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This is a guest post by Zain from Pakistan
The ‘Sporter’ cal .308 Winchester has been designed as a hunting rifle with the firing mechanism of G3A3 in semiautomatic mode. The accuracy of the gun has been enhanced with a freely floating extended barrel and a mil standard pictanny rail for mounting telescope.
Caliber 7.62 mm x 51 NATO/.308 WIN
Muzzle velocity 770-790 m/s
Effective Range 600 m
Barrel grooves 4 grooves right hand twist 305 ± 10 mm lead
Sights: Rear Rotary rear sight with 4 adjustments 100 m ‘V” sight and 200, 300 & 400 m aperture sights, adjustable for windage and elevation.
Front Fixed hooded post front sight
Magazine 5 x round, box magazine
Barrel length 521 mm Length of weapon 1096 mm
(20.5 inches)
Weight of weapon 4.66 Kg (Approx) without magazine
Overall length 42 inches
The Gun
Barrel
As mentioned to above, the barrel is free floated to enhance the accuracy of rifle. The barrel is robustly chrome lined and to keep it strictly a civilian rifle, the barrel is not threaded. The barrel has 1/12 rate of twist.
Furniture of the rifle
As the pictures depicted above would show, the furniture of the rifle is high quality black colored polymer which has an excellent metal to polymer fit. There are no gaps and spaces any where between the metal of the gun and polymer furniture.
The stock is a typical G3 fixed stock with two holes to retain the locking pins when field stripping the weapon. The pistol grip has grooves for thumb and fingers. The hand guard is a wide type and has groove for fitting of bipod and has two channels for resting the legs of bipod.
Trigger
Since this rifle is based upon the G3 rifle and made by the same company /organization (POF), it inherits all good and bad things from its elder sister, the G3 rifle. The trigger is essentially a combat trigger but it can be made smoother by polishing the internals. Since I don’t have such expertise, I have to live with it. The good thing in this is that even being a combat trigger, the rifle is fairly accurate. I presume it is because of its roller delayed blow back mechanism which delays the recoil and bullet leaves the barrel before the recoil is felt by shooter.
Sights
The front sight is hooded which appeared to me to be resembling to G3 and HK91. The rotary drum rear sight has 4 adjustments i.e. 100m ‘V’ sight and then 200, 300 & 400m aperture sights. The rear sights are adjustable for windage and elevation. I have removed the rear sights of my rifle to mount scope. I was very skeptical about the front sight post interfering with the scope and even thought of removing it . But when I shouldered the weapon after mounting the scope, there was no trace of front sight post and field of view was crystal clear. It was a pleasant surprise for me
Safety / fire control
The safety / fire control lever has two adjustments, “S” for safe mode and “E” for semi auto fire mode, this being a semi auto only rifle. The safety lever is situated on the left side of the rifle and can be easily accessed with the thumb of the right hand. the shooter does not have to remove hand from pistol grip, finger from trigger and sights from target to operate the control. This indicator cannot be swapped to other side to facilitate the left hand shooters and there is merely an indicator on the left side which reciprocates to the movement control lever to show status as safe or fire position.
Magazine
The rifle comes with 2 five rounder magazines which sit flush in the mag well. The magazine appeared to be dipped in black colored paint and dried. I have never seen any thickly colored magazines in my life. Perhaps it was the reason that the magazines took effort to be inserted in mag well . But after the magazine is inserted in well, it requires a firm slap at its “seat” to be seated in its place. Such an adamant magazine requires some effort to come out as well. I think it happens due to thick coat of color. The magazine can accommodate an extra round easily so it is actually a “six rounder” magazine. The gun can easily accommodate and operate a regular 20 rounder magazine of G3 rifle.
Charging Handle
The non reciprocating charging handle has a plastic cap and is adequately large. But even then it requires lot of force to charge it. It locks back in a notch and can be released by famous G3 slap. But one cannot not slap it once the scope is mounted. You have to use your thumb to release the charging handle. The stiffness and relatively difficult operation of this component is the inherent flaw/uniqueness of the G3 design that is not going to go anywhere.
Advantages over Western civilian 308 semi auto rifles built on roller delayed blowback action
Since the day made up my mind to to get this rifle, I started to review the rifles based on the roller delayed blowback action and only then I knew that there are many versions of civilian semi auto rifles based on roller delayed blowback action such as HK 91 PTR91 , C308 , PTRGI, CETME 308 etc. When I got the rifle I saw many things in this rifle that those western rifles lack, owing to their gun safety laws or the reason best known to the manufacturer, but it was a joy to see this weapon decorated with all those missing bells and whistles which the gun enthusiasts of US and other countries are never going to get or get them as aftermarket upgrades.
The rifle is made on H&K factory tools
The videos I saw on YouTube and reviews on internet shows it to be a plus point if any roller delayed blowback rifle is made by the original H&K factory or any factory which has received the ToT ( transfer of technology) under the license from H&K. Even if some gun is made by the parts made by H&K or under ToT, it is boasted in the advertisement of the gun. So the first and foremost advantage of this gun, over other civilian rifles made on this principle (excluding those who are actually made by H&K i.e. HK91) is that this weapon is made by POF on same machines which are making G3 rifles under a ToT license agreement from H&K Germany.
