IWA 2013 Summary (by Gruppa-L)

Now after 2 months and several email traffic with different exhibitors since our visit, I had the chance and time to write a full fledged Summary about our experience and encounters at the Nuremberg IWA 2013 Exhibition.

After waking up at our “headquaters” at 6am in the morning, we packed us a small lunch (in typical german manners – bread buns with salami and cheese) stuffed our “equipment” in the car and headed off to Nuremberg, which is around 200km (2 hours) away.

After arriving and getting our Entry passes we started to mark the exhibitors with a circle in the guide-map, in whom we were more interested (like russian and eastern block exhibitors) and went into the busy exhibition halls.

   

First and probably our personal highlight of the exhibition was the Booth of “RoS” – RusOpticalSystem. They have engineered a nifty and never seen before lenssystem within their scopes. I won’t go too much into detail, since we wrote already a very detailed post about their amazing scopes! Check it out here!

   

Just a few meters away there was a Booth of “Sightmark“, where the CEO personally greeted us very friendly. They have some cool products including a Bore sight which can be fitted to several Guns and Rifles due to a Magnet and a cone, which makes it possible to fit any Barrel and a big variety of good and rugged looking Red-Dot sights in even greater price range! More to follow on that!

 

Our next stop was at the “Light my Fire” Booth in Hall 4 in the “Scandinavian Outdoor Group (S.O.G.)” Corner. Besides some pretty cool Outdoor eating dishes and several Firemaking and cooking equipment we saw this beautiful child of Mora and Light my Fire! It is a cooperation Work of both Companys which combines the great Morakniv Compainion MG Knife (Read our review about the proven classic here!) and a Fire Steel which is hidden in the Butt of the Grip  and holds in place via a bayonet lock. You can strike the fire steel on the dull back of the blade and “light your fire”!  Stay tuned for a full review exclusivly here on Gruppa L from us!

 

Something that caught my attention was this littel neat carbine Kit from CZ which is intended for the CZ 75 Duty – a modern polymer duty pistol version from the all-time classic CZ 75 (Read our KWA CZ 75 review here!) – Is it that obvious that I am a CZ fan?

 

The next Booth in our little “paperchase” around the exposition grounds was “Aimpoint” – you’ve probably heard already of this company  - probably. It was the exact same Booth as last year and there was nothing special besides the above shown Corner/Mirror sight – which is in my opinion one of the unpractical ones on the market – no quick flip thing or something. You have to attach and deattach the whole unit with the mirror….Not to mention that I was really disaimpointed…I mean disappointed of their red dots. Nearly every red-dot sight got a 1 MOA dot, which is too small for their “purpose”, which is fast target aqusition in CQB situation (especially the Micro ones). Not to talk about the ghosting while looking trough the sights (and we tested several red-dot sights on the booth, to make sure that we not accidentally used one which was already mangled and abused by all those exhibition visitors). In my personal opinion I would rather buy a chinese clone then the original one, since then the price justifies the quailty. Not to mention that I don’t promote the buying of fake products  - well in conclusion, I liked the blue rubber guns the most at this booth.

   

The next cool thing we encountered in Hall 1. There was a “small” Booth from “RADETEC”     kinda hidden, since it was across from the HUGE “Carl Zeiss” Booth and a lot of visitors  walked just by this amazing product.

   

So what is this “amazing” product? Well it is a Bullet-Counter! All your Counter-Strike and Call of Duty or Battlefield Dreams come true! A new pair of Handgripss which got a little backlit LED display on the right side of the grip above your triggerfinger which shows after each shot how may bullets are left in your magazine (including the one chambered!) So how does it work? Well first of all you need a pair of those fancy looking grips for your pistol (They displayed a Beretta M9, Glock 17 and a 1911 besides a M4/M16 Rifle prototype). The second thing is a special Magazine Follower you need to install in your magazine (or you buy the already modified magazines directly from RADETEC). So the Grips know where the follower is positioned and then let you know how many rounds you got left in the magazine via the display! They also got a “LED advisor” version. Since they said in high stress situation it can be difficult to read the number on the indicator, they made some kind of “traffic light” system. Not sure how the numbers were, but something like “blue or green = 5 rounds left”, “yellow” = 4 rounds left” and “red= 3 or less left”. The red also starts flashing if you have only 1 round left. Maybe we can take a more detailed look into this at some point later.

