I've been a Marui fan ever since they introduced the Airsoft AEG that really opened the doors for the wide adoption of airsoft outside of Japan. While I still reminisce those days running up and down the grassy parts of our university campus with my MGC Calico which was one of the most extremely fun airsoft guns before AEGs were introduced, I was tossed between JAC and MGC models. But when these companies suffered when Japan went into recession by the mid-1990s, Tokyo Marui went to save airsoft by their decision to go manufacturing AEGs. So for some time, I went Marui until some manufacturers outside Japan started coming out with their airsoft guns and producing more variety then Marui without deviating from the standards set by the Japanese company.

I almost went out of Tokyo Marui's orbit, as I dabled in Hong Kong, China, and Taiwanese airsoft guns, as far as I can remember, I didn't use Tokyo Marui for about two years, only left with one M4A1 AEG which was crying to be replaced. I never thought of Tokyo Marui raising the bar in airsoft innovation.

Then in 2007, Tokyo Marui introduced to the airsoft world their new generation AEGs, featuring their shoot and recoil engine. While many airsoft makers have tried their hands on having an electric blowback, or a recoil effect, only Tokyo Marui have managed to achieve both at the same time. The other manufacturers only achieve this by going the gas blowback way. With their AK line-up and the M4 series, then followed by the G36 series this year, my appreciation for TM rose again, and I started having most of my airsoft guns made up Marui products.

Tokyo Marui looks like that it can't do anything wrong...

...which left me with a problem: the lack of spare parts or upgrade parts for the new generation AEG. The only thing attempted by third party manufacturers are some bits and bobs, the only thing very significant for me is the Pro-Arms magazine adaptor for the M4 AEG which allows me to use the standard TM M4 magazines, allowing backwards compatibility.  But any more parts, improvements? It's been quite a while to hear someone doing such things, and it was surprising that there's someone in my own backyard, meaning in the UK. Richard Young of Eagle6 Airsoft Ltd. took some time to correspond with us and he explained that he is doing some innovations on the new gen TM, focusing on the SOPMOD.

Being a TM M4 SOPMOD user myself, he has gotten my attention and my questions regarding to improving the AEG were satisfactorily answered by Richard. I am curious more about trying out his products in the near future, but as he is still has a long list of of customers waiting for his products and operating small scale, I might as well fall in line for now.

The important thing is, learning more about Eagle6 Airsoft.

Popular Airsoft: Richard, can you tell us about yourself like how you started Airsoft and what you do off the skirmish field?

Richard: I’ve been Airsofting for over 5 years now, but to be honest it doesn’t feel that long. Long story short I got invited to a private Skirmish with some mates at a local golf course called Eagles (hence the team name). We would play in the evenings after it closed from about 8pm til midnight, sometimes with flood lights on some times without. We often look back on it now and can’t believe the ranges we used to play at, and all of us were running with upgraded guns, we’d have been better off playing with dummy knifes than AEGs.

To be honest I was more interested in playing golf than Airsoft at the time but Airsoft has a habit of taking over your life in a very short period of time. As a team I think we’ve all been pretty obsessed since, once we made the leap to proper skirmish sites we never looked back. We did try the small scale private skirmish again recently but with our upgraded guns and the close ranges it didn’t hold quite the same challenge any more now that we had experienced Skirmish and Milsim Airsoft.

At present I spend my days trying to balance gun repairs, making batteries for SOPMODs, my day job which is pretty boring servicing charity sweet boxes for the Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity, studying for an engineering degree at the Open University, designing and making internal AEG parts, running in the evenings, and trying to maintain my ten pin bowling 200 points a game league average! It’s tough life but somebody has to do it.

Can you give us a short story on how Eagle 6 came about and its history?

Well as mentioned the team name came about from when we used to play Airsoft at a golf course called Eagle’s. It was our team mate Charlie whose father owned the Golf Club that introduced us to Airsoft. He had a bit of an Xbox fetish at the time with Rainbow 6 and after “a lot of thought” we came up with E6...Genius!

