in the warm weather it's got a lovely snappy kick almost comparable to a co2 gun, although cold weather performance is somewhat lacklustre but then i've never met a we that liked the cold (in its defence when it couldnt keep up it was also cold enough to stop a hicapa in its tracks as well)

 

The hop unit is awesome, one of the better designs i've seen, think a pro-win style rotary hop adapted to a pistol. Out of the box it's ok for .2's but will struggle to lift .3's but if you drop a maple leaf and a nub made out of a square of aeg hop then you can lob .4's at sub 1j which is hilarious (and effective)

 

Gas effeciency is greatly dependant on the weather, a couple of mags in the warm turns to half a mag if your lucky in the cold. They're small mags so not much gas. Generally i down-load them as lobbing heavy ammo from a pistol always murders the gas effeciency.

 

Features wise the safety is a bit finnicky, in theory it's a slide mounted safety/decocker but its very easy to pop her just out of battery when engaging which will mean it doesnt work, i tend to opt for either just not using it or manually dropping to half-cock for a double action pull. Also seems the decocker puts a little bit of pressure on the mag which can cause it to leak.

 

Trigger is your standard single/double, double action is long and creepy, single is surprisingly crisp and definately the better way to shoot.

 

In the hand the grip is a bit odd, feels uncomfortable if you're conciously holding it, but in the field that sort of melts into the background and you end up going with the full sean connery spec one handed lower grip, very good for instinct firing.

 

Sights are small (like the pistol) but crisp and if you take the time to get a proper sight picture it's nice and precise, but as mentioned before you'll end up doing a bond impression and instinct firing.

 

Strip down follows the original pretty well, pop the trigger guard down, pull the slide back lift up and off to give you access to the hop. Its a bit of a tricky sequence but quite smooth when you get the hang of it and gets the attention of folk who aren't familiar with the design.

 

Holster wise your options are both wide and limited. The good news is with the heel release you can safely stuff this in a generic fabric holster and be reasonably confident she'll still go bang when needed (unlike the thumb button style that loves to drop mags when in that kind of holster). This will be your cheapest option.

 

Otherwise you'll be looking at either leather concealed carry type, or the proper russian military style ones. Can't confirm if this thing works in the fancy spetsnaz push draw holster or not but i did grab a paddle rentention one which she fits perfectly, of course this route is not exactly cheap as they're marketed for real guns rather than airsoft.

 

Overall it's a lovely combination of something unique and different but good enough to hold its own against the sea of glocks in terms of performance at least in good weather.

 

edit: a few points i forgot:

the suppressor is a hollow can with a tube up the inside, no foam filling here, so not useful for actual suppression unless you gut it and do some mk23 esque shenanigans with the insides.

careful with the mags- cold weather+mag lips+a drop onto concrete wont end well, although amazingly you can actually buy spares

gas wise- as mentioned later in the topic i run it on nuprol 4.0 with .4g bb's and it hasn't blown up yet, but then i also run a plastic slide hicapa on the same and it also hasn't blown up either despite what the internet says about putting anything stronger than 144 in a marui so make of that what you will......

 

Edit 2: you know you want pics.....

[EvilMonkee]

I have had issues with mine not feeding the BBs.  Any ideas?  Though it was cold so might be something to do with that.  Also, the hop unit needs a little PTFE tape to keep it in place or it wanders off again.

[Rogerborg]

3 hours ago, Adolf Hamster said:

lobbing heavy ammo from a pistol always murders the gas effeciency

 

Errr... how?

 

Honestly, I have no idea, I'm a GBB virgin.

[Adolf Hamster]

49 minutes ago, EvilMonkee said:

I have had issues with mine not feeding the BBs.  Any ideas?  Though it was cold so might be something to do with that.  Also, the hop unit needs a little PTFE tape to keep it in place or it wanders off again.

 

is she short stroking? mine only misfeeds when it's very cold and it doesn't even have the energy to fire properly.

 

32 minutes ago, Rogerborg said:

 

Errr... how?

 

Honestly, I have no idea, I'm a GBB virgin.

 

takes more energy (joule creep) and i tend to find the heavier ammo makes the kick a bit more violent too, all takes gas.

 

don't really find it a problem myself, i never expect more than a single mag from a fill and anything more is a bonus.

 

normally with .4's i'll only load to 8 or 10 rounds, of course the plus side is the extra accuracy and range.

[EvilMonkee]

Probably is.  What gas are you using in it?  I was using that Ultrair shite as its all I had

[Rogerborg]

48 minutes ago, Adolf Hamster said:

i tend to find the heavier ammo makes the kick a bit more violent too, all takes gas.

 

But... how does it know how much gas to vent on each shot?

 

Again, honest question.

[Immortal]

1 hour ago, Rogerborg said:

 

But... how does it know how much gas to vent on each shot?

 

Again, honest question.

 

Pressure; the time it takes for the gas to vent plus the valve time to close and the power of the spring operating the valve to return to its original position.

 

"Science stuff" is the short answer.

[Adolf Hamster]

3 hours ago, Rogerborg said:

 

But... how does it know how much gas to vent on each shot?

 

Again, honest question.

