armoury
G&G COBALT BAMF
add more accessories thanks to the M-LOK
rails at 3, 6 and 9 O’clock. Up top, the
aggressively contoured charging handle is
offset by some curiously old-fashioned iron
sights. I guess they presume everyone will
just take them off to run an optic.
There are QD sling points at either end
of the handguard, which would make
for some unbalanced sling configurations
since there isn’t one on the skeletonised
stock. The butt is slightly curved and feels
natural in the shoulder.
Building on the
speed-first methodology,
the physical movement
of the
ambidextrous
fire selector is
smaller than conventional,
with semi auto at just 45
degrees and full at 90. It’s
so user-friendly that we can
instantly see how it might save
time on the range. It’s also clicky-
clicky-precise-nice.
The flared magwell that is definitely
oversized - and one of the more sci-
fi aesthetics - is similarly designed to
facilitate faster reloads, but some high
capacity metal airsoft mags may be a tight
fit further up the chute. On our tests at
least, polymer mags are just fine.
With a largely graphite grey finish, the
unmissable neon blue of the buffer tube
is picked out by that distinctive flash hider.
There’s also a flash of gold on the trigger,
too. Flash is the word…
LENGTH ISN’T EVERYTHING
The BAMF was always designed as a range
rifle first, so it’s not exactly the shortest
platform. The full metal pistol grip and
stock may also add weight, but that only
helps with the overall balance against that
long front end.
On the inside, there’s the familiar G2
gearbox and you can unscrew the buffer
tube to swap out the spring to adjust your
FPS. The factory spec short-stroke gearing
is designed to allow faster trigger response
and hence, speed up subsequent shots
too. The wiring also features an
inline MOSFET, so it’s 11.1 LiPo ready.
There’s a rotary hop behind the
ejection port that you can access
using the charging handle and you
can remove the non-adjustable
stock to fit the battery using an
Allen key. You can squeeze an
11.1 LiPo stick into the buffer
tube, but only with some
torturous feeding of cables up,
down, back up again and with
a bit of folding for good measure.
And I thought the front-wired Evo was a
pain!
The fact you can’t adjust the stock
through multiple positions might seem
like an ergonomic step backwards, but I
personally only ever tend to use a stock
at its maximum adjustment, so it didn’t
bother me at all. But you should make sure
the BAMF fits you - and your batteries -
before buying.
(CARS). It’s largely based around the auto-
eject magazine system, which is imitated
here, but G&G calls it the “Auto Drop
Advanced Magazine” (ADAM).
In the highly competitive world of two
and three-gun shooting, the fractions of a
second saved with auto-drop could make
the difference between first and last place.
When enabled on this airsoft version, the
follower pops up on empty and a small
plate releases the magazine, ready to
replace. It might be an inconvenience mid-
skirmish, but it would be altogether more
welcome mid-course in a competition -
which is this RIF’s heritage.
Mag depleted - which you should
anticipate, after all - it drops by itself, new
mag
in; go!
Removing the
intermediary
step of
manually dropping
the
magazine could shave split-seconds off
your course run. We went in curiously
sceptical but came out thinking it’s a giggle
- there’s something impressive about a
machine pre-empting your next move and
saving both time and effort.
There’s been a lot of speculation in the
airsoft world about damaged mags since
the BAMF’s drop-free feature was first
announced and sadly, we have to report
it’s entirely justified. The base plate on our
review sample decided to go it alone after
just a few hundred rounds. Throughout
DROP ‘EM!
In the real world, the Unique Selling
Point for the BAMF is its reload speed in
competition shooting. And as if they can’t
get enough of acronyms, this is called
the “Cobalt Advantage Reload System”
“THE BAMF BARELY BREAKS A SWEAT HITTING CANS AT 25M AND TORSO-SIZED
TARGETS FROM 40M, WITH SHOT AFTER SHOT LANDING ON POINT. WE’D EXPECT
NOTHING LESS GIVEN ITS RACE RIFLE ROOTS, BUT WE’RE STILL HAPPY TO FIND IT
EXCELS IN THIS AREA.”
www.airsoft-action.online
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