Frag Out! Magazine

...was used, and so it remained. The sides have (each) two cooling slots and three barrel screws openings, as well as a cocking slot with rounded cocking handle inserting opening. The cocking handle can be inserted from either side, without any adverse effects on operation. The barrel screws also hold the side rails, and their openings are filled with pol- ymer sleeves to eliminate vibration and hinder heat transfer. The ejection opening is on the right side of the upper receiver. From the rear it is closed by a back plate, from the front by the barrel assembly, and from the bottom half by the lower rail, being the part of the barrel assembly, and the other half by the lower receiver. The interesting point here is, that the lower hinges not on the upper receiver, but on the rear end of the bottom rail! The barrel assembly is exchangeable as a whole unit, and resembles the one used in SCAR – at least in the mode of fixing – very closely. The locking fer- rule is screwed onto the rear end of the barrel. Rear two pairs of the barrel fixing screws are screwed into this ferrule from the sides. On top of the fer- rule there is a piston guide, directing it on the way to hit the bolt-carrier. On the bottom another two screws fix the lower rail to the ferrule. At approx. 2/3 length of the barrel the gas port is drilled, covered with gas block. Just aft of the gas block there is a U-shaped former, into which bottom the forward bottom rail screw is screwed, and into which sides fit the forward barrel fixing screws pair. The locking ferrule and this former keep the barrel free-float- ing as much as possible in a gas-operated gun. The muzzle is threaded for a countering nut and muzzle devices – standard bid-cage flash hider/compensa- tor, a blank-firing-attachment or a sound modