13 minute read
ARMOURY: SECUTOR GLADIUS MAGNA PCC KIT
OVER THE PAST YEAR WE’VE SPENT A LOT OF TIME LOOKING AT THE RAFT OF PISTOL CALIBRE CARBINES (PCCS) THAT HAVE COME ONTO THE MARKET, AND ALTHOUGH WE LOVE MOST OF THEM THERE IS STILL A QUESTION UNANSWERED IN OUR MINDS; WHERE IS THE PRIMARY THAT ACTUALLY USES THE EXACT SAME MAGAZINES AS OUR SECONDARY? BILL TAKES A LOOK AT BOTH A SECUTOR PISTOL AND THE LICENCED CARBINE KIT TO GO WITH IT, AND MOVES THINGS FORWARD AGAIN!
As I predicted round about this time last year, 2021 has indeed been the “Year of the PCC” and this shows no sign of letting up any time soon! I’ve had my hands on some wonderful little carbines during the course of the last year, and all of them are skirmish-worthy, but there’s still a MAJOR niggle scratching and itching at the back of my mind, and it’s the fact that virtually all of them use proprietary magazines.
You may ask why this bothers me SO much, and it’s as simple as this; I own a number of 1911, Hi Capa, and G-Series pistols, and have a grab-bag of magazines for all of them, so a PCC that used those exact same magazines would be 100% my ideal tool… no need to buy a whole other set of mags, I could just use the same ones for both pistol and carbine! I also think that given complementary mags, any airsofter considering moving to “full gas” in their loadout that already owned a GBB handgun would find this a cheaper option too. Although the superb new lowers for the PCCs are indeed “airsoft art”, the fact is that proprietary magazines are still needed is, I feel strongly, a real loss for both existing gas players and potential “gas carbine” skirmishers.
I do hope that that some of the manufacturers will go back to their design teams with the gas PCC variants and make them completely compatible with pistol magazines, as a short PCC really is quite an excellent and useful addition to anyone’s CQB armoury. Would I own one right now? Yes I would, but it’s not what you might think!
A couple of months back I had the pleasure of visiting our friends up at iWholesales who deal, amongst many brands, with Secutor Arms. Although I know and love Secutor for their VELITES shotguns and RAPAX AR models I will admit that I’ve had limited experience with their pistols. A number of local players, and indeed a couple of members of Red Cell own the Secutor LUDUS 1911-style GBBs and they perform very nicely, no problem with any of them. I’ve also tried the original Secutor GLADIUS (their take on the “G-Series”) and liked it, but as I already own quite a few excellent “G-Series” handguns it didn’t wow me enough to make we want one. However, when you add the Gladius to the RECOVER TACTICAL Carbine Kit, then all bets are off!
Now pistol carbine “kits” are nothing new, and I simply need to point you at the CAA RONI family and the KPOS to illustrate this; in direct airsoft terms I can also point you towards one of my favourite G&G setups in the form of the SMC-9 that in terms of operation is based largely on their super little “Piranha” pistol and is fully compatible with the gas magazines for that.
However, both of these models are pretty much SMG-length RIFs, and if you’re looking for something to act as a backup for a DMR or bolt-action rifle then it means you’re going to be lugging around an SMG as a “secondary secondary”, and especially for the snipers out there, the last thing you want is more weight and more bulk to lug around and get caught in the undergrowth!
This is where a minimalist carbine kit like the RECOVER 20/20 (known under licence to Secutor as the CORVUS) married up to a reliable GBB pistol comes into its own.
A NAME TO RESPECT
First up though, let’s have a closer look at the pistol that Secutor recommend as a partner to the RECOVER 20/20 kit, and that’s the Gladius Magna, and in fact you can now buy the pistol and the carbine kit as one item!
Why Gladius? As some of you may know, and some may not, “gladius” literally translated means “sword”, but given Secutor’s love for all things Romanesque in their naming protocols I believe we can safely say that in this case it refers to the “Gladius Hispaniensis” as this was the standard short sword of Roman legionaries. It was much respected due to its relatively short and double-edged blade which made it ideal for cutting and thrusting in the confined space of hand to hand combat. Legionaries were trained both to cut and stab, and in fact were very specifically trained to stab while protecting themselves with their shield rather than expose their torso and arm, and of course we all know how historically important this was!
As Eddie Izzard once said ““I’ve done a bit of Latin in my time… but I can control it”; his sketch on the efficacy of what he called “the Roman Pokey Pokey Sword” still ranks up there for me as one of the funniest sketches out there that actually teaches you something about military history, but I digress… what he intimated in the sketch is that while wild barbarians had huge blades that they would flail about with, the Romans, highly trained and effective, would simply engage from behind their shields, and from that protective stance… then, “pokey pokey”, I’m sure you get the picture!
Magna? Again, literally translated from Latin, magna means simply “great”, so what you have then is a “great little sword”… doesn’t sound quite so flash as “Gladius Magna”, now does it? But
from what I can see, in the Gladius Magna series Secutor have created a family of “G-Series” pistols that fulfil the role of a short effective fighting tool for the trained user. As a standalone I had the Gladius Magna VI TIER 2 to have a close look at, and I have to admit I really liked it!
The polymer lower frame is undoubtedly “G”, and it uses “G-Series”
mags, but where that’s pretty much “standard” stops!
The alloy FDE on the slide, a rather nice test model, is fully
on-trend with the current crop
of cutaway
and lightened styles out there, and I actually love the fact it has a deeply etched “SPQR” symbol on the top, giving it a distinct character. I also love that behind this symbol are the fixings for attaching a red dot sight should you wish to, but unlike some this is neatly done without losing the aesthetic “line” of the slide.