A few years later when I brought my SOPMOD, shortly after it was released. I wanted to upgrade the power but at the time there was nothing in the way of upgrades around. So after some thought I decided to expand my love of Gun Mechanics/upgrading and set about solving this issue, and to be honest it was the most fun I could have...Sad hey? So because of my own desire to upgrade my SOPMOD I found myself in a small niche to look into upgrades for the whole TM recoil series. After some thought and forum chatter my desire’s matured into developing products to help other SOPMOD owners and find solutions to eventual issues.

Eventually I worked with a high quality producer here in the UK to make proper high quality AEG springs. I spent a lot of time in the shop designing these on their computer programs while working with their team to produce the range we have today. It wasn’t all plain sailing though as several of the first batches had to be thrown away as they just didn’t meet the standard. And each time a batch was ready I’d have to drive an hour to pick up the springs then drive an hour back to begin testing. This really became a labour of love and if it wasn’t for the guys on the forums who needed these springs I may have gone back to playing golf! Truth be told, despite the miles and the effort I enjoyed every part of it, designing a product and seeing it come to life to provide something which players needed and where genuinely grateful for. That’s how Eagel6Airsoft Ltd came about, a small idea backed by the support of the “SOPMOD Community” on Arnies and ASCUK (RIP).

And because of the support we opened up the online shop (www.eagle6airsoft.co.uk) so we could sell our own parts in conjunction with other quality producers.

Why Tokyo Marui as a brand that you are focusing on?

For me there are two brands that I idolise, Tokyo Marui and Laylax. From a design and manufacturing point of view Laylax produce some of the most amazing stuff; it’s so accurate and such high quality. They set the standard others should aim to, and to be honest working for Laylax would be my perfect job, having that kind of equipment at hand, and that kind of freedom to have an idea and produce it in a short period of time is perfection.

As for Tokyo Marui they have got mass production and quality control down to an art form. They seem to be able to produce hundreds of thousands of parts yet rarely fail, their reliability is very impressive! In my opinion TM are hands down the best gun producer out there and people can argue all they like but I know I'm not alone in my thinking. Tokyo Marui invented the AEG as we know it, the hop unit and every single aftermarket upgrade part is made to TM specs, not Classic Army or Jing Gong or CYMA, but TM, something many airsofters simply don’t know as they are so new to the hobby.

For you to be able to "mod" this much, I assume you have a very good background in this field. Can you tell us more about this?

To be totally honest not as much experience as you might think. I’ve been skirmishing for over 5 years and have been upgrading and tuning AEGs and AEPs for nearly the same. For me the internals are the fascination, the complex moving parts more so than the externals. To me practicality and ergonomics have to be paramount over looks. I had the usual “Airsoft Tech” education, working on mine and my team mates' guns, etc.

It was basically down to the poor supply of replacement and upgrade parts for certain gearboxes that I started to produce my own and source from outside the UK. I also find Gun Mechanics a real challenge when a problem needs solving and a prime example of this is my TM USP AEP. I wanted more FPS from it and basically I was told it wasn’t possible to reach 300fps. A custom E6 spring, new cylinder and a PDI barrel later I hit my mark. And a year on it's still kicking out a consistent 285-290 fps, I love proving people wrong.

What is the most challenging thing when you do custom work on the new generation Tokyo Marui AEGs, especially the shoot and recoil engine?

Well, I guess it’s more time consuming than challenging. Taking it apart over and over and over for testing is the biggest pain. Don’t get me wrong, the gearbox is so easy to disassemble compared to version 2 gearboxes but the stock pipe is so fiddly and if you don’t align it properly you could mess up the threads. Custom batteries are also very time consuming but at the end of the day Im just so grateful to be in this position and provide a product players want. It’s a real honour.

How many products have you released and what are in the pipeline?

