[Crunchmeister]

1) Manufacturer, Model Name
- Double Eagle M86 (AK47 ) AEG

2) Date Obtained
- Sept 2007

3) Initial Cost
- $250 Cdn

4) New or Used
- New

5) Mechanical Problems
- None to date, although couple of the plastic 'teeth' connecting the plastic lower body to the upper receiver broke. Has no effect on the performance of the gun though.

6) Esthetic Problems
- The fit of the 2 halves of the stock isn't the tightest, but it lines up well enough. The simulated wood grain is quite realistic though. Otherwise, everything else looks great.

7) Rounds fired between failures
- I've put over 17 000 rounds through it so far. I have't been able to find any .20g BBs around here, so I've been using those 5 000 packs of .12g Crosman BBs. I've been through 2 full ones to date plus the 200 that came with the gun. Just fired off 5 000 .20s today though. What a difference!

Changes to Internals and Externals
- No internal changes. I've only painted the lower body since it was originally clear.

9) Resale Date and Value if applicable.
- I couldn't see myself selling this gun. I'm getting more guns, but I'm never replacing this one unless it breaks

10)Notes and Comments

I think this is a great first gun. It's reasonably solid (nothing moves, wiggles, bends,etc). Seems quite powerful too. The box advertises 105 m/s (344 fps). I don't know if this is accurate or not, but it did seem quite fast.

And the accuracy is KILLER too. At 25 feet indoors (in my basement), I can easily cut the centre out of an "official" NRA qualification targetwith very few stray rounds. I brought it out to a friend's place out of the city today for a while and we shot off a 5 000 pack of .20g BBS, and I was accurately tagging targets up to 150 feet away. I could still hit the target at about 180 feet, but there were a lot of stray shots. Still, I'm impressed with this gun. I wasn't expecting much for the price.

I'm new to Airsoft and have a lot to learn, so I'm sure my opinion here can be taken as the words of someone without much experience with Airsoft guns (I did collect BB and pellet guns for years). But in terms of reliability and accuracy for recreational shooting, I can give this gun top marks. I'm not sure how it would hold out in the field in an actual game, but to me, it appears pretty solid.

UPDATE: Dec 1, 2007 - I dropped the rifle and the stock broke off. the part that connected the stock to the stock body essentially snapped off the body. Got some duct tape on it, and it still shoots fine, only not very solid and now ugly as sin. It seems the plastic is quite brittle. Still think it's a great gun for just fun shooting, but now I'm convinced it wouldn't hold up to abuse in the field.