6 minute read
TECH: ICS UPGRADES
IC-YES PLEASE!
WE HAD A LOOK AT THE BLE CHALLENGER GBB PISTOL FROM ICS SOME TIME AGO NOW, AND IT WAS A MODEL THAT REALLY SHOWED THEIR INTENTIONS TO DRIVE FORWARD THEIR HANDGUN RANGE INTO THE NEXT GENERATION! TIME MOVES ON, AND THAT PROGRAM HAS ALSO MOVED FORWARDS, SO JIMMY HAS A GO AT FITTING SOME ADDITIONAL PARTS TO THE BASE MODEL TO SEE IF THIS FURTHER ENHANCES WHAT WAS ALREADY A SOLID AND MORE-THAN-SERVICEABLE HAND CANNON!
You may well remember back in issue 127 that Bill had the pleasure of testing a new release from ICS. That new release
I got the opportunity to get hold of said pistol and I will admit at first I was a tad “meh” about it as It looked just like the Korth pistol and seemed
was the very lovely Vulture GBB if you don’t remember that means you probably never saw it feature, so please do visit the back issues section and familiarise yourself with that article, although Bill’s conclusion in short was:
“I believe that the BLE Vulture is ICS’ “coming of age” pistol model, one that gives a firm nod to the best developments in the “real world” whilst providing the very best of that “ICS flair” in design and airsoft gas performance. It strikes me as a pistol that 1911 fans will most certainly want in their collection but one which they will rely on and use regularly, and that makes it another winner for ICS, and this time a winner totally on its own merit!” to be very similar in design, utilizing the same recoil system, the same grip and lower frame along with the same single stack 17BB magazine, but after a fashion I discovered that while it
does look a bit the same and has a similar design as the Korth,
the functions between the two are worlds apart. I understand now why Bill referred to it as a “coming of age” model as it moved things along to be a proper, in–house ICS big-boy pistol. I didn’t realise at the time that ICS had made a 2nd edition of the Vulture, but this one was by far for me the better of the two, and looked so much better, and I can lay claim that the “tactical” version does in fact perform to another level to that of the standard Vulture. On the outside the only noticeable difference is the compensator/ muzzle device, whatever you want to call it. My initial perception was that all they have done is screw the device on and given it the title TACTICAL. How wrong was I to think that, it looks absolutely fantastic with the added device making it around two inches longer. fact I myself had made a connection on a professional level with ICS; Airsoft Action has a long-standing professional relationship with ICS might I just add.
Parts landed and it was a very quick delivery I must say, and I was very eager to get started on this little project. What was sent over at first had me baffled; we received several little bags of bits and I was scratching my head as there was half a hop unit, an outer barrel on its own, and the hop up
PROFESSIONAL, AND OLD FRIENDS
After chatting with Rita from ICS I managed to secure the parts needed to do the conversion, along with some very nice quality apparel in the form of a zip-up hoodie, t-shirt and a nice new baseball cap which I very thankful for! I think I was more excited about the housing. After a bit of headscratching the penny dropped… I needed to connect the two pieces of the outer barrel (Loctite don’t forget Loctite!) and swap the left half of the hop unit with the original!
From here on installation was pretty straightforward. Included also was a longer inner 6.03mm brass barrel, threaded adaptor for the muzzle device and a short stroke screw. Using the short stroke screw really did make a difference on the overall performance and increased gas efficiency and together with the short stroke trigger adjustment made a very fast response.
Accuracy has been increased largely due to the fixed hop unit and the addition of the fixed outer barrel and the extended inner barrel. When fixing the outer barrel to the hop unit it’s wise to take care; the screw is short and the threads are very fine. I think the main reason for the fixed outer barrel is to aid the added weight of the muzzle device and to aid the recoil spring as the Vulture doesn’t use a guide-rod unlike something like a 1911 which uses a separate rod. On the Vulture the recoil spring sits around the outer barrel so the added weight of the muzzle device could possibly put pressure on the spring creating issues for the blowback.
Adding these parts I was eager to get some testing in and I wasn’t disappointed. Using Nuprol’s Greenbottle 2.0 gas and 0.20g BBs the chrono was showing an increase on velocity at 290fps +/- 3fps, so an increase of around 30fps which I put down to the extended inner barrel and the fact everything was now more stable.
On the range at 10 meters accuracy was pretty much the same as the out of the box Vulture, that being very accurate, hitting a spinning target which is just over 1 inch in diameter, it was over a distance where the gains were really noticed and the fixed outer barrel really did aid that increase, consistently hitting cola cans (we use only the best targets you know!) at 30mtrs outdoors and the hop unit was easily lifting 0.28g BBs. I believe that with the addition of the Master Mods R-Hop kit this would send a 0.32g BB out to around 50 meters with a 90% hit rate, but that is just a theoretical opinion, but one which I would love to try, and most probably will! I also added a pair of FMA silver CNC pistol grips to make it a little more special looking… performance and bling, a match made in heaven, or Taiwan!
As I said in my article on the ICS Challenger pistol I do believe Tokyo Marui has finally found some very close competition with the latest offerings from ICS, and it’s nice to see what I would say to be true innovation in their products. Information can be easily sourced on all ICS products on their website www.icsbb.com or you can join them for regular and informative updates on their social media pages. AA
