Frag Out! Magazine

Frag Out! Magazine #00

Frag Out! Magazine

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CZUB had no design resources to speedily ac- complish a design like that, and so they decided to outsource the designing phase and hired Mr. Fin- dorak again. This proved to be an excellent choice – in less than a year the rifle was not only designed, but prototypes were built and tested. This also proved unfortunately to be Findorak's last design accomplishment, as he died prematurely in the fall of 2006, in his early 50s. In November 2006 CZ S805 was first demonstrat- ed to the Army's chief of staff, General Stefka, but the Army again didn't ordered any – instead they bought another batch of Bushmasters! After that CZUB decided to go public with their new accom- plishment, hoping that patriotically-inclined public would affect the military complacency. For three years the rifle was regularly exhibited during the IDET fair in Brno as well as Prague's 'Future Soldier' conventions, but the success proved to be elusive. The big change came upon in 2009, when finally a tender was opened for the Czech Army's new battle rifle. Meanwhile at the factory the Findorak's rifle de- sign's development has been overseen by Vitezslav Guryca, CZUB designer since 1984, whose previous accomplishments included the CZ 97B, Czech first ever .45 ACP pistol. Testing of the Slavicin-made prototypes revealed minor problems with lock tim- ing, trigger mechanism, buttstock, return spring as- sembly, and barrel change method. These teething problems were ironed-out by Guryca, assisted by the CZUB's chief engineer Radek Hauerland, chief designer Pavel Mahdala, with Jaroslav Bachurek, Jiri Kafka and Vladimir Simek. They were also designing the whole armament subsystem around the new ri- fle, including a novel 805 G1 40 mm underbarrel grenade launcher, as well as the 805 UN/BN bayonet. Racing against the clock, the design team decided to curtail the modularity of the system, and press on with development of only the A platform (SCAR-L equivalent) with two barrel lengths, rifle (A1) and carbine (A2). These were initially provided in two calibers, 5.56x45 mm and 7.62x39 mm. The first A1 demonstrated in November 2006 to the chief of staff was a 5.56 mm A1, but the first to be hands- on publically demonstrated was the A2 in 7.62 mm (during the Future Soldier 2008). Later on the pro- gram got curtailed once again – only the 5.56 mm system was exhibited since then, from early 2009 on with a re-modeled upper receiver. The caliber exchange in the CZ S805 rifle requires changing barrel, gas system, bolt-head and a magazine well. The magazine well is a separate module of the lower receiver, connected by a T-slot and the rail and (since 2010) stabilized with a pin – the idea resembling the MGI's Hydra exchangea- ble magazine well system. There were three maga- zine modules demonstrated so far, two for CZ's own plastic magazines and one for the AR-15 (STANAG) magazine. The proprietary plastic magazine is a re- ally bulky affair, patterned after HK G36 magazines – the 5.56 mm variant claims interchangeability with the German rifle. These are opaque, semi-transpar- ent to allow quick bullet count, and fortunately do not copy the G36 integral magazine couplings. The 7.62 and 5.56 plastic magazines different mostly in shape, 5.56 being much straighter than the 7.62 'ba- nana'. There's even a joke about these, stating that the 5.56 is a 'Euro banana' (hinting at the infamous EU regulation on the shape of banana, stipulating it should be almost straight – because such shaped bananas prevail in former French Guyana), as op- posed to the 7.62 mm 'real banana'. An AKM-com- patible magazine well was announced, but nev- er demonstrated, while the factory dismisses the speculations about Sa-58 compatible magazine well being ever contemplated. CLOsE BuT NO CIGAR THE MuLTI-OPTIONAL RIFLE

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