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Weg wrote:Very interesting .... only verifies what I already knew the AK to be though. Only reliable rifles are interesting....

OUCH! Another slam! Stick a fork in me.

Just giving as good as we get, TAM. Think of us as the little brother who still has some proving to do to the family before we get taken seriously.

Video AK74 vs AR15 at 300 yrd: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZO11glbkr4" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It was a cool video!

I was just browsing along dropping grenades in my trail yesterday. . . glad I didn't pipe in on the Nissan Titan thread, being a Chevy man. lol

That makes me think of all the classic all-time debates for the generations (I've personally seen all of these end in name calling and hurt feelings at one time or another. .. you might be surprised which ones I've seen nearly come to blows):
(Correct answers, where available, in blue)
- AK vs. AR
- Glock vs. Non-Glock
- 1911 vs. the world
- Chevy vs. Ford vs. Dodge (vs. Foeign - although the debate often turns to 3/4 ton and 1-ton trucks to systematically eliminate these)
- Diesel vs. Gasoline (Correct answer might have been diesel before 2007, when the government ruined a lot of the efficiency advantage)
- Mobile 1 (or Valvoline) vs. Pennzoil
- A&M vs. t.u. vs. Tech vs. UT-Norman
- PC vs. Mac
- Unix vs. Linux (Correct answer is actually: zOS)
- DB2 vs. MySQL (this was an interesting, and sad one)
- Republican vs. Democrat
- Texas vs. anybody who will listen (or not listen)


. . . this could make an interesting off-topic discussion. Maybe we can settle all of these here and now. Honestly, most people are indoctrinated into one side of these or another from birth and rarely change.

I took the kids (they all came home last weekend) to the Garland range for a day of shooting. I recently picked up a pristine Norinco AK in a trade. Ihad no sooner begun to empty the first mag and an audience gathered. Lot's of fun to shoot...but IMHO it's largely a 'spray-n-pray' weapon.

AndyC wrote:What the AR crowd often fail to appreciate is that the AK was designed as an assault rifle in the truest sense of the word - used in large quantities when assaulting a defended position in the filthiest of conditions, using sheer volume of fire to overpower and crush the defenders. That's the Russian combat philosophy - their rifles are axes, not rapiers.

It's a general-purpose, close-to-medium range assault weapon - the loose chamber throws accuracy out the window but means great reliability; it was never designed to be an independent or precision rifle used by trained riflemen as in the Western philosophy - just a tough-as-nails weapon with which to storm the trenches.

Agree. I'm only a hobbyist, and my personal experience is limited, but I've always been under the impression that the AK was designed with the lessons of World War II very much in mind - the Soviets wanted a rifle that they could put in the hands of a conscripted farmer and trust to send vast amounts of lead downrange under the most miserable conditions imaginable.

Cold War design ideologies are interesting things, because the US and USSR built lots of things that were comparable in intended use and employment - from small arms to nuclear reactors to spacecraft - but the design philosophies were so different that direct comparisons are usually a case of apples and oranges. The AK and the AR are hard to compare directly because they were designed with roughly the same end goal in mind, but they went about it in vastly different ways.

Steve133 wrote:Cold War design ideologies are interesting things, because the US and USSR built lots of things that were comparable in intended use and employment - from small arms to nuclear reactors to spacecraft - but the design philosophies were so different that direct comparisons are usually a case of apples and oranges. The AK and the AR are hard to compare directly because they were designed with roughly the same end goal in mind, but they went about it in vastly different ways.

As you mention, the space race is a great example. The USA took the high tech approach, making gear smaller and lighter, building the launch site closer to the equator, et cetera. The USSR built bigger, more powerful rockets.

Louis Awerbuck had a recent article that touched on the design differences between AK & AR. His metaphor was a bit salty so I won't repeat it here, but he mentions several Recce members who carried AKs by choice, even in preference to the FN-FAL.

fickman wrote: - Glock vs. Non-Glock
- Chevy vs. Ford vs. Dodge (vs. Foeign - although the debate often turns to 3/4 ton and 1-ton trucks to systematically eliminate these)-
- DB2 vs. MySQL (this was an interesting, and sad one)

Guess nobody is perfect...DB2...

As for accuracy, I can easily produce a 5-shot group that fits under the palm of my hand with my Romanian SAR-1 at 100 yards. (it's like a WASR, but with dimples and no slant brake...stupid AWB....)

I hiked to a cave in desert mountains near my house once and from elevation could hit anything man-sized within 400 yards, mostly Yucca cactuses. Just click it to 3, practice all of the fundamentals of shooting, and hit stuff.

For the shots around 400, it took what felt like several seconds to see the puff of dirt, and I doubt the x39 round had much energy left at that range.

For energy purposes the x39 round is good to 200 yards or so, maybe 300 in a pinch. After that, you might as well find a way to accurately throw rocks.