MP5K PDW Up Close And Personal - Part 2: The Return of a Vengeange

This is the second part of my Galaxy MP5K PDW review that grew into a giant and was split into two. Part 1 here.

Operation

To get the gun in working order, you need to jump through a few more hoops than usual. Or, at least the process is somewhat more convoluted than it is in my other two guns. I guess it's simply due to the small measurements of the gun. It's actually pretty amazing how much stuff fits in such a small space.

Before inserting the battery, you will need to remove the flash hider, the front grip and the buttstock. The flash hider has a fast locking mechanism and can then simply be twisted and pulled off. My flash hider conveniently broke into two pieces when I forgot to remove it before trying to slide the front grip off.

I suppose there was some glue in between the two parts, but not very much. The thing is still very much intact and can be reassembled, but I don't really care to.

To remove the front grip, you need to pull out the pin that also doubles as the front sling point. Problem here is that it is secured by a spring that is strong enough to resist pressing it down with fingers alone. I have to use a screwdriver or other implement to do this, so taking the gun apart in field conditions might prove problematic. Once the pin is out, the front end is free to slide forward and off the gun.

Once the front end is free, you have access to the connector. Now you still need to remove the buttstock to actually be able to insert the battery. The buttstock is similarly held in place by spring secured pins, but they are much less resistant and can be pushed out without tools.

Once the buttstock is loose, you can carefully insert the battery in the space above the gearbox. You need to be careful not to get the wires caught on anything inside.

Once you get the battery in far enough, the connector still needs to be finessed out of the opening in the front. Depending on the angle, it might take a bit of work to actually get it out so you can push the battery all the way in.

There is very little space to work the connectors, but they will eventually fit in there somehow, and you can replace the front grip, the flash hider and the buttstock.

If you want, you can remove the buttstock and just use the end plate to secure the battery in place. The buttstock is connected to the end plate just with two screws.

Once unscrewed, you'll also notice that the sling mount is held in place by a simple C clip. In an ideal world, you could just remove this, push the sling mount base through the hole on the end plate, replace the clip and you'd be good to go.

No there though. The edge of the end plate is so close to the hole that the C clip will not lock in place. The tips of the clip will need to be filed down in order for it to lock. Curious design.

I kept the buttstock on, since I was just about to start test shooting and sighting this thing.

Shooting

Before starting actual target shooting, I chronoed the gun. As advertised, it shot a fairly steady 95-98 m/s (312-321 fps) with 0.20 g BBs. The fire rate was around 860 rpm (14.3 rps). Not bad at all, although there might be some interest for to up the ROF one way or another in the future.

To zero the sights, I set up a small shooting range in the study at home. That enabled me some peace and quiet and a distinct lack of cats that love to jump after BBs rolling on the floor. There's about seven metres from the door to the other end of the room which ends in a large windowsill. Perfect for setting up a target.

I filled a cardboard box with some old newspapers, taped a blank A4 on the front and used brightly coloured Post-Its as the actual aiming point. This way I could replace both the paper and the Post-Its with ease once they were filled with too many holes while still seeing if the shots were missing the target one way or the other.

And they sure were. Missing, that is. The gun kept shooting up and way to the left. First order of business at this point was obviously to check and see if there was something I could do to adjust the sights. The front sight is immovable, so nothing to do there. The rear sight has no elevation controls, but at least there's a rudimentary windage setting. Turn screw, slide sight sideways.

Sadly, this had very little effect on where the BBs went. I even tried to move the rear sight in both extremes just to make sure I was not doing something wrong, but no. Always to the left and up. As I said, there's no elevation adjustment so I'll just have to aim a little low.

Adjusting the hop-up also did very little, since my shooting distance was rather short. Unlike in my other AEGs, this one has a rather awkward hop-up adjustment. There is no wheel as usual, instead the adjustment is done via a white slider inside the front grip. You'll need to remove the front end every time you want to make an adjustment. I guess the idea would be to check the hop-up after hooking up the battery and before putting the gun back together.

I guess something on the gun is a little crooked in the end, which is why the shots don't go straight. I was getting pretty nice groups from the other end of the room, though, which did surprise me. After all, the gun has just slightly more barrel length than a pistol. I even stopped to think if the rear sight was just too small altogether, which would explain the tendency to shoot high. I'm not entirely sure if it is too small or not, but at least not by a huge margin.

To inject something positive here, the MAG midcaps I bought for the gun fed perfectly and I must have shot more than 200 rounds all told in order to zero the gun.

As I sat down nex to the target, I came up with an idea to fix the crookedness of the gun. I folded up a Post-It note and stuffed it between the gearbox and the frame of the gun, which I hoped would twist the barrel in the opposite direction.

I'm happy to report that my makeshift fix worked more than well. The gun is now shooting straight, although still somewhat high. That, though, is a lot less annoying. I'm also thinking of ordering a weaver mount so I can put a holo or red dot on this, which would fix all my aiming woes once and for all.

Conclusion

If you're looking for a cheap, fun little gun, I can definitely recommend the Galaxy MP5K PDW. If you're just starting out, this is a nice, complete package to get you started. If you know your way around guns, this seems like a very fun project base for a high ROF setup, for example.

I have not tested the range of this gun, but I'm sure it will not do too well in a long distance (well, airsoft long) engagement. For indoor games and other close up situations, though, this thing looks amazing. The short length and light weight make it ideal for fast paced gaming. The awkward hop-up adjustment also limits the usability of the gun for anything other than short range where the hop-up does not have so much effect.

All in all, a great little package for a very low price.