Don't Be A N00b Episode 3 - "Don't use n00b eyewear"

Fox Airsoft now on Twitter!

Check out our new Twitter profile online at: http://twitter.com/foxairsoft

New Website Changes

Hello and welcome back to the Fox Airsoft blog! We wanted to let all of our loyal customers know that we are working around the clock to ensure our web store provides an optimal shopping experience! Some of the changes have already been implemented and you will see more over the coming weeks.

Website Changes:
- Now accepting AMEX!
- More products added
- Easier checkout experience
- Registration is no longer required


Stay tuned for more updates!

- The Fox Airsoft Staff

New Fox Airsoft Youtube Channel!

Fox Airsoft is proud to announce a new You Tube channel where we will be posting video reviews and introductions for our products. We made our first short video over our Fox Airsoft Custom AK-47 airsoft gun.

Check it out online below!



Want to see a particular review of a product? Let us know by emailing us at www.FoxAirsoft.com

Madbull Bucking & Barrel Review

Madbull Bucking & Barrel Review

In this review from Fox Airsoft, we test two recent developments from Madbull. The first is the Blue hop bucking; the second is the 6.03 diameter tight bore barrel. They were tested in order, first installing the hop bucking, and then installing the tight bore barrel.

The hop bucking is a thin rubber sheath that covers the rear end of the barrel.  Its primary purpose is to hold the chambered round in place just ahead of the nozzle before firing.  The bucking also applies the backspin, through deformation caused by the nub, to create the hop-up effect on the bb.  Madbull used a softer rubber compound than most OEM buckings which creates a more consistent grip on the bb and helps to prevent wear and weakening of the rubber after many thousands of cycles.  Also, in every hop bucking kit Madbull includes two buckings and two nubs to further extend the life of your purchase.

By their own admission, however, mad bull doesn’t know why their hop buckings are creating such drastic increases in velocity.  According to their website (www.madbullairsoft.com) they feel the three fins on the end of the bucking better channel air down the barrel for increased velocity.  Whatever the reason may be, there are widespread and reliable reports of 20-50 fps increases in velocity by only installing a Madbull bucking.  This test was conducted specifically to determine whether or not those claims are accurate and to quantify exactly what sort of performance gains are to be expected from using this product.

The second component tested was the tight bore barrel.  The idea behind a tight bore barrel is nothing new in the airsoft world, but Madbull advertises improvements that promise both increased accuracy and range. 

A standard OEM airsoft barrel is generally sized around 6.08mm.  Assuming a perfectly spherical 6mm bb, this allows just over .75 square mm extra space between the bb and barrel at any point within the barrel.  Madbull’s choice of a 6.03mm barrel reduces this extra airspace by 62% resulting in more of the air fired directly contacting the bb rather than escaping around it.

The generally accepted view of how a bb travels down the barrel is that as soon as it is fired it bounces its way down the barrel rather than smoothly flying down the center of the barrel.  In this respect, a tight bore is dramatically superior because it gives the bb less room to bounce away from the center axis of the barrel.  This means each shot will be much more consistent with the previous shot resulting in much improved accuracy. 

Of course, a tighter bore also has some disadvantages.  It must be kept much cleaner than a stock OEM barrel.  Care must also be taken before selecting ammo because certain low quality ammo can become jammed in the barrel.  Also certain older bbs, especially some biodegradable brands can swell with age and exposure to the weather.  We recommend only using new, very high quality with any barrel with a 6.04mm bore or less.  The 6.01mm barrels further exacerbate this problem and we will test and present you with the results of that hopefully in the very near future.

Test Procedure

Testing was performed on a brand new completely stock Classic Army CA416 Sportline. Out of the box velocity is in the range of 305-310 fps. After installation of the Madbull bucking, 10 measured shots were fired on semi-auto, followed by approximately 20-50 unmeasured shots on full auto, and finally another 10 measured shots on semi-auto. This procedure is intended to "break in" the new item to see if there is a difference between the performance of a brand new component vs. one that has been lightly used.

Accuracy testing was performed in a similar manner with several initial unmeasured shots to set the hopup, 10 measured shots, an unmeasured full auto burst and another 10 measured shots.  The distance to the target is approximately 30 feet.  The group sizes are calculated by the smallest circle that can be drawn around the 9 most tightly grouped shots (the furthest outlier is ignored).  The circle does not have to include the center of the target so a tightly grouped set of shots to the left of the bulls-eye will score higher than a loosely spaced group centered on the bulls-eye.  This is intended to test repeatability and consistency rather than sight alignment or shooter skill.

