Double Eagle B&T ACP556 AEG

[mightyjebus]

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.

 

[Druid799]

Yet another outstanding review good sir ! I freely admit I’m absolutely enamoured of my 904 especially as I bought it on a whim ! and first gameday it had i basically used it the entire day I was that impressed with it , mine was also a tad ‘fruity’ out of the box but after lopping a couple of coils off and re-shaping the cut end of the spring it’s doing a very satisfactory 342-45fps .

Have to say I’m on the fence about the look of this one but if they carry on using the ‘Falcon’ system in their new guns I definitely would be happy to buy some more of them .

[Speedbird_666]

Looks really nice. It's refreshing to have something new on the market that isn't an M4.

 

The only tiny critism is the markings on the mock bolt. I'm not sure what 'Col 5.56' is supposed to mean, but it should be 'Cal 5.56'

But that's me being super anal.

 

 

 

[mightyjebus]

small update:

 

Fitted a Guarder M90 spring gives 310 FPS

ASG SP95 give a FPS of 330

Guarder M100 takes the FPS up to 370

 

Sticking with the ASG for a run-out this weekend. I need to try and run some heavier weight BB's through it to see what it can and can't hop.

[mightyjebus]

sadly the ASG B&T Rotex silencer doesn't fit over the DE flash hider. Just means I need to swap flash hiders over whenever I want to run tracer inside the silencer.

[Tactical Pith Helmet]

Good review.

 

What's the comb height like with that stock?

[mightyjebus]

5 hours ago, Tactical Pith Helmet said:

Good review.

 

What's the comb height like with that stock?

it's quite tall so full face masks should be able to use it set up like this.

[Tactical Pith Helmet]

Cheers mate!

 

Looks genuinely interesting.   

[Louish118]

On 16/09/2021 at 09:09, Speedbird_666 said:

Looks really nice. It's refreshing to have something new on the market that isn't an M4.

 

The only tiny critism is the markings on the mock bolt. I'm not sure what 'Col 5.56' is supposed to mean, but it should be 'Cal 5.56'

But that's me being super anal.

 

 

 

Col stands for Cartridge Overall Length. 

Edited March 8 by Louish118

[Speedbird_666]

5 minutes ago, Louish118 said:

Col stands for Cartridge Overall Length. Some firearms use it.

 

Cool story bro....🙄

[RostokMcSpoons]

Damn, I'm glad this thread has been resurrected... a Double Eagle that's not an M4, but takes M4 mags... that's getting very near to the top of my shopping list!
Does anyone in the UK actually sell them though???

 

Edited March 8 by RostokMcSpoons

[Crazy_Crystal]

7 hours ago, RostokMcSpoons said:

Damn, I'm glad this thread has been resurrected... a Double Eagle that's not an M4, but takes M4 mags... that's getting very near to the top of my shopping list!
Does anyone in the UK actually sell them though???

 

I believe that ASG will be importing them soon... or at least they are importing some form of APC556 based on their recent press release.

This is from their Facebook page.

Edited March 8 by Crazy_Crystal

[Fatboy40]

31 minutes ago, Crazy_Crystal said:

I believe that ASG will be importing them soon... or at least they are importing some form of APC556 based on their recent press release...

 

That's very interesting as I always understood that Krakman in Poland (aka Taiwan Gun) were the European distributor for Double Eagle, and also interesting is no explicit mention of Double Eagle or QAP branding 🤔

[Crazy_Crystal]

57 minutes ago, Fatboy40 said:

 

That's very interesting as I always understood that Krakman in Poland (aka Taiwan Gun) were the European distributor for Double Eagle, and also interesting is no explicit mention of Double Eagle or QAP branding 🤔

 

Yeah they are, although most retailers get them straight from HK for the most part (patrol base excepted I think.) As for whether the ASG is OEMd by DE... I guess we'll have to wait and see. I couldn't tell you either way.

 

Just the thought of two apc556s licenced at the same time is a bit unusual. Last time we had that was the WE & VFC G3s...

