I won't go into too much detail on the pistol itself, there are plenty of places on the 'net to get that info. This is merely a short blurb on the one I own, and what I like, and dislike about it.
There's a lot to like about this pistol, and a few warts as well. First of all, it is pretty cheap, Aim Surplus carries them for approximately $120, check for the latest price. They usually come with 2 magazines, a cleaning rod, and a leather holster. The holster is pretty useless, unless you want to collect useless holsters. But the cleaning rod and the mags can be put to good use :)
Field stripping them is a little different for those of us used to John Brownings tilting barrel style of semi auto pistols. But it's simple enough, details can be found here Actually, there's a lot of info there, if you leave here now, and go there, you will get a lot more info than I can give you.
Still with me? good
The pistol is robust, well made, and has a tough finish, looks like some sort of parkerizing, but I am not sure. The sights are atrocious, the trigger worse, and the firing pin will eventually break, especially if you dry fire it. But the sights can be replaced, as can the firing pin, and replacing the firing pin will go a long way to improving the trigger pull. The main complaint I have about the trigger on my example, is that it slaps the finger when the slide comes back into battery. It is quite distracting after a couple of magazines, and causes accuracy to suffer. The main culprit seems to be the firing pin safety. I will be replacing my (original, and as yet unbroken) firing pin some time in the near future. I will report on any changes in the trigger at that time.
Recoil is light, although muzzle blast is quite noticable, the surplus Czech ammo I had, produced quite a fireball, and got many comments at the range when I was trying the gun out. The commercial S&B ammo is apparantly not as bad in the flamethrower department.
Accuracy of the pistol seems good, hampered though it is by a bad trigger, and poor sights. The mag catch is a euro style on the butt of the grip, and like most of them, sucks. Spare mags are relatively inexpensive, $15-20 apiece, and are available at most gunshows.
In summary, despite poor ergonomics (the gun points very high for me, the bore is very square to the grip), a bad trigger, and weak sights, the gun is a lot of fun to shoot, is reasonably accurate, and quite cheap. Ammo can be expensive if you buy the commercial S&B, but is quite cheap if you stick to the (corrosive) surplus ammo, of which there is a lot. One caveat, there was a batch of Bulgarian surplus ammo, that was showing extremely high over pressure, details at the forums Unlikely that you will come across some, but be advised.
Don't dry fire the pistol, the firing pin will eventually break, and don't trust the decocker. There have been incidents of the decocker firing the pistol. It's one of the main design flaws of the pistol.
This is not a carry piece, but it's a lot of fun at the range, and you will get quite a few requests to try it out, once you have fired off a few rounds and the folks see the fireball. This thing spits flame like a 2" .357.
Enough for now, I will add more guns later, both to this page, and to my armory :) until then, safe shooting, and keep the powder dry.
Last modified on Fri Sep 26 20:25:21 PDT 2003