Due to time and expense, we will not normally test an item's durability on a long term basis or test it to failure. If, later on, we uncover any durability problems in any of the products we test, we will add those findings to the review at that time.


Data/Results

Velocity measurement with .25g biodegradable Airsoft Elite bb

Stock	Bucking	Bucking	Barrel	Barrel
304.3	311.6	309.8	326.7	326.7
310.7	308.7	310.8	323.2	325.7
308.9	311.0	306.3	323.7	324.6
306.5	307.8	309.7	326.1	323.6
304.5	310.2	309.6	325.1	324.3
307.4	316.7	311.4	325.0	325.1
307.6	311.4	311.2	327.0	329.7
305.4	310.5	313.0	326.1	326.7
306.3	318.9	314.4	326.4	327.8
307.0	311.6	311.1	326.7	326.0

Accuracy Test

Stock	Bucking	Bucking	Barrel	Barrel
5.5 in	5.0 in	5.0 in	4.0 in	4.0 in

 

Based on the data gathered in the above section, the hop bucking added approximately 5-10 fps with a significant increase in accuracy and consistency.  A further gain of about 10-15fps was observed with the tight bore barrel in addition to the bucking yielding a total gain of around 20fps with both components installed.

We saw a significant increase in accuracy at 30 feet, with much tighter groupings than without the upgraded components.  A decrease in average group sizes of about 10% was seen with the bucking alone and a further 20% reduction in average group size was seen with the tight bore barrel and the bucking installed together.  It should be noted that since the gun was fired from the kneeling position rather than securely mounted, a portion of the results depend on the skill of the shooter rather than the accuracy of the components.  The testing was performed this way to get a more “real world” measurement of accuracy that may align more closely with what a player may see in the field. 

From a qualitative standpoint both the bucking and barrel seemed to show a marked improvement in accuracy and consistency.  The gains from the hop bucking were most noticeable at relatively short range and by the reduction of curve off at the limit of range.  The tight bore barrel performance was more noticeable at medium to long ranges where the groups appeared significantly tighter than stock.

Conclusion

Both the Madbull hop bucking and 6.03mm tight bore barrel showed significant improvement in both accuracy and consistency.  Velocity was significantly improved without altering any gearbox components so there is no effect to the mechanical durability of the gun’s internals.  The “curve off” at the limit of range was also reduced resulting in an increased effective range along with the increase in absolute range from the additional 50 fps.

We welcome any and all comments, questions and suggestions at service@foxairsoft.com   If you would like to purchase these products for yourself send us an email at sales@foxairsoft.com or visit www.foxairsoft.com.

Effects of Altitude on Velocity

Effects of Altitude on Velocity

Introduction

Have you ever wondered how the altitude affects your FPS when traveling to national airsoft events?  Check out the following review from Fox Airsoft. 

Fox Airsoft is based in Colorado and as a result, variations in altitude might be more important than in many other parts of the country.  At least locally, there has been a lot of speculation on the exact effect that changing elevations has on the velocity, especially for those who set up their guns to chrono at or near the published velocity limits of whichever events they attend.  It is the intent of this review to provide a quantitative analysis of the effect that altitude has on velocity and provide an explanation based on the results. 

Before we present the results, we’ll quickly go over the basics of atmospheric pressure and how it changes with altitude.  The first and most important thing to recognize is that air has weight.  The normal atmospheric pressure at sea level is 14.7 psi (pounds per square inch); the easiest way to think about this is to imagine a one inch by one inch column of air reaching all the way to the upper edge of the atmosphere, roughly 100 miles.  This column of air weighs 14.7 pounds on an average day at sea level.  Because of the weight of air pushing down on the air below it, the air is much more compressed on the bottom of the column and there’s almost none at the top.  This means that if you go up just 2000 feet above sea level, you have bypassed a full pound of air and your column now weighs about 13.7 pounds. 