As it is, the pistol comes with some distinctly “G” open sights, which of course means you can fit Hi Vis fibres if you wish. At the sharp end is a really chunky, easily removable compensator that adds to the overall visual appeal of the pistol as a whole, as does the extended bumper on the 23BB C02 magazine and the aggressive stippling on the pistol grip. It’s a very striking design without doubt, and everything is very tidily finished!
On the range the Magna is a real blast as given the CO2 mag, it has a hard-kick, fast-cycling action, and knowing that you’re not going to run out of gas during your first mag means that you can really put some BBs downrange at a rate of knots! Power is sensible, with a mean reading through the chrono of 0.93 Joule/317fps using a .20g BB. Accuracy at 10m is very good indeed, with nice tight groupings possible if you put your mind to it. The trigger guard is standard “G” which means that the Magna is still fine if you’re using gloves with reinforced/protected fingers, and for me the extended-bumper magazine made the pistol very comfortable indeed to shoot. Although the Magna is by no means a “replica” I can tell you that it is largely compatible with existing “G” holsters.
STABILTY IS KING
As I may have mentioned in my article on bipods in this issue, when it comes to longer-range accuracy then stability is king! How does this transfer to a pistol then, and the answer is via the RECOVER TACTICAL (RT) 20/20 carbine kit! If you’ve not come across them before, RT products are designed by the world-renowned Israeli weapons engineer and industrial designer Tamir Porat. Tamir has a long history of designing innovative weapons systems including the Tavor rifle used by the Israeli Defense Forces as well as other militaries and the growing civilian markets around the world. Tamir has many years of experience in the defence industry, specializing within a wide range of areas such as small arms, vehicles, and riot control. The values that guide his work are reliability and functionality, and RT “are committed to the highest standards of performance”.
What sings to me about the 20/20 kit is its absolute simplicity! Although it does offer a folding stock so that you can use your pistol from the shoulder effectively and more accurately, when this minimalist stock is locked to the right hand side the entire frame only extends 105mm behind the pistol, and you can still access the trigger easily when the stock is folded. I did however find the slide release difficult to activate when wearing gloves, but as with all things this got better with practice and repetition.
Obviously the 20/20 is aimed, in the real world, at Glock pistol users, and although it follows the Roni and KPOS kits’ distinctly Israeli tradition, it is a far neater and less bulky design. The 20/20 wraps around the pistol in a clamshell fashion, and locks itself to the front rail; fitting requires a single allen bolt (provided) and it’s super-quick and easy, as it simply requires you to align the 20/20 with the rail, and the kit has a recess to secure the rear of the pistol firmly in place, locking it down and adding to the overall stability. The kit comes with a choice of two oversized “charging handles” to provide ease of cocking, a straightforward two piece affair, and a large “ghost ring” style; these charging handles allow you to more easily manipulate the slide when the pistol is mounted in the 20/20, but I found that the “ghost ring” version was hard to fit to the Magna given the “swell” in the slide where the red dot mounting point is.
The RT 20/20 is completely and utterly modular, and if you pay a visit to their website you’ll find a host of different attachments and upgrades available which include an optic mount, additional rails, and
a magazine holder for the front rail. There’s even a bespoke holster option; the paddle-style holster fits around the body of the kit and covers the trigger for safe carry. Just FYI, if you buy the “Magna/RT” kit as one item you’ll be getting the Magna III rather than the TIER 2, but the only major difference is that the III has a knurled outer barrel protector rather than the compensator.
As much as the Magna /RT setup is a brilliant lightweight design that transforms your pistol into a proper shoulder-aimed platform, if anything it shoots even better than it looks! The Magna/RT combo for me steps into that 10 to 30m ground where I have to lay down my DMR and draw my pistol, and as I’d hoped given that it’s C02 -driven, at those distances it absolutely rocks! Once you’ve set up to your chosen weight of BBs (0.25g worked well for me), at 10m it’s deadly accurate which makes it an absolutely ideal CQB tool, but where my pistol would start to fade a little beyond 15-20m (down to the user, not the platform!), the combo is still bang on the button. On the 30m range prone and using the standard iron sights I was still happily hitting sandbags at the furthest extent, and this is with a standard G-series-length inner barrel; my thoughts are that with a bit of fettling the power is certainly there to reach further, and the added stability given by the 20/20 means that you’ll actually be hitting what you aim at!
So does the Magna/RT setup begin to answer my question as to a proper “PCC System”? Oh yes, it does! Although I would personally class this setup as a “carbine” when it’s all mated together, it is so much more than that. The RT 20/20 is a platform that turns a pistol (and it does fit most G-Series” models out there) into a more effective and more stable shoulder-fireable “carbine”, and I CAN use my existing pistol magazine in it, including extended models!
Okay, whilst the 20/20 is a “carbine” or “brace” kit that works with the Magna and not what I would call a TRUE PCC, in my mind the door is still very much wide open for someone to step through and fill this void. I STILL believe that the first company to come to market with a viable gas carbine in AR configuration that is completely compatible with gas pistol magazines will be onto a real winner, but until someone develops a PCC that uses the same magazines as my chosen secondary I’d say that the RT 20/20 and the Gladius have a distinct edge!
My thanks go to www.iwholesales.co.uk for providing me with the test model of the Gladius Magna, along with the Gladius/RT combo; they have most of the Secutor line available so for this and other models do check them out! AA
TOKYO MARUI L119A2 CUSTOM BUILD
NEXT GEN RECOIL SHOCK CONTACT US FOR DETAILS
THE L119A2 IS JUST ONE POPULAR EXAMPLE OF OUR CURRENT RECOIL MODELS, BASED ON TOKYO MARUI’S FANTASTIC SYSTEM - FITTED WITH THE ANGRY GUN RAIL SYSTEM AND REAL STEEL MAGPUL FURNITURE
