LAST POST

THIS IS ...OR WAS MY RIFLE…

WHILE HE WAS WRITING THE T4E PIECE, FRENCHIE WAS AWARE OF THE LIMITED RANGE AVAILABLE COMPARED TO THE VAST RANGE OF AIRSOFT GUNS THAT THERE ARE, OR HAVE BEEN. THAT GOT HIM THINKING ABOUT SOME OF THE MODELS THAT WERE AVAILABLE AND HAVE SINCE DISAPPEARED, EITHER BECAUSE THEIR TIME HAS COME, OR BECAUSE THEY HAD A SOMEWHAT LIMITED APPEAL.

Some guns are just too niche to prosper where it is more difficult to acquire them purely as collector pieces and others were frankly not brilliant, even if they have done relatively well despite themselves. So, for this month’s Last Post I’m going to trawl my unreliable memories of guns that came and went, or didn’t really do well despite decent availability. It is inevitable that this will not be an exhaustive list, so if there is something that fits here which I’ve missed, forgive me!

I’ll begin with a couple of favourites of mine, the Sten gun and the M41 rifle from Aliens.

The Chinese-made Sten was solid, affordable and worked really well. It was built around a Marui M14 gearbox with all the troublesome selective fire bits removed. The original version, with the fixed hop, shot brilliantly, especially if you changed the hop rubber. I ran mine on 0.3s at 328 fps and it truly shot for miles. Downsides; It’s a crude gun with the ergonomics of an unwieldy pipe. Magazines could be hard to get and were limited to 50 BBs, you couldn’t run a hi-cap sideways sadly. It was never going to challenge ARs in terms of use-ability and really only

“SOME GUNS ARE JUST TOO NICHE TO PROSPER WHERE IT IS MORE DIFFICULT TO ACQUIRE THEM PURELY AS COLLECTOR PIECES AND OTHERS WERE FRANKLY NOT BRILLIANT, EVEN IF THEY HAVE DONE RELATIVELY WELL DESPITE THEMSELVES.”

appealed to gun-nerds and re-enactors. I wish I still had mine just as a wall-hanger though.

This limited appeal has affected a fair number of airsoft replicas. MP40s, PPSH 41s, the Mosin Nagant and Kar 98s have less than universal appeal and I doubt the manufacturers expected to sell millions of them. Some were produced by small businesses and support or spares were pretty much non-existent. They also only really work with certain loadouts and the truth is that enough airsofters care about appearances to mean that Multicam and Sten guns never really became a thing.

The M41 on the other hand is wonderful, right up to the point it isn’t? There’s a Thompson M1A1 inside it which is a great gun with a solid gearbox. It looks fantastic and it is properly iconic. As a gun that you actually have to use however, it’s sh*t. I built a few from kits for customers many years ago and later worked on a number of the Snow Wolf versions. One was fundamentally a copy of the other and therefore they all suffered from similar issues to the historical airsoft models.

Handling left a lot to be desired. Balance was non-existent, the shoulder stock was rotten, the sights were as crude as you can get (even the Sten had better sights), the plate that covered the end of the magazine tended to disappear with depressing regularity and overall it is a clumsy, uncomfortable bit of kit. It’s a film prop after all, so it was designed to look great (which it does) not to be a practical firearm. Like the Sten, I wish I had one, but only enthusiasts and Aliens fans would buy and use them.

Again, this is true of a number of futuristic looking airsoft guns. Many were either silly or not very good, but there were a couple which handled and worked well. Their Achilles heel was the fact that they were different and just didn’t fit into an overall look for the vast majority of players. Anyone else remember the ‘Thundermaul’?! I loved that gun! Looked awful but handled and worked really well if you didn’t mind carrying a strange silver fish-shaped thing about!

HAULING A PIG!

Another class of platforms I’m going to include here might be a bit more divisive - support guns. As a preface to my comments, I owned, used and loved a PKM for a while - that’s a proper gun - and I have used a number of 249s in game over the years. The thing about support guns is that in the UK there is no appreciable difference in performance between them and their much more portable siblings. If you are willing to carry a slew of hi-cap magazines for your M4 or similar, you can perform exactly the same role as with a 249 or an M60. While most support weapons have fairly solid and reliable gearboxes, speaking as one who spent years working on airsoft guns, they aren’t inherently more reliable than most other AEG gearboxes.

If you are a ‘Namsofter I completely understand why you might want an M60, likewise if your thing is to reproduce the look of the old Eastern bloc the PKM or RPK is clearly for you. But truthfully? With no difference in performance there is zero mechanical advantage to lugging around twice the weight of a standard AEG, so you do it because you like it, which is totally fine, indeed part of the attraction of airsoft is you can use whatever platform you want. There was a period when thanks to Chinese production, support guns were hardly any more expensive than rifles, and although I have sold many of them over the years, you don’t see many of them on the field. LiPo batteries have Photo: Twentieth Century Fox overcome the ‘big

battery’ argument that used to be in their favour and while they are impressive bits of kit their success has always relied on some players being willing to carry a lot of extra weight compared to their teammates, essentially to look badass.

A DYING BREED

Finally there are guns which have just disappeared because the manufacturer has decided to either discontinue them or they now make so few that they never seem to make it to the UK. Foremost in my thoughts are my old faithful, the Marui FAMAS. I appreciate that the French army has now adopted the HK416F, but with all respect, the 416 is just a pimped AR and nothing to write home about, whereas the FAMAS was iconic. Even I have to concede that compared to every modern AEG out there, the performance of the FAMAS is pretty woeful and I never managed to upgrade one to my satisfaction but it was still a wonderful gun of which I have many happy memories. I suppose it’s time has come. For reasons I won’t bore you with, I own a 1989 two-stroke East German Trabant; I could argue that it does all the basics required of a car, but would I honestly choose to take it on long journeys? No, of course not. It’s not particularly reliable, it’s uncomfortable after a couple of hours and it really only does 50 mph. This is sadly true of guns like the FAMAS which were the first wave of electric guns many years ago. They were far better than what was around at the time, but technology has moved on apace and with regret they have been left behind.

Airsofters often complain that our little world is full of ARs and AKs, and they’re not wrong. There is a huge variety of weaponry out there to choose from, but the simple truth, in airsoft as in the real world, is that the guns which make it easiest to do the job and which have the flexibility to tackle new challenges are the ones which will ultimately find favour. And for anyone out there, running around every week with multicam and a Mk II Sten, I say, well done and Vive la difference! AA