 

Some quite good and high-quality looking Scopes caught our attention while passing by. A Romanian Booth with some unbelivable unfriendly romanian exhibitors. We really were interested in their different scopes, which in fact were amazing – nearly as good as the Schmidt&Benders one. But they kept taking the “fake” rifles with the mounted guns out of our hand and didn’t let us take their flyers and don’t even wanted to talk with us properly.    

But oh well – lets keep it professional and talk some names and numbers. The Name of the company was “Valdada” and they appear to be settled in Bucharest, Romania. We really liked the Short-dots from them with changeable magnification and illuminating reticle (as you can see above). Well, numbers I don’t have, thanks to some grumpy exhibitors – but you can see the prices and specs on their homepage by yourself.

   

As we passed by the “EKA” Booth, we saw the updated version of the EKA Viking Combi Saw (Read the full review here!), which included just a color update. We were also shown a new “switchblade” (take the “switch” in “switchblade” literally) – officially called the “EKA G3 Swingblade” which is for hunting and fishing purposes. It has a regular blade on one side and then you “swing” it around by 180 degrees and get a “gutting” blade. The Rubberized Grip feels very good in hand and sticks really to your hand. Maybe later we will have the oppurtunity for a full review.

 

Finally we got into Hall 7A where a few of the “Big” Companys in terms of Airsoft were displaying their products. First stop was “Real Sword Company“.   You guessed it right! The RS GBB SVD was the main attraction on this Booth, which was identical to last years Booth. Non-the less, they were very friendly and tried to answer all our questions – well the only one we had was “When will you release the GBB SVD?” and they couldn’t answer us… But I really liked the display of the GBB SVD and the parts from the “making it” and their different stages – all to touch and feel!     

But to be fair, we asked also about their amazingly well build Chinese QBZ-95/97 and QBU-88 AEGs (they feel great!) and if they intend to build GBB versions of them and their AK/Type 56 as well. They said that they are considering it, but there are no plans yet of doing so. So again, no real answer, despite the companys name – We will keep you up to date anyhow!

 

Passing by the “Trijicon” Booth we couldn’t help ourself and look trough this amazing futuristic looking Scope with rangefinder and windspeed indicator mounted on a blue rubber M249 SAW (sadly no PKM).

 

The Mother of all Assault Rifles and Rifle Mounted Night Vision systems. The Sturmgewehr 44 (Stg/MPi 44) in the “Vampir” (Vampire) set-up. Neat display!

  Finally we got to “KWA” and got a first-hand look at the AKG-74M GBB. After asking them when they want to release the GBB on the Market, we were told it will come out in May 2013 – yeah right. I also asked if this would be a real release date, since they said the same thing in 2011 Shotshow Las Vegas and 2012 at IWA in Germany. We were told that this is a crystal clear release date in will come in May 2013 to USA and Europe…hmm.. let me take a look at my calendar….could get quite narrow with this date… However, they were very friendly. We asked why they intended to built this “stroke shortening piston” in the GBB? Since it would be more realistic to have a full-stroke  rifle – since they call their GBB Rifles “Professional Training Products”. We were told that it could be due to US Goverment rules reason, that any “toygun” must be built in a way that you can never turn it in a real firearm. Sounds legit. After asking if it is possible to remove it afterwards, he said, maybe, but was not sure if it will still work afterwards. We will see… Sadly no Trace of the MKV “Makarov” GBB and also no date could be elicited from the guys and girls there. We were told that it is still in testing etc. I cought one of them red handed, after asking why they intended to discontinue the KWA CZ-75 (KZ-75). I was told that it wasn’t. After a few seconds he asked some collegue and was told that he was wrong – I had to smirk a bit. Never the less-  we will keep you up to date what is going on with the Makarvo and the GBB AK from KWA!

   

EOTech got a “new” Holo-sight called the X-Bow and is intend for the same. As you can see there is a new reticle with a ballistic correction “display”. Next to that was the “strange” Biohazard Holosight with the Biohazard sign as reticle in green….with salutes from Call of Duty.