So far we only have 3 readily available products:

• AEG spring for recoil shock series M90 (315-330) depending on upgrades
• AEG spring for recoil shock series M100 (330-350) depending on upgrades
• AEP M80 upgrade spring (250-300) “depending on upgrades and air seals”

We also offer a custom 7.4v 3000mah lipo battery pack service for the SOPMOD series AEG, where we can create a lipo battery pack which is still a "quick change" but offers almost twice as much playing time. Unfortunately these can take up to 2 weeks to create and I have a waiting list as long as my arm! We can also upgrade standard packs to 9.6v or even wire lipo batteries directly via deans connectors removing the quick change system completely. It’s all about giving the player the choice because people like to be different.

Our next project which we are working in will be a CNC Heavy Recoil Weight for the TM M4 SOPMOD. This idea will probably get pinched by some big company after writing this but I’ll still be going through with it. I’ve CAD designed the model and the prototypes being created as we speak. This will be at least a 50% increase of weight over the standard weight block thus the extra weight will give more sensation of recoil. We have also created recoil springs which are 100% stronger to return the weight block faster as timing is an issue with the recoil system. We’re having a play and once we’re happy we’ll tell the masses.

After the recoil weight, I’m looking at a 400 fps spring for the guys wanting to run TM M4 SOPMODs as DMR rifles and hopefully a range of normal AEG springs. We have the process in place to make quality springs for the recoil series so why not try normal AEGs?

Are you intending to do full time on this? Or still waiting for some angel investor to help you get into full production?

I would love to be able to leave my current job and put all my time into making Airsoft parts but at the moment it’s just not realistic. I’m happy balancing the job, Eagle6Airsoft and the engineering degree until E6 is big enough to need me full time. I never saw this as a money-making scheme but it has developed into a real business and if I could sell stuff for no profit I would but I want to raise money for milling machines, lathes, further factory production runs, and new stock flowing into the shop. I won’t lie to you, the thought of someone investing some cash or outsourcing my designs to other manufacturers to see them come to life has crossed my mind several times. I have a million ideas floating around my head for which I can design but that’s as far as I can physically take them at the moment. As much as I would love to see my ideas come to life immediately I think I’ll enjoy it more going it alone. It’s a mountain to climb for sure but I look forward to the challenge!

Other Airsoft brands you are thinking of working on soon?

I’ll be sticking to Tokyo Marui as my main brand, but I’ll be branching out to their whole Next Gen Recoil Range.  The same goes for the AEP series and their whole range. As well as Tokyo marui’s normal AEG range.  Since most companies make their guns as close to TM’s specifications as they can it’s easier to make stuff for TM, then odds are it will fit every other brand too.

What is your favourite Airsoft gun in terms of realism?

Realism, realism, realism the holy grail of Airsoft Guns, that’s a toughie. In my heart, I still feel the next gen recoil series from TM provide a great balance of performance and realism. I’ve used GBB’s and I’ll be totally honest, “I don’t get it”. Sure they are realistic but for our climate they just aren’t practical enough yet. Sure given time somebody will release a GBB that has it all but until then the EBB with recoil Engine takes the prize.

If there's no dream Airsoft gun on the market, what do you envision about Airsoft guns in the future should be?

I agree there’s no perfect gun; I sold all my guns before the SOPMOD was released out of frustration from a mechanic's point of view. The Systema PTW has the best technology without question, but an inconsistent stock hop unit and the price tag put me off. When the TM SOPMOD was released if offered PTW like features but at half the price and for a long time I was torn between the two. For me the future of AEGs has to start in the gearbox and needs to replicate what Systema have done with the Revolution. The inclusion of an electronic trigger system is a true breakthrough. The idea that a gearbox can start and stop in the same place every time is ideal. So what? Systema Revolution internal mechanics with TM SOPMOD features...sounds about right. And as for the outside, I’ll leave that to someone like VFC or Inokatsu.

Anything you want to share to our readers about modding or upgrading Airsoft guns?

How about a rule I live by: “Don’t just replace parts, if it broke, why did it break?” Yeah sure the part might be defective but usually it’s a part incompatibility with the rest of the gearbox or something’s not aligned right. There’s a lot more to Airsoft mechanics than just replacing parts with “stronger more expensive” parts. All I’m saying is give it some thought and think outside the box, I know I do.

Cheers Guys, happy skirmishing!