FOG HORN
November 2020 Twobirds Flying Publications
BLACKBEARD ! Copyright 2020, Towbirds Flying Publications. All Rights Reserved.
MANTIS BLACKBEARD – to enhance your AR training experience MANTIS BLACKBEARD – to enhance your AR training experience
2020
and the electromechanical wizardry that resets your trigger.
By: Sal Palma
This review is definitely not a pirate story, but in the interest of enlightenment, Blackbeard was an English pirate who operated in the Atlantic and West Indies. His real name was Edward Teach and hailed from Bristol, England, but why the folks at Mantis named a product that is as much fun after a pain in the ass to shipping and navigation remains to be revealed.
Blackbeard’s bolt carrier completely replaces the platform’s actual bolt carrier rendering the rifle totally safe. It’s impossible to inadvertently chamber a live round or fire a round.
Concisely stated, this is the most fun I’ve had with an AR style carbine in a long time. If you find that statement redundant please excuse my exuberance. So, let’s reveal what this Illinois Company has created. Mantis, designers and manufacturers of some very high-tech training systems like the MantisX, created an AR training tool that fires a laser with every trigger pull and resets the trigger after each pull, freeing the trainee from operating the charging handle between shots. In the process, they also successfully eliminated the chief reason why most people don’t dry fire train with their AR platforms. The Blackbeard is a two module system, the magazine-like rechargeable battery pack and the bolt carrier group, which houses the laser
The battery pack is a USB rechargeable power source inserted into the rifle’s magazine well.
Copyright 2020, Towbirds Flying Publications. All Rights Reserved.
MANTIS BLACKBEARD – to enhance your AR training experience
2020
Contacts on the battery pack make contact with similar contacts on the bolt carrier, and once they mate you’ll hear the Blackbeard bolt carrier power up.
The engineers at Mantis had their thinking caps on when they included a windage and elevation laser adjustment. These two adjustments are accessible from the ejection port and their function is to allow the shooter to center the laser to the rifle’s bore.
Mantis offers the Blackbeard in four flavors: no laser, red laser, green laser and IR. However, If you are planning on using Blackbeard on reactive targets, for example Laserlyte targets, you’ll want to confirm spectrum compatibility, Laserlyte targets for example are tuned to red lasers. Training with the Blackbeard is an absolute blast. You can use it safely anywhere. Teach your kids, practice CQB tactics, transitions etc. You’re only limited by your imagination. One of the drills that usually gives me a hard time is sight offset at close ranges. A few practice sessions with Blackbeard cleared that problem up for me.
Centering the laser to the bore is straightforward. Locate the slide switch directly behind the wind and elevation adjustment points. Slide the switch to the “+” position then adjust accordingly until you see a sharply focused laser dot. When you’ve centered the laser to the weapon, slide the switch to the up position and you’re ready to train.
I’ve trained with Simunition and love it but it’s not cheap so it would not surprise me to see a Mantis Blackbeard or two work its way into LE trainers where weapon recoil impulse is not critical to delivering an effective experience at a much lower cost. The Mantis Blackbeard has made its way into my Holiday Shopping recommendations. It’s fun, completely safe and cost effective at an M.S.R.P. of $199 for a no laser version, $219 for a red laser, $249 for green and IR. Be sure to add to your Santa’s letter, you’ll be glad you did. -SP Copyright 2020, Twobirds Flying Publications, All Rights Reserved