Thinking about this from a more practical airsoft point of view, if you are shooting 100 feet, the BB will fly horizontally through 1200 of these columns of air so the less air in that column, the farther you will shoot.  On the other hand you will also have less air inside the AEG cylinder when you fire resulting in less compression and theoretically a lower velocity.  The data we have gathered is intended to determine which high altitude characteristic affects the velocity more, the lower drag on the BB or the lower compression in the cylinder.

Test Procedure

This test was performed in according to our standard test model at two different altitudes.  With hop up completely turned off, 10 measured shots were fired on semi-auto, followed by approximately 10-30 unmeasured shots on full auto, and finally another 10 measured shots on semi-auto.  The test gun was an ICS M4 with a Madbull blue hop bucking, a Madbull tight bore barrel and M120 spring.

The same Xcortech X3200 chronograph was used at both locations and the tests were performed two days apart to minimize any other outside disturbances that could affect the test with time.  Two brands of BBs were tested; Excel .25g Bio and Airsoft Elite .25g Bio. Weather conditions were measured at the time of testing and based on NOAA information at the closest available weather station.

Data/Results

The posted data show the results with both BB brands and the velocities measured after the full auto burst described in the test procedure section.

High Altitude

Altitude	Temperature	Relative Humidity	Pressure	Air Density
6189 ft	51°F	48%	29.84”	0.0615 lb/ft3

Shot #	Excel Bio .25g	Airsoft Elite Bio .25g
1	341.0	369.3
2	353.2	368.1
3	341.4	364.0
4	333.5	364.5
5	345.0	364.7
6	343.3	365.4
7	342.7	367.3
8	339.7	366.1
9	342.8	368.4
10	335.8	367.3
Average	341.8	366.5

Low Altitude

Altitude	Temperature	Relative Humidity	Pressure	Air Density
906 ft	55°F	77%	30.07”	0.0742 lb/ft3

Shot #	Excel Bio .25g	Airsoft Elite Bio .25g
1	376.0	380.0
2	375.6	377.0
3	375.1	380.0
4	376.6	381.4
5	372.1	381.6
6	376.6	378.9
7	372.1	384.7
8	370.3	381.0
9	379.8	377.0
10	368.8	382.1
Average	374.3	380.4

Conclusion

As you can see from the results, we saw an average 32.5 fps increase from the Excel Bio .25g BBs and an average 13.9 fps increase from the Airsoft Elite Bio .25g.  The discrepancy from one brand to another could be due to a number of reasons.  If these BBs are not precisely the same size, a smaller BB will escape its seat on the bucking before a larger one.  This would result in less pressure being built up behind the BB and a lower velocity measured at the chrono.  The same reduced velocity would be experienced by a BB with a smoother surface finish.  Additionally, a slightly smaller BB allows more air to escape around it in the barrel and reduce the total velocity.  One thing these results do point out is how important BB selection is at the chrono for guns close to the limit.

Regardless of BB choice though, from these results it’s clear that decreasing elevation has the effect of increasing velocity measured at the chronograph.  The important thing to remember is that we are measuring velocity at the end of the barrel.  At this point the most significant effect on the BB is the pulse of air delivered by the piston.  The drag from the denser air makes almost no difference at the end of the barrel because of the much higher pressure of air pushing the BB out the barrel.  Beyond the end of the barrel, the BB is only affected by the air it’s traveling through.  In this case, the higher density of the air results in higher drag and the BB will slow down sooner.  Overall, even though velocity is reduced at the muzzle at high altitude, the same gun will have a bit more total range.

Please let us know what you think of our online review.  We welcome any and all comments, questions and suggestions at service@foxairsoft.com or sales@foxairsoft.com.  Also, be sure to check out our other reviews at www.foxairsoft.com

Free Shipping? We must be crazy!

Fox Airsoft is proud to announce that we now offer FREE SHIPPING!*  That's right!  Starting October 1, 2009 we are offering free UPS Ground Shipping for all orders over $100.  It's our way of saying thank you to our loyal customers.  To take advantage of this deal, simply purchase an Airsoft Rifle or accessories totaling over $100 and use the coupon code "FREESHIP" at checkout.

Start October off right by treating yourself to some cool new airsoft gear at an even more affordable price!  To see this, and other great deals on airsoft guns, accessories, and more check out www.FoxAirsoft.com .


*Offer subject to change without notice.  Offer valid on all orders over $100.  This offer cannot be combined with any other offer.