9 minute read
ARMOURY: G&G PIRANHA
A PISTOL
WITH BITE!!
ALTHOUGH “AIRSOFT REPLICA MILITARY MODELS” ARE STILL AMONGST THE MOST POPULAR AEGS AND GBBS THAT WE ALL BUY, IT IS INTERESTING TO SEE NEW DESIGNS HITTING THE MARKET, CONCEPTS DRAWN UP BY AIRSOFT MANUFACTURERS THEMSELVES. BILL HAS BEEN LIVING WITH THE NEW G&G ARMAMENT PIRANHA MK1 GBB PISTOL FOR A COUPLE OF MONTHS NOW AND THIS IS HIS VERDICT ON THIS UNIQUE PISTOL DESIGN.
Idon’t know about you but I’ve certainly been spending more time than usual with my handgun collection in the past weeks! Even while you’re stuck at home, if you have a back garden or yard where it’s safe to shoot, then a pistol is the ideal thing. You only need about 20-30 feet, your eyepro, some BBs and gas, and some targets set into a solid backstop, and you’re good to go!
I do have neighbours but they’re all used to seeing me “out back” with AEGs and GBBs, as I’ve taken time to speak with them and “educate” them that what they see me shooting are “6mm BB replicas”. In fact, my immediate neighbour, Steve, whilst 100% NOT an airsofter now regularly sticks his head over the fence to ask me “So what model is that?” - and I’ve invited him to come and have a go when we’re able to “mingle” once again!
Now I know that everyone reading this may not be as lucky as I to have a range at home, but even if you can’t shoot, you can still be running draw and manipulation drills and especially in a small space it’s actually far easier to do this with a pistol than even a carbine. I find (and this is a somewhat guilty admission) that I spend far longer working on my “long drills” than I do for my handgun skills, but then I am of the “old skool” that feels if you need to go for your “secondary” then something has gone seriously wrong!
I’ve actually been enjoying spending more time with my GBB handguns and although I have my favourites, it’s always nice to try something new isn’t it? A couple of months back, when I paid my last visit prior to lockdown to the NUPROL office near London, I was lucky enough to secure a test and evaluation sample of the new Piranha Mk1 GBB pistol that, as G&G distributor for the UK, they had receieved for the product launch. As I posted recently on the Airsoft Action website, this model is soon to be with retailers and therefore available to everyone!
MODERN STRIKER
I’ll get this out of the way first… The Piranha is most definitely not a replica of a “military or police” pistol but something far more interesting! It’s a unique design that G&G have created in-house and, in my opinion, it shows the very best of the current you could still argue that by mimicking the action of the real world “Striker Fired” concept, it allows you to get your follow-up shots on target more quickly and efficiently and the rest of the Piranha follows this ethos. Like many “Striker Fired” handguns, the Piranha has a
drive for airsoft manufacturers to play with their own concepts, ones that feature all their latest technology all wrapped up in a pleasing and ultimately very usable finished product!
The Piranha, to me looks, like a “Striker Fired” pistol but one with some super features. For those of you confused by the term “Striker Fired”, just picture the rear end of a Glock, where there is no visible hammer and nothing to catch on anything. In a real firearm, what makes a gun striker fired or hammer fired? The differences come from the parts that make up the action, the mechanism of the gun that loads, fires, and ejects a round and how those parts work together.
With a “Hammer Fired” semi-auto pistol your first trigger pull is in double-action mode and every shot following is shot in single-action, as the cycling of the slide cocks the hammer. Having two different trigger pulls has its pros and cons; while some find that the initial “trigger pull” is safer, others find it difficult to adjust to a lighter trigger pull following the first shot, which is reflected in their shot placement.
Glock are still probably the prime example and the striker fired pistol has become extremely popular with many shooters. The striker fired pistol does not rely on a hammer hitting a firing pin to ignite the primer of the cartridge. Racking the slide to chamber a round partially cocks an internal spring and when the trigger is pulled, this cocks the spring the remainder of the way, which causes the striker pin to hit the cartridge and fire the round.
