What is airsoft speed loader? Speed loaders are special tool that helps you load BBs into your mid-capacity magazines. Mid-cap, low-cap, and shotgun shell-looking magazines function similarly. The BB is pushed by a follower and springs inside the magazine. It requires no winding, unlike a high-cap magazine.
This little tool is what you need to get your midcaps to work - they can come in different shapes and sizes.
A high-cap magazine has more going on inside. You fill the magazine with BBs through the trap door to the top. Then, you have to manually wind the magazine by turning a wheel on the underside of the magazine, which builds tension in the spring that will feed the BBs to your gun. Without winding it the magazine will not feed.
This is NOT how you load a high-cap mag!
So what kind of magazine do you pick, and what do you have to do to make them work?
You will likely get a high cap to start with on your AEG, and these are fine to use no matter how you cut them. They carry more ammo, which means you can have more BBs on you with fewer magazines. The downside is the noise they make when BBs are bouncing about inside a magazine body, which can be a deal breaker for players who value stealth. To get it to work, fill the magazine with BBs through the trap door, typically located at the top of the magazine. Once filled to the top, shut and secure the trap door (usually, it clicks or snaps into a closed position). Once the magazine is filled, the high cap is not yet ready to use. Inserting it into your gun and trying to fire will be met with no ammo being fed.
While high-capacity magazines offer extended playtime, they require manual winding to maintain proper BB feeding. This process can be time-consuming, especially during intense games. Speed loaders streamline this task, allowing you to quickly refill your magazines and get back into the action.
No, that is not the case! You have to wind the magazine—a lot. For an M4-style magazine that holds about 300 rounds, you usually wind it 30-50 times. Just keep turning the wheel; you should hear some clicks as the magazine is wound. As you approach the maximum tension that it can store, the wheel becomes harder and harder to turn. The magazine has a built-in "slip" so that you do not overwind the magazine. When you reach the maximum tension that the spring can store, the clicks should change audibly and sound different. That means your magazine is fully wound. A fully wound magazine should be able to feed 1/4 to 1/3 of the magazine's full capacity before you have to wind it again. You can wind the magazine while it is in your gun or even as you are shooting it to keep it prepared to fire at any time.
As you expend more ammunition, the hollow magazine body makes itself more apparent by the sound of your airsoft bbs bouncing around inside the magazine as you move. Some players don't like it and prefer midcaps, but that will be a fact of life. To store your magazines when not in use, make sure there is no tension so they last longer. You can empty the magazine.
This is how you load a mid-cap magazine (90-round generic speedloader pictured)
How you load a speed loader is typically the same as how you load a high-cap
A mid-capacity magazine does not require anything to make it work; however, it requires you to load it manually using a tool. The tool is known as a "speed loader" and transfers BBs from the tool into the magazine. A mid-capacity or low-capacity magazine, like those found in airsoft sniper rifles, works like a real magazine. Rounds are stacked on top of each other and pushed upward using a spring and a follower. The follower is the part that the BBs sit on and is what is pushed by the spring. At the top of the magazine, there is a part that retains the BBs, so they don't come out once you put rounds inside the magazine.
When the magazine is loaded into the airsoft gun, the retainer gets deactivated, and BBs start entering your gun from the magazine into your gun's hop-up chamber. Mid-caps are preferred by players who do not like high cap rattles or prefer to enhance their immersion by carrying more magazines and forcing more reloads. For maintenance and longevity, mid-caps should be lubricated to ensure smooth and jam-free feeding.
They say springs lose their tension over time, attributed to the number of compression and decompression cycles they go through. The spring is the heart of a mid-capacity magazine, and once they sag or wear out, you'll start getting feeding/misfeeding issues, so only expect these to last for a while. However, they do last a very, very long time. From my experience, the tiny coil springs used inside mid-capacity magazines do not hold tension like a normal heat-treated thicker coil spring, so I prefer to store my magazines unloaded when I put everything away.
BB loaders tend to come in shapes that allow them to fit inside magazine pouches, so you keep them! Or you can carry them with you to recharge your magazines in the field.
