Posted on 07/25/2011 11:48:10 PM PDT by West Texas Chuck
Adequate internal ballistics require a very good chamber and barrel (Red Jacket used a Shilen) and a machined receiver.
Adequate external ballistics requires repeatability (match ammo) and a trajectory designed to be relatively flat. Unfortunately, the 7.62x39 has moore or less the same trajectory as a .30-30 - good for ranges out to 100-150 meters, but after that it quickly becomes a rock. The best way to judge the 7.62x54R is to pull its terminal ballistics from a Hornady/Remington/whoever ammo maker and graph the results, comparing it to other rounds that you know to be good for long range. One word of caution - Published numbers only go out to about 500 yards. I have had some luck in putting the numbers into Excel, graphing them, and then using the last 3 or 4 entries to create a trend line out to 1,000 yards. For initial selection purposes that will be good enough without resorting to ballistics software that requires numbers you won’t have access to.
Nice, I’ll take a look around. I scoped out FN FALs a few years ago and was seeing prices north of $2K for complete guns. You could get parts kits, but not intact receivers. A buddy of mine bought a cut one (for $300!!!) and did I-know-not-what with it.
That must have been a very, very, very long time ago, because FAL build parties are quite common these days and parts kit + new upper receiver is quite a popular buildup.
You can still get such parts kits for about that money, but the quality is lower than it used to be (best ones sold first). New receivers were made by Imbel and then after those were banned from import, by Hesse and Century (ugh) but now DSA is making new ones here in the US to the original specs. Entreprise Arms is also making some. Check out falfiles.com for more information, the forums contain all knowledge about the things.
Even semi-collectable ones are going for less than a damn M1A. This is a rare Israeli Heavy Barrel model like mine: http://www.falfiles.com/forums/showthread.php?s=610fc93bf99df45ce718467a3efc032f&;
threadid=313437
A complete light barrel metric version can be had for or less than $1000 already built.
Corrected URL: http://www.falfiles.com/forums/showthread.php?s=610fc93bf99df45ce718467a3efc032f&threadid=313437
I hear you loud and clear, but the scenario you describe is more gruesome than the one I am preparing for. The opponent featured in my planning wears blue or black or is a looting urban troglodyte with a "liberated" weapon. If my opponent wears ACUs I doubt I will be given a chance to swap weapons. As someone wiser than me once said, "as goes the Army, so goes the Republic." Pray that if the worst happens the armed services go the way of The People.
I've been collecting C&R for years, I kind of lost track of what was going on in homebuild land.
Consider a fastball from a world-class pitcher, like Randy Johnson or Roger Clemens in their heyday. Remember the vaporized bird that Johnson hit? His fastest pitch would rack up about 150 Joules of energy - about 1/10th that of a 5.56mm bullet.
Considering a beaning in the batting helmet from Johnson would leave a guy with a concussion, and vaporize a bird, I'm not sure I'd want to trust a helmet would protect me from ringing my bell VERY strongly from 10 times the energy!
Just like a level IIIA (no crash plate) bullet resistant vest - it'll stop a 12GA slug, but you'll break some ribs and basically be out of commission for a week or more. Not dead, not perforated, but in no condition to do much more than lay there in pain...
Just like a level IIIA (no crash plate) bullet resistant vest - it'll stop a 12GA slug...
Would it stop this slug?
The only way to go is the right arm of the free world
http://www.dsarms.com/videos/DSA_Video_2011.wmv
Nope! But neither will it stop a 5.56mm round...;)
Yeah, that’s been a very long time. There are multiple options now. Imbel was making new, not recycled receivers, though. Imbels do still go for a bit of a premium, but it’s $600 or so, not $1000+ now.
A brand new DSA receiver is $449 retail. http://www.dsarms.com/FAL-SA58%20Upper%20Receivers/products/13/
Entreprises start at $349. http://www.entreprise.com/fnreceivers.html
You can even get one for an “inch” FAL from them, as the L1A1 receivers.
Yeah, those are not reloadable.
I have one that does that and one that just leaves the gas lines from the fluted chamber. I think those are OK.
The beat up ones probably need the delay time on the locking rollers looked at.
AK based .308s beat the crap out of the brass too.
My VEPR beats the crap out of brass
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