Although this has little real bearing on an airsoft pistol,
polymer frame which consists of a one-part front rail section, trigger guard, and grip. The grip angle is more “Glock” than “Colt” which personally I like.
The slide is all alloy which gives the pistol a nice weight (773g overall) and balance, but again there’s something a bit different about it in that it’s a two-piece design. The front section of the slide housing the barrel is semi-fixed which should aid accuracy and it’s only the rear section that moves, which, in principle, means that if only 50% of the weight of the slide is moved during the shooting sequence, then gas efficiency should be optimised for faster cycling but more on that later!
Controls are simple and easy to use, with a Glock-like “safety trigger”, slim slide release and a chunky magazine release. In addition to this is a large, ambidextrous takedown lever and that, basically, is all she wrote! But what more do you need?
The hop design is one that I’ve seen on the new line of G&G pistols and one that I like immensely, with precise adjustment an easy task; this super external adjustment means you don’t need to remove the entire top slide, which is a really cool feature! Fine-tuning is very straightforward and requires only the included “bullet tool”, which comes with a key ring so that you can add it to your keys for easy retention, or dummy cord to you or your gear. Simply insert the “bullet tool” into the muzzle to make tiny adjustments and by turning it you are pulling the inner barrel tighter into the outer barrel, which presses onto the hop rubber itself. Simple, ingenious and works perfectly!
With any gas-powered platform you need to keep an eye on the action if the temperature starts to drop and the Whirl Cylinder Valve that G&G have created will certainly help you when things cool down, or when you’re “having at it” in earnest! With a light slide weight and spring the Piranha is already very gas efficient, but the ceramic “Whirl Valve”, which spins when you shoot to break up any ice deposits inside the nozzle, takes performance further still.
IT’S GOT TEETH!
I set the Piranha up with .20g RZR BBs for chrono in the 24BB magazine (this is slightly larger than the magazine of the GTP-9 and sadly not compatible) and got a pleasingly consistent and perfectly playable 0.8 Joule/295fps over the course of the magazine on NUPROL 2.0 “Green”.
And as much as the Piranha is a very attractive, lightweight modern design and a lovely thing to behold, at the end of the day it’s how it performs that we all want to know and if anything, it shoots even better than it looks! As I stated earlier, for me a handgun is a backup and certainly one that needs to excel on the 10m range, and as I’d hoped, at this distance the Piranha has some serious bite! Once you’ve set the “muzzle hop” with the sweet little “bullet tool” to your chosen weight of BBs (0.25g worked well for me), at 10m it’s deadly accurate! Where
“THE PIRANHA IS A VERY ATTRACTIVE, DESIGN AND A LOVELY THING TO BEHOLD, DAY IT’S HOW IT PERFORMS THAT WE ALL ANYTHING, IT SHOOTS EVEN BETTER THAN IT
the accuracy of many of my pistol collection would start to fade a little beyond that distance though, the Piranha is still bang on the button. Upping to 20m using the classic three-dot sights I was still happily hitting sandbags!
G&G Armament really seem to be pushing things forward right now when it comes to interesting and unique design concepts, and I have to say that to date I’ve thoroughly enjoyed shooting the GTP-9, the SMC-9 (which shares the pistol operating system), and now the Piranha Mk1. As I write, G&G have just added the Piranha TR to their pistol line and this adds a top rail to the overall feature set.
Whilst this a great addition for those that want to run some form of Micro RDS on their pistol, for me it detracts from the sheer elegance of the Mk1 which harkens back to the “feel” of the original CZ75 and the Browning Hi-Power. Both of those models were, and still are, superb “combat pistol” designs that were slim, light, and easy to manipulate, and IF there is any nod to them in the overall design for the Piranha, then the G&G pistol is all the better for it!
My thanks go to G&G (www.guay2.com) for providing this sample for evaluation and to NUPROL for facilitating this as my country G&G distributor. The Piranha is currently available in plain black or black/silver as tested. AA
LIGHTWEIGHT MODERN AT THE END OF THE WANT TO KNOW AND IF LOOKS!”
