Single points worked, but Vickers is not a big fan of them. They are very easy to use for switching shoulders, but he contends that they suck for everything else. Having used one for a bit on my AR now, I have to agree with him on that. Great for switching to the left shoulder…they stink for about everything else.
Larry has his name on a quick adjust two point sling from Blue Force Gear that seems to work pretty well.
Three point slings bite the big one. I used one through this course and I was constantly fighting with it. I never noticed how bad they suck before because I had never worn anything on my chest before. I had always just used a simple duty belt in the past. It had always had moments of real suckitude like when it would stop me from using the bolt release on an AR during a stress course, but it had always been a manageable level of suck. This time with the SKD Eagle chest rig I was constantly fussing with the sling to get it out of the velcro on the pouches or to keep it from getting hung up on my pistol magazines and dragging them out. It was maddening.
Rigs - where the mags were stored and how was access?
The students all had some sort of chest rig. There were a couple of SKD Eagle rigs, a couple of plain Eagle rigs, and a couple of armor carrier rigs with pouches on them.
After doing some prone work folks started moving stuff around to allow for better prone positioning.
Simpler really is better. Mags crammed into cargo pants would work just fine too.
Mags - any problems with particular countries/makers?
I believe GotM4 had some busted clear polymer mags, but the AK expert (I believe it is Templar…) said there were a couple of bad production runs of that type of 5.56 magazine.
Caliber - was it 5.56 and 7.62 or any 5.45?
I think there were only three people shooting 7.62x39mm, me with my VEPR-K, Larry with his reworked 300 buck Romanian rifle, and a PMC who was in the class with a pretty beat up rifle. I believe everyone else was using either 5.56 AKs or 5.45 AKs, with the majority being 5.56 AKs made by Arsenal.
Incidentally, some of the rifles had serious reliability problems with various ammo types. GotM4’s rifle was a friggin death ray when it ran, but every now and then it would choke for various reasons. Early on the first day Vin had to mortar a round out of his deathray rifle, and a couple of other guys kept having problems with American Eagle brass cased ammo getting smushed by the rifle. Steel cased seemed to run better.
I’ll let the AK tech experts tell you more about that because I have nowhere near the knowledge they do of the platform…but I can say that I was happy to be packing my VEPR-K in 7.62x39mm even though it was a heavy bastard and was slower to get followup shots with because of the lack of a muzzle brake.
Some of those guys were shooting AKs that just flat didn’t move under recoil, and their targets showed just how beneficial this can be.
I was also thankful that I installed one of the Blackjack safety levers with the finger tab on it. Those things are awesome at helping to overcome one of the big ergonomic problems with the AK, namely the safety lever. I used the notched lever that can also operate as a bolt hold-open, but this feature is only useful as a means of locking the bolt open to show clear when you are on the range.
It is actually a detriment to try and use the holdopen notch when trying to clear malfunctions or reload the weapon.
The sweet setup seemed to be an AK with a good brake, an Ultimak gas tube, and a red dot optic. The guys packing that kind of equipment had consistently good performance…although some of the iron sighters did extremely well too. The guys who spent lots of time shooting AKs were really easy to spot. The guys with the neat doo-dads I mentioned were easy to spot by their targets.
Poor bastards who hadn’t done much of anything with an AK and who didn’t pimp theirs out were also pretty easy to spot by their targets too. (namely me…)
he’s got all the Gucci sh** on!
