PLA Small arms
- Thread starter Vanguard1688
- Start date
broadsword
Brigadier
That was 5 years ago. You should see the Gen 3 reviews.
To be fair, those two issues can be attributed to most stock bullpup rifles, particularly the trigger issue due to the far distance between the positions of the trigger and action.
Does that trigger stuff even really matter outside of civilian gun range use? My impression was that in combat, you practically never see what you're shooting at and aren't shooting single shots. At least from that perspective a "good" trigger to prevent flinching isn't that important compared to reliability.
What I heard is the QBZ-95 and its export variants have a trigger without a force breakpoint and the trigger reaches max force quite early, which is something a lot of Americans and other Westerners who are familiar with guns usually associate with mushiness. I heard, back then, the PLA decided that such a trigger makes training faster. The QBZ-95's trigger force graph would be like the blue line but the flat part would start much earlier. So you have a trigger that gets harder fast and stays hard (I heard the peak force required is quite low, so "hard" is relative here.) until the hammer is released, with no significant extra hardness before the point hammer is released. I can easily understand why Americans would readily comment "shit trigger" when they encounter such a trigger.
Speaking of the importance of such small details, they are not important at all. Riflemen do a very small percentage of killing in modern wars. Small arms, in general, are responsible for less than 15% of combat deaths and most of that is machine guns and snipers. And light firearm tech has been very stagnant for 120 years. Commoditization of full auto rifles and scopes have been the only significant developments and those happened mostly because they were expensive to produce before then. Things like trigger force graphs are not really relevant.
Is he on Ukrainian or Russian side?A Norinco Type-97 in Ukraine, with buttstock extension.
Ukraine
I'll pitch in my 2 cents. The Type 97 Gen 3 is a decently accurate, very reliable rifle from my experience. Ergonomic has been improved but is still a bit of a mixed bag. In the updated model the top carrying handle has been replaced with a full length Picatinny rail. The charging handle is now non-reciprocating and reversible. Mag release is ambidextrous, with a push button and paddle release similar to the AR platforms. The one thing that remained a pain is the safety, which is still the same dial switch located on the butt stock, despite being upgraded on the later variant domestic Type 95s.
The trigger pull is fairly light but has no discernible wall before it fires. Reset is positive. All in all not bad for a bullpup. I actually liked it better than the Tavor as a point of comparison.
Ian is correct in saying the rifle has a extremely robust ejection cycle. They tend to lob cases a good 25 feet away and rain them down onto the range. (Cases are also heavily dented so forget bout reloading them)
All in all, for about 1200 Canuckistani Pesos, its the most reliable and economical .223 semi-auto you can buy on the market currently, Assuming you are a fan of bullpup configuration and its inherent tradeoffs from a ergonomics perspective.