   

Intrestingly we found a Zeiss Scope which will be used and is intended for the German Military (Bundeswehr) at some Red-dot Booth, which was not Carl-Zeiss.

   

We also passed by “UTAS” and took a look at the updated UTS-15 shotgun with its revoulutinary magazin system, which allows you to feed 2 different ammo types by the flick of a switch. Now with a integrated Flashlight/Laser System. (Side note: Kel-Tec’s KSG was produced 1 year earlier then the UTS-15 and has the same magazine system)

   

The Strizh or “Strike-One” was actually one of my most anticipated things I wanted to see. But the Booth was a disappointment. The Guns were fixed on the table, you couldn’t move any part of them and the exhibitors around the booth didn’t talked english or german. It felt quite god ON my hand, since I couldn’t lift it I can;t say jack about the weight, etc. and how it felt IN my hand. Well maybe next year…

 

We found some Russian chemical Exhibitor, who have some Signal Flares and Grenades for Traingin Purposes. Sadly also here they spoke a really bad english and didn’t understand well enough our questions.

   

The Trainng Grenade had already a BAM-certificate, which is needed here in Germany to ensure safety for the consumer and in use. No information on retail price, though…

   

Not sure if this is actually something new – but “Molot” got a 4.5mm bb Airrifle version of the PSSH-M. Feels great and looks even greater Probably not precise at all tough – but who knows? I like it anyways.

   

“G&G” got something new in their product line – somehting new in the Airsoft scene to be precise. It is a hybrid system of GBB and AEG. Besides 1 (one) Prototype displayed and this huge billboard (see first picture above – and read) there was not much to see or information about it. After taking the pictures and trying to open it to take a closer look we were asked to stop. Hmm… my guess is that the propane will only propell the Blowback and the BB’s will fly via the AEG system – also if the billboard says otherwise.. maybe more to come…

I

zhmash! Yay! Well first thing that caught our view was this “strange” AK variant  called “Saiga MK 107″ – It reminded me immediately at a AK-107 (well obvious due to the name with the 107 in it and the BARS system). After we took a bunch of pictures in detail of it and wanted to open it we were also told again to stop it and were asked to stop taking pictures – well too late, lady!

   

Looks like a civil version of the PP-19-01 “Vityaz” – I took it down the shelve and loved it right away! Would love a GBB version of this thing. Not to mention that the frontgrip was really ergonomic (any information about the Frontgrip and where to get it would be appreciated!) I also really liked the Tacitcal Magazin release on that Saiga-12 (picture below) – I have only seen those which goes under the triggerguard.

   

It was a kinda difficult to leave this Booth, as you might guess – so many things to see and touch…

   

“ASG” got behind a glas display a CZ Scorpion EVO3-A1 AEG Prototype. Looks cool! Will be on my watch as well.

   

We saw this Booth actually by accident, but are quite happy we did encountered it! The Company called “TLSFx” specialized themselfs into making great wargame grenades. From Smoke, to “Fraggrenades” filled with BB’s or Paintballs to even functional flying Mortar rounds with Smoke trails to lay smoke down in the distance. What makes this Company so special is that not even they take good care that their products are enviroment-friendly but also affordable! I really enjoyed chatting with the owner of this fine company. More to come definitley- including heavy testing with a full fledghed review afterwards!

   

After passing by alot of Booth’s specialized in Nightvision, Digitalt Nightvision and Thermal Vision, I decided not to write all the details all in here but dedicated a seperate Post to this Matter with some more technical information (since net’split is gonna write it – he’s the NVG & Thermal Professional)

   

 I’ll just show you some teasing pictures of all the different devices in different sizes.   

Well that was it actually for now – It was a great experience after all – alot of Hunting accessories and clothing and clay-pigeon equipment sadly – but thats ok. We enjoyed the 2 days and met alot of intresting people and even more intresting products. We hope we could bring you a little insight on this years IWA Exhibition.

If you want to have any details on something mentioned here are have something particular on your mind, feel free to ask us via the comment function.

26.05.2013 – by Logisticz for Gruppa L