Paddle Magazine Release
I have seen the US and the gun enthusiasts of other countries to install the paddle magazine release in their rifles as an aftermarket upgrade. But this rifle has its paddle magazine release already installed in it and it really works too. Besides paddle magazine release, there is a push button magazine release and it is not situated at an odd location where shooter has to take off hand to operate such button . Rather both the magazine release mechanisms are within easy approach of the operator. The new 5 rounder magazines supplied with the gun did not fall free owing to thick coat of paint on them ,however , used regular 20 rounder G3 magazines continue to fall free by activating the both mechanisms
3rd pin to hold trigger group
The Western Gun enthusiasts may never get this feature on their guns due to their insane gun safety laws. I have seen that in western countries, in all civilian 308 rifles made on G3 principle a weird shank is used to hold the trigger group. While this gun has 3rd pin to house and hold its metal trigger group.
Rail to Mount the optics
The shooters of west had to wait for this feature till the manufacturers had, very kindly, and, very recently included this feature in their guns. The reason of delaying / withholding this feature is best known to PTR or Century Arms, the manufacturers of those respective rifles.
I have noticed that PTR 91 GIR model possess this feature and that model is probably one of most recent models of this sort of guns. Thanks to the genius of the team POF responsible for release of this rifle that it has this very useful feature built in from the very first day and we, the civilian gun owners of Pakistan, who are already short of accessories, are saved from the quest of looking for side / claw mounts.
Field Stripping
The method to field strip the gun is essentially the same as ordinary G3 which is shown in dozens of clips on YouTube so need not be repeated. However here is the view of “guts” of the gun in field stripped condition:
The bolt and the carrier aka “the big one”
I have read some somewhere that in G3 rifles, you can run a full auto bolt in semi auto only rifle but it cannot be done vice versa. I shall request the learned members of this site to look at the bolt and the internals of gun and guide me as to whether it can house a full auto enabled bolt or not. This is just a question posed out of curiosity and I know curiosity kills the cat.
Range report
I wanted to write this review as soon as I could but it got late and the review of the gun I got after this rifle got written ( Hilink Lr3 aka Norinco AK 556, may be because I am an AK guy) but this review was due. I am in the habit of writing everything in one sitting (human essentialities exempted, of course ) so it was hard to find the time. However I kept it mind and kept the pictures being uploaded. The pictures shown in this review are taken months apart.
One day I was thought to take one day leave from office and to write the review of this rifle. On the way back home, I saw an interesting thing and made a short clip of that. While I was on way home I was telephonically informed that my leave is cancelled and I have to go back to my jurisdiction due to an emergent work. Again, The review got delayed for months but I thought to make that video part of this review.
The region I live in is one of the hottest parts of the world. Just weeks ago , the temperature soared to 54 degree centigrade and coincidentally it was the month in which we Muslims fast from 4.00 am to 7.40pm.
The condition of electricity is this that out of 24 hours, it is available for 10 hours in cities and hardly 4 hours in rural areas and that too with pauses and breaks. The major crop of this area is paddy. In the months of July and August the lands get irrigated to prepare the soil for transplantation and when heat combines the vapor that the hot soil lets out, coupled with the mosquitoes and other millions of species of insects, who compete and contest each other to hurt the defenseless humans of this area, you just cannot imagine how miserable life becomes. In those days the only relief is natural blowing wind but that too stops due to climatic reasons and there is no way anyone could have a nap. But the life has go on and the best way out in that condition is to devise a refuge or escape method that is less dependent upon modern technology due to no electricity. The method, devised to have a peaceful nap in the night is shown below.
[EDITOR: Hotlink, as I know FB embed is buggy]
As I got a space, I proceeded to the break I was eagerly waiting to get. To fire some shots out of my POF sporter semi auto 308 Roller delayed blowback rifle. We don’t have range in our entire region so we shoot while using the sandy dunes or banks of river as back stop. There is hundreds of hundreds of kilometers of uninhabited lands beyond that river.
The area we shoot in
But the shooting was not the only agenda on this trip. We have a lot of friends to visit when we reached at the place we decided to shoot, it was time for lunch.
Lunch in wilderness
After we got finished with food, I set out targets and started to shoot
It takes some effort to insert the mag and…
It takes some extra force to charge the handle (May be because the gun has not been broken in yet.)
The ammo used was regular POF Milsurp 7.62x51mm bullet and POF made 308 Win 150 grain rounds .
The target sheets are not standard target sheets. But the groups could speak for themselves
Three round group
Distance 100 Meters
Ammo 7.62×51 Mill surp
Three round group
Distance 100 meters
Ammo 308 Win , 150 gr made by POF
On another occasion, I shot an orange placed on a stand at the distance of 150 meters. The first bullet pierced through the orange with damaging the stand. Other orange was put on the stand and the second bullet traversed the stand and licked the orange on one of its side.
