i got an upper recently in a deal and was told it's an armalit a4.  i know that much but when i was looking through the BM catalog (page15) i got to wondering about the handguards.  how do i tell if this one has the freefloated guards or the normal A2's?  it has a picatinny gas block and is an hbar.  havn't shot it yet though cuz i don't have a scope for it.

  From the little i know of armalite if yours has a fiberglass looking cound handhuard that does not taper down its the freefloated ones.  if you have the ones that look like say a unmodified m16 those are not.  a few companies sell a freefloat tube for those that go under the plastic halves to float them but they cost more.  I couldnt tell you what the freefloat barrel sleeve looked like with the guards on though because ive never seen one.  i imagine though if you remove or look through the holes in them that if you see some type of tube surrounding the barrel its a free float tube.  If you can see the barrel and gas tube and you have the m16a2 looking handguards then its not in my opinion.  Hope that wasnt too confusing how i tried to explain it.  if so just tell me to try again and i will.  Major        

Pull the hand guards and look underneath.  If the barrel is floated, there will be a tube in between the hand guards and barrel.

An easier way to see the difference is to just look at the front sling swivel, if it connected to the front sight, instead of a clip at the end of the hand guard tube, the barrel is not floated.

The hand guards on DCM floated barrels and non floated barrels are the same, it's just the floated barrel tube requires the guards to be modified to fit over the tube, verses just attaching to the front sight clip.

Also, there is a tube system that replaces the stock hand guards completely.  If your hand guard is a round tube, the barrel is floated (no pressure to the end of the barrel from the front gripping/slinging system).