Just a small update on my bolt mod and shooting performance.
As I had noted in my original review, the action of the fake bolt is rather limited. You can only open it about 2 cm, making hopup adjustment rather difficult for anyone with fat fingers. I had make the suggestion that a couple of cm could be cut off the end to improve bolt travel. Well, this is true, but still, it doesn't let it travel quite far enough for my liking. It's both a matter of practicality and realism.
The motion of the bolt is stopped by a nub on the guide rod intended to block the spring from sliding off the rod. This nub, unfortunately, also is what prevents the bolt from travelling back far enough, even with a bit cut off the end. So, I made a small modification that allows the bolt to travel over the nub.
First, I removed the fake bolt, and used a grinder bit on my Dremel to grind a notch out of the tip so that it could "ride over" the nub. I installed it and it worked - most of the time. But the notch would still sometimes get caught up on the edge of the nub. So, I used the grinder bit to slightly grind the squared edge of the nub to allow the bolt to ride over it more smoothly.
So now, when the bolt is pulled back all the way, the bolt easily rides over the nub. ow the 2 parts mate together very well and the bolt rides over top of the nub without any interference. I managed to keep the length of the fake bolt as to not expose the AEG's internals to dust by shortening it, and managed to get good range of motion.
This gives it close to a full range of travel as it should. It's still about .5 cm off from having a full range of travel, but now it's the fully compressed spring that's blocking it from moving fack to its full range. I'm pretty happy with this though. It's about as close to perfect as I need it to be - opens enough to allow easy hopup adjustment, and the action is more realistic.
So today I had the gun out at a friend's place in the country and was shooting it. It's a very fun gun to shoot. Its ROF is decent enough, although I'm considering switching for 9.6V batteries (now that I know there's plenty of internal room for them) to increase that slightly. A stiffer spring will be a certain addition down the road, as I just don't feel the stock 300-ish FPS is quite enough for this beastly of a gun. Even with the stock spring though, 150 foot ranges were nothing for this gun to hit accurately.
If you know how to shoot, there's no way you could miss a man-size target at this range as long as it's not moving. And since we were accurately shooting at a 9" aluminum pie plate attached to a 2 x 4, I would say it's realistic to say that you could accurately tag a human head sized target at that range with little effort. At that range, there's the odd BB that will stray from its target a touch, but for the most part, they hit where intended. And this was using the cheap Wal Mart .20 bio-BBs (still working off some leftovers I have).
A note on the hopup adjustment. The other RS T56 review here on ASC mentions that this is a 400+ FPS gun loaded with a weaker spring, and the hopup rubber installed is intended for a high FPS, and not the low out-of-the-box performance. It takes very little adjustment to get the BBs flying straight.
My first 'blind' adjustment attempt had me move the hopup about 25%. I figured that would be a good start point. That effectively converted my gun from an assault rifle into an anti-aircraft gun. BBs would travel about 50 feet with a slight upward arch, then suddenly turn skywards. It was one of the funniest sights. More hopup adjustment only helped to increase this effect. Hopup of over 50% with the stock spring will cause the gun to jam. It's just not intended to handle this type of low power. I found that the best adjustment was to have the hopup at about 10%. That keeps the BBs flying in a nice straight path.