 

i don't really fully understand it myself, but i'll try to explain what i think is happening as it makes sense to me:

the gas comes up from the mag and goes both directions, back starts pushing on the slide and front pushes on the bb

while the bb is in the barrel the flow rate is kept low (relative term) so the float valve stays open

when the bb leaves the barrel the pressure drops, increasing the flow rate which shuts the valve (it's why messing with the valve and it's spring can change fps)

when the valve closes now all the gas can go into pushing the slide back and it cycles normally.

 

so when you're using heavier ammo it's harder to accelerate, so the pressure spikes increasing leaks from all the usual places (eg around the bb- not a tight fit, and all the places around the nozzle it could leak) and increasing the pressure on the piston while it's in that phase (hence the boost in kick). it also takes longer to accelerate hence the joule creep. the pressure spike is also why the tech at my local shop thinks i'm mad for running a hicapa on .4's and swears i'll blow up a nozzle some day......

 

the same applies for a longer barrel- the valve stays open until the pressure drops so it just keeps pushing and pushing until the bb's left the barrel, the flow rate for a given gun is tuned for a rough energy level for a given barrel length (hence how you can have NPAS kits for GBB rifles- it's just an adjustable way of tuning the flow rate) so you can expect X joules for Y barrel length and increasing barrel length increases the energy.

 

that's for marui pattern guns that use a sprung float valve (WE being marui clones in that respect). i have a (kwc?) cybergun co2 1911 that's different, the valve isn't sprung but instead has a protrusion into the chamber so the bb holds the valve open, i suspect what happens here is the valve closes the moment the bb moves far enough to let that happen and it's up to the gas already in the barrel at that point to expand and push the bb, so it's possible that system won't react as well to a longer barrel due to this mechanism but i haven't tested it.

 

 

now the caveat is all that could be wrong, but it's a theory that kinda makes logical sense and at least explains all the different phenomina i've observed with these guns. if someone knows this better than i i'd love to know how close (or not) i've got it

[Immortal]

The joule creep is mostly a matter of gas efficiency. Basically with the lighter ammo you're rif is wasting a lot of gas to send the lighter BB forward and into flight - the wasted gas is simply expelled once the BB has cleared the barrels muzzle. With the heavier ammo it is using the excess to achieve the same thing but because that excess is available it is able to do so.

 

If the valve was efficient with the gas and only used enough gas to send a light weight BB into flight it would have a lessened ability to push the heavier BB as the excess gas wouldn't be so abundent and therefore less able to do so.

 

 

Not accounting for seals and a lot to do with pressure.

[Rogerborg]

Oh, sorcery.  Gotchya. 👍

[Slamz]

On 25/03/2019 at 09:50, Adolf Hamster said:

 

 

 

 

Where did you get that holster? It's exactly what I need for my Smersh! 

[Adolf Hamster]

56 minutes ago, Slamz said:

 

Where did you get that holster? It's exactly what I need for my Smersh! 

 

grey-shop, ordered it along with a gorka and a smersh for maximum cheeky breeky

[Slamz]

Makarov and holster ordered to go full Ruski

[Adolf Hamster]

14 minutes ago, Slamz said:

Makarov and holster ordered to go full Ruski

 

good to see another son supporting the motherland!

[EvilMonkee]

Resurrecting this post again.  Have you had issues with magazines?  Tried a mates mag in my Makarov and it ran so much better. my mag just doesn't seem to have the power to cycle the gun properly.

[Adolf Hamster]

8 minutes ago, EvilMonkee said:

Resurrecting this post again.  Have you had issues with magazines?  Tried a mates mag in my Makarov and it ran so much better. my mag just doesn't seem to have the power to cycle the gun properly.

 

only with overfilling, i have 3 and there's no way to distinguish between them when firing.

 

try emptying it and filling it when it's completely drained.

[EvilMonkee]

Also had an issue with it going full auto as well.  Increasingly feeling like I got a lemon.

[Adolf Hamster]

35 minutes ago, EvilMonkee said:

Also had an issue with it going full auto as well.  Increasingly feeling like I got a lemon.

 

Hmm, not had that one, maybe you got unlucky i do know we's reputation is being a bit hit and miss.

 

How old is it?

[EvilMonkee]

Not had it long. 3 months?

 

[Adolf Hamster]

14 minutes ago, EvilMonkee said:

Not had it long. 3 months?

 

Hmm, not the sear worn out then.

 

I've had mine about a year now so i guess you must have got unlucky, any chance of a warrenty return?

[EvilMonkee]

From gunfire so I doubt it

[EvilMonkee]

Where did you get the Crazy Jet barrel for it and what size did you use?

[Adolf Hamster]

I currently have a hand-cut zci in there but i have a 75mm pdi on order, should be around the right length.

 

Never used a crazy jet.

[EvilMonkee]

Working fine tonight in the backyard.  Odd.  Added some tape to keep the hop arm in place. Deffo a better gun with the barrel extension

[Adolf Hamster]

5 minutes ago, EvilMonkee said:

Working fine tonight in the backyard.  Odd.  Added some tape to keep the hop arm in place. Deffo a better gun with the barrel extension

 

Careful with that, pushes the fps a fair bit above what most would consider sensible.