There are a plethora of MOSFET options available on the market these days. The majority of these require some form of soldering or in their basic non-hardwired form are “plug and play” style that do not offer the benefit of full trigger contact protection. Distilled down to its basic requirements, a FET’s job is chiefly about protecting your trigger contacts from burning out due to arcing.
Novices to Airsoft teching, or players who do not otherwise have a quality soldering iron may struggle a bit with installing some of these offerings. While the cost of a basic iron itself has decreased dramatically over the years, soldering itself is a bit of an art, and it’s not uncommon to see some pretty bad soldering jobs in this business. Poor soldering can in fact negate much of the perceived gains you might have been seeking in the first place.
The HulkFet is a basic no-frills drop in MOSFET that requires zero soldering on the part of the end user. These are hand-built by local Airsofter Hunter Ward, who wanted something that was easy to install and ideal for basic builds and beginners alike.
Currently the HulkFet is only available for Ver. 2 configurations. It utilizes a TVS protected MOSFET, which is shorthand for Transient-Voltage-Suppression. This essentially protects electronic components from voltage spikes incurred through typical use. The FET is covered in a silicone conformal coating with an outer layer of adhesive heat shrink, which waterproofs the components. You can, in fact, completely submerge the FET in water and it will still work provided the plug is protected from water penetration, as can be demonstrated on this video here. Owing that the majority of time the FET itself is going to be located in the buffer tube or stock area, it’s not likely to get much exposure to moisture to begin with, though. But rest assured, if you take a dive in a lake, it’ll come through unscathed. There is a piece of clear heat shrink that’s provided for additional protection of the plug.
The wiring is based on 16 AWG AlphaWire EcoWire, which is some of the best wiring you can get for your AEG, and is also the same stuff used on high end programmable MOSFET’s, such as the Gate TITAN. While it is 16 AWG, it is dramatically smaller in diameter than comparable silicone wire in the same gauge. This is due to the quality of the insulation used, which is a Modified Polyphenylene Ether (mPPE) construction. AlphaWire is also fairly stiff, so it can be bent into your desired shape and doesn’t have that “wet spaghetti” and tacky feel of silicone wire.
The color scheme is a bit unconventional – being neither the traditional black and red as is commonly found, but there are some instructions included that outlay which color is positive and negative. The small purple wire, is of course, the signal wire.
All HulkFet’s come equipped with a Deans style T-Connector as standard. There’s an extra female plug included for converting your battery (which will require soldering). If you still haven’t updated your builds to a Dean’s connector, you should really take a deep soul-searching look in the mirror and ask yourself if the late grey 90’s were really all that great to begin with.
The trigger contact box is SHS based, and seems to have a better fit and finish than the older red SHS units of the past. With those ones in particular, I’ve sometimes encountered instances where they required hand-fitting to lay inside the gearbox flat and would not work with any other cutoff levers besides SHS. In this instance, I encountered none of these issues.
As this FET was furnished to me free of charge for a review, I elected to pass it onto a customers build free of charge as well. I had an older KWA KM16 that was due for a good tune up. Since it was going to be locked to semi-auto only for an SPR style setup and wasn’t an especially demanding build, this FET would be a perfect option for protecting the trigger contacts.
As anyone who has ever hardwired a FET in can attest, it can be a little tricky to figure out the appropriate wiring lengths needed for any one build. In the case of the HulkFet, I found the wiring lengths to be on point. In this case, I was installing it into a gun with a full sized M16 style stock and found there was enough wiring length to easily reach inside the trapdoor and fish out the plug and pop in a battery.
Overall, the installation process was quite easy. The trigger box laid in there flat, the cutoff lever worked flawlessly with the trigger trolley, the wiring was the correct length and there was no need to do any modifications or hand-fitting and the FET worked flawlessly upon connection of the battery. I couldn’t have asked for an smoother install really.
This is a good quality basic FET that is a great option for anyone new to installing their first FET or does not have experience or the tools to do soldering. While it’s not designed to handle large extremes or intensive builds, it’s been reported to work well in DSG’s under 40 RPS @ 1.5J. Keeping that in mind, I would say it’s a good choice for any basic build that requires contact protection.
HulkFet’s come with a 1 year warranty covering manufacturing defects and are currently offered and found exclusively on Brill Armory.