I have two questions for those of you with experience:
It sure has been a while
1) what's the best instructional video for running an AK? I am looking at Travis Halsey's new video and beyond the weapon.
What are you trying to do with it? Suarez International is, or at least used to be a big champion of the Kalashnikov. Some of the things you can find on YouTube are absolutely hilarious if you can read Cyrillic. Also, It's not a video, but you can find the Soviet training manual online for free. If you can meet some people who come from the right parts of the world, you can get firsthand instruction from them. I learned the Kalashnikov from a man who used to be Viet Cong. I admit that the training was very lackluster compared to what any competitive tactical school or instructor would teach. I just learned how to operate it, clean it, and how to fight with it.
Here are some helpful tips: When you reload, use your front hand on the rifle and rotate it so that the ejection port is facing the sky. Then use your trigger hand to reload the gun. Use the next magazine to hit the magazine release and knock out the old mag. Get used to shooting without cheek weld. The length of pull will be smaller than on an AR.
These are trick I came up with myself. Operate the trigger with your middle finger and use your index finger to operate the selector lever. This will fix the griping concerning the safety ergonomics. Another one is that you should fire the AK with only one eye open. Close the eye that is not looking down the sights. Learn to fire the AK with your left hand dominant. This will give you an advantage in quicker reloads using your right hand.
2) sling? am I the only one who thinks the factory AK sling is way to small? Or do people not use them like they do on ar platforms? A lot of video I see they arent slung while shooting like a 2 point ar sling?
Please help??
The sling was designed for smaller people and to be used differently from how and American would employ the sling. With the AK, the sling is just there to keep the weapon out of your hands while you are not preoccupied with fighting. I happen to be a small guy, so the generally smaller sizes on all things Kalashnikov are actually something I rather like. For me, it's a break from having to stretch and twist my body to fit American guns.
A huge mistake many people make is to try to handle an AK like an AR. It simply does not work like that. They are separate platforms and require different mindsets and techniques to be applied in order to get the best performance from each. Russian traditions of marksmanship and combat techniques are very different from American ideas.
An AK is a simple rifle intended to tough it out under the hardest conditions while giving the necessary performance for the modern mobile confined battlefield. The gun was designed by a soldier who experienced war at close range where mobility, reliability, and volume of fire were the primary concerns. Accuracy was meant to be good enough for what characterized a typical engagement. Power and control were balanced with an emphasis on having a controllable enough weapon that will still reliably inflict significant damage at any distance within its range. Ergonomics and customization were not part of the design at. The AK was meant to be simple to operate and easy to learn. Russia has a tradition of giving specialized troops their own unique weapons. It is meant to be effective when everything goes wrong.
An AR is a complicated rifle built around theory and conjecture. It was intended to meet a medley of goals and very little of its development has to do with the realities of the battlefield. It was created as a compromise between the realities of modern warfare which demand a high volume of fire, and between the conservative paradigms of senior officers, who still believed in the idea of the American soldier as a rifleman. This shows in the design, which has a high cyclic rate coupled with aperture sights. The idea was still to engage the enemy at range, even though this idea was strongly disproven by empirical evidence. The design was created by an aircraft engineer without any gun experience, and then rammed forcibly into service unmodified despite protests from the military. The result is that the AR was designed around ideal conditions, statistical averages, and ignorant theory. Emphasis was placed on accuracy and how much ammunition could be carried. The controls are ergonomic but complicated and so take a while to learn, it is highly adaptable, and the mechanically complex design is sound and reliable so long as it is fastidiously maintained. All of these things are indicative of the designer's background in aerospace design. The gun much more accurate than necessary and the cartridge is underpowered, save for when certain fragmentation conditions are met. Reliability and power were made secondary concerns. The AR is intended to work when things go right.
