H&K P7M13 Hop-Up (Tokyo Marui)

by Flinn

Appearance
I've never owned a real one, and with UK gun laws I probably never will. Nor yet have I seen the real thing. Yes, its plastic, but with a good, dull finish. The magazine is reasonably heavy and clicks into place with a satisfying noise. In common with my AUG, the sights have luminous paint applied to them, which helps a little at night. Marui include a barrel extension? in the box, this has instructions is doubtless perfect Japanese, but seems to have no function. Maybe one of the US based players could comment here. The gun's size means that it fits nicely into a pocket, although a holster would be OK, the short barrel means that the gun is butt heavy, and may fall out of the holster at inconvenient moments.

Operation
The gun is operated like any other standard spring job, pull back the slide to cock, pull trigger to fire, pull back slide again etc. The squeeze cock element manifests as what boils down to a grip safety, if you don't squeeze the safety the trigger cannot be pulled. There is also a safety on the slide, but even the instructions warn you that you risk breaking the trigger if you forget to take this safety off. The magazine holds a useful 22 rounds, the guns HOP seems set to make best use of 0.25g BB's, but 0.2g ones work adequately. After all, this is a pistol for "close encounters", not long range artillery. Suffice to say that in my 25m back garden, grouping will hit the torso of a man-sized object most of the time, and I am a rotten pistol shot. This is still adequate for "plinking" sessions and as an emergency weapon when your mag runs dry, or your battery gives out. And yes, the gun has, as it were, a notch in it already! The chronoscope gave a muzzle velocity of about 170fps, enough for a hit to be noticeable, but not too painful.

Comments
This is not a gas gun, and does not have the same rate of fire, but it was also less than half the price of a cheap gas blowback. I can get off about two aimed shots every five seconds or so, but wild firing can be done at about one round per second. Barrel length does not seem to matter, I gather that the Glock 17L from Marui is no more usefully accurate. In actual combat I have achieved a kill, by sheer good luck on my part, because a little pistol can be fired round corners that my AUG won't, without exposing me too much.

(added 9/3/97, add four more notches in the gun, more kills!)

Regards, Andrew Fanner (Flinn) Portsmouth
UK