Classic Army AEG, DSA SA-58 OSW

bullets

After being outbid yet again on ebay for a Trilux scope that went from 99p upto over 156UKP
in a few mins I decided to treat myself!

Whats Better than one Fugly gun! MORE fugly guns.
I've been keeping an eye on the stock levels of several airsoft stores and for the last 8-9 months now,
I could not find a shop that actually had an OSW in stock. Firesupport were out of stock up until a recently, saw they updated their stock level to "1" and thought to myself I just could not pass up the oppertunity to make the purchase (Alas I've a tenner left to my name now and any savings have been wiped out)

When I first started to collect Airsoft guns, Classic Army were the "expensive good brand" their AUG got gun of the year people wrote good things about the brand, Nowadays
people tend to think the brand is crap! on the flip side
people used to think WE were crap but opinions tend to be changing in favour of WE. (Hard to keep up sometimes)

I was worried that this would fire over the limit as the upper range in the description was 105m/s
I contacted firesupport before the purchase to ask them
what the exact FPS was. They said they did not know!!!!!

I enquired about if I ordered one could they downgrade it
if it was over 1j and they said sure for a charge of about 20
UKP and they also agreed to Put in a letter stating that the gun was under 1j of power in the packaging.
From dealing with customs on the phone before they mentioned that a lot of the time they simply check the paperwork of packaging to see if there is a Power reading written anyplace. If they cant find one they can send it directly to the gardai (which happened me before)

Gun arrived today (without the said note!!!)
it fires at 260fps. I think the hopup may be either damaged or not working, as If I turn it on or turn it off
the gun still chrono's at 260-264 fps.

First impressions were good. Its solid, very metally
no wobbles or creaks and not too heavy.

I NEED to get one of those long 1000 Round mags to complete the look and also some rail covers, and possibly
try to use a Lipo battery and something neater than a PEQ box (suggestions welcome)

Here it is compared to my other FAL's/L1A1's


The stock folds by pushing down on it and locks when folded too. its rock solid. It really shows how short the gun
looks when folded if you compare it to the longer L1A1


The front hand guard is all metal. I was hopeing I could
remove the rails to make it look more FAL like but they
appear to be part of the guard ie molded into it.

My ideal look would have been a standard handguard
as in the carbine model but with the foldable stock.
I plan on getting rail covers for the ones I wont use
and also to place some small tiny rail index covers
over the top rails too. When not pimping it. Maybe
OD to give it a little colour.

The Post type foresight protectors are solid! Yippeee
as I never liked the skelaton ones on the other guns I
have. There protectors so they should be nice and solid
and not hollow. The Back aperture type sites look like
they flip but when I tried they wont under considerable force!
I did not want to force them in case they snapped considereing
the metal was probably not a strong metal.




The Cocking lever handle (round piece) is made from
plastic like the real thing but its cheap crap plastic.
When you cock the gun the hold open device works and
is a lovely feature. I have read however that internally its
put together/designed badly and if you over use it it is easy to break.

The fire selector switch has very little movement involved to switch from safe to semi to auto. (compared to all the other brands of guns such as Star and KingArms)

The Body locking lever moves but thats all it does!
it does not appear to break the gun body, and the hinge screw does not appear to actually be a hinge point but will screw off to seperate the body of the gun.


The hopup chamber where the magazine feeds the bb's into looked a little dented but does not cause a feeding issue. The hop up itself does not appear to be working,
not sure what the problem is or if I am willing to disassembly everything just to check (at the moment)


The PEQ box is CRAP! real Crap! the plastic is rubbish, the screw has rust on it and pretty worthless. Although it serves to hold the battery. If I use a Lipo on this gun maybe I can find something to attach to the rail that holds the smaller battery a little bit neater or streamlined.




Important point to note!!!! As usual.
The Magazine for the Classic Army is incompatible
with the Star L1A1, the KA L1A1 and the KA FAL.
(Heck even the KA L1A1 and KA FAL mags are imcompatible with each other and they are the same bloody brand)

Like the other guns when I fire this it feels a tiny bit unusual. You almost feel the motor in the pistol grip with
each shot as if the motor jumps slightly in the grip.

I've heard the Hop up on these is crap, I've also heard the nozzle is crap
and an awquard non standard thing.

Also point to note. There is NO electric blowback. There are some videos on youtube which show a Classic Army SA58 with
electric blowback. Aparently the gun looked like a combination of the the OSW model and the Carbine Model.
So far I've not been able to find out more information on this electric blowback model, but as far as I know
it was never released!

Back in 2008 there was a video to show this blowback
and it looked like an OSW model with a fixed stock, but the
handguard is different as it looks longer and flash eliminator look like a longer model.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nalXIYp9lGM

Here it is in all its glory!




~B

thermo

i found with this family of aeg's is when you "cock" the action push the cocking handle to the forward position before you "release springs" or after a while the mechanism will break.

television

i have a classic army sa 58 and the cocking spring has broken 4 times.i will never buy another classic army airsoft gun again.they are crap and i advise everyone else to stay well clear of them.got me a king arms fn-fal and it is superior to the sa 58 in every way so if its an fn fal you are after go for the king arms model[they do 7 versions,including the l1a1 slr and 6 fn fals,2 short,2 medium and 2 full lenght models].cant praise them enough