[Louish118]

On 08/03/2022 at 08:49, Speedbird_666 said:

 

Cool story bro....🙄

How mature of you.

On 08/03/2022 at 16:51, Crazy_Crystal said:

I believe that ASG will be importing them soon... or at least they are importing some form of APC556 based on their recent press release.

This is from their Facebook page.

Yes, ASG will be the European distributor for this rifle.

Edited March 13 by Louish118

[Speedbird_666]

1 hour ago, Louish118 said:

How mature of you.

 

Well, you wanted your Ackchyually moment....

 

I was going to argue that I've not seen a modern firearm stamped with 'COL' and COAL is the acronym used when it comes to cartridge length in any other context, but couldn't be bothered at the time.

 

But carry on and keep trying to win the internet.

 

 

 

[Louish118]

On 13/03/2022 at 15:23, Speedbird_666 said:

 

Well, you wanted your Ackchyually moment....

 

I was going to argue that I've not seen a modern firearm stamped with 'COL' and COAL is the acronym used when it comes to cartridge length in any other context, but couldn't be bothered at the time.

 

But carry on and keep trying to win the internet.

 

 

 

Yet you take the time to make another sarcy comment. I was just telling you what it stands for, and that it's not a mistake on DE's behalf. 

[Speedbird_666]

21 minutes ago, Louish118 said:

Yet you take the time to make another sarcy comment. I was just telling you what it stands for, and that it's not a mistake on DE's behalf. 

But that’s the point, it IS an error by DE, the pic I posted was of the REAL ACP556 taken directly from the B&T website.

 

The markings on the Airsoft version are wrong. You tried to be the smart arse adding incorrect context to a spelling mistake made in the DE factory for internet cool points.

[RostokMcSpoons]

This is a silly argument to be having, but I tried independently to find out which of you was right.  While COAL is definitely a thing, I couldn't find any evidence for COL, it's CAL on guns on all the images I've seen.

 

So if I can be bold and be the arbiter of this disagreement, it's down to you Louish to provide some evidence, just one pic of a real steel gun would be enough to validate your point. 

[mightyjebus]

since this has been revived, I thought I'd update.

 

AEG is running fine to be honest and the only modification currently is a little cover for the ambi mag release as I have a tendency to knock the release on my chest rig, which is annoying.

 

I designed and 3D printed a cover to stop this happening.

 

[mightyjebus]

I wanted to see if I could make a magwell adapter to take the ACP9K 9mm magazines. Turns out I can.

[GraphiteSunray]

How have you found battery life with the Falcon? I have one of the M4s and it burns through a lipo in a morning.

[mightyjebus]

all my Falcons don't seem to drain the battery more than any other AEG

[Fatboy40]

On 13/05/2022 at 16:15, GraphiteSunray said:

How have you found battery life with the Falcon? I have one of the M4s and it burns through a lipo in a morning.

 

You're missing important points out of your message...

 

# What's the mAh of the battery?

# How many BBs do you believe you've shot when using it for a morning?

# Exactly what voltage is the battery at at the end of the morning?

# Is your DE M90X rifle stock? (have you made any changes to it).

 

... otherwise others can't reply with accurate comments.

 

Personally I've had no problems at all with batteries and the Falcon controller, but people must understand that it IS NOT a GATE Titan, it's battery management is crap compared to the real deal where you can set custom values. Double Eagle have directly told me that the battery protection will let a LiPo batteries cells go below 3.2 volts, and this will more than likely cause permanent damage to them, before the low cell voltage protection kicks in.

 

On Reddit I've argued with people claiming that the Falcon kills batteries, but in and of itself it does not, it's the player not using a battery with an high enough mAh and expecting the gun to cover their arse with it "magic fairy dust".

 

For me, when running a DE M904E as an AEG in skirmishes (I don't play milsim), I'll often get through 1,500 or more BBs, and I'll take a 3,000 mAh Titan LiIo down to around 3.4v per cell. I'd say that if you're maybe shooting 1,000 BBs a morning you'd want a minimum of 1,450 mAh on an 11.2v otherwise you'll run dry and potentially cause permanent battery damage.