A little while ago, a moderator on this forum recommended that I make a proper review about the BlackHawk! CQC SERPA for the full-sized USP and its uses in the airsoft world. I will be giving a quick review of it, and explaining how to easily modify this to work with the Tokyo Marui USP AEP.
I received my USP SERPA from a brick-and-mortar store in California called
Botach Tactical. While some people have had many problems with this store, I didn’t have a problem with them, and my package arrived on time with all my other orders from California. While I can’t recommend them due to their bad reputation, I didn’t run into an ordeal.
As soon as my package arrived, I swiftly ripped it open and was presented with this beautiful holster.
Front Side of USP SERPA
Back Side of USP SERPA
Paddle Attachment
It feels very strong due to its carbon-fiber construction and I can’t see this thing breaking at all, even if you fall on it. The SERPA comes with the belt attachment installed, and the paddle attachment extra. The belt attachment is adjustable for different belt sizes, but since it wouldn’t fit on my belt, I took the adjusters off and it fit like a charm. After looking over my precious, I grabbed my belt and fixed my holster onto it. I then fixed my belt onto my pants, and threw my new TM USP it in. This is where my first problem arose.
As it turns out, Tokyo Marui created their USP with a barrel that it about 2 millimeters shorter than the real-steel model. This causes the magazine release lever to release the magazine when holstering and re-holstering the USP too fast because of some problem corners on the holster. Now, if I holster it and take it out VERY slowly, nothing will happen, but as most know, in the heat of battle, you aren’t really prone to being slow and careful. Below is a picture of the problem corners, they are the ones right before the base of the holster.
Problem Corners
However, upon putting my KWA USP in the holster, the problem completely went away. The magazine release is now further away from the “problem corners,” and all snags were gone. But since I hopefully won’t have my KWA for much longer, I needed to fix my holster problem. At first, I was afraid that this wouldn’t be fixed unless I bought a dremel, which I didn’t feel like doing, but it turned out to be a lot easier than that.
KWA USP in the SERPA
When I thought all was lost, I had an idea. What if I whittled the two problem corners away with a simple pocketknife? I hurriedly grabbed my simple multi-tool and went to work. This turned out to be an excellent idea. Any younger kid hoping to do this, HAVE A PARENT DO THIS FOR YOU. I would hate to lose sleep at night because little Johnny chopping off his finger. For the older guys, make sure to cut AWAY from yourself, and whittle away from the SERPA as well, or you may cause some unnecessary cuts in the holster. All I had to do was slowly slice away at the corners with the pocketknife with the SERPA turned slightly on it’s side, NOT STRAIGHT. THIS WILL CAUSE YOU TO PUT A LOT MORE TIME IN THAN NEEDED. The overall goal here is to try to get your release lever to NOT touch the holster anywhere. You should have about 0.5-1mm of space between each side of the lever when it is fully inserted. This should take you no more than 5 minutes. As you whittle away little parts of the corners, make sure to insert the TM USP to see where you are, but if you whittle away a little too much, it’s no big deal, the important stuff is on the inside bottom anyway. By the end of this modification, you should be able to fully insert and release your TM USP very quickly without having any magazine release problems. Below is a picture of the SERPA after modification.
TM USP in the SERPA
With this modification done, it was time to put my holster to the test. To start out, I threw on ALL my gear, and inserted the USP in its holster. After that, I started running. I ran all around my house, up and down the stairs, and through all the hallways with no problems at all. I continuously pull out my USP and put it back in numerous times with no problems at all. To put how great this holster is in perspective, I used to use a drop-leg holster that took me anywhere from 3-5 seconds to get my USP unholstered and ready for action. With my belt-mounted SERPA, I’m down to 1 second. This holster is truly created for speed.
With my first test complete, I set out to perform a second test outdoors. Keeping my gear on, I ran all around my backyard, climbing trees, jumping off of the roof of my shed, doing summersaults, and rolling around on the ground. Still, no problems whatsoever.
To sum it up, this is an excellent pistol holster. It provides everything a dedicated player requires in a pistol holster and is made of high quality materials built with the needs of the player in mind. It gives the player easy access to his weapon with speeds that not many other holsters can match. Even though it needed to be modified to fit my USP AEP, this problem does not transfer over to gas-blow back USPs, and even if you have a TM USP, it’s a real quick and easy process to modify to your liking. If I were to give this pistol holster a rating out of 10, it’d be hitting the 10 mark with flying colors. Congratulations, BlackHawk! You very well may have made the perfect USP holster. {smiley face}
Thanks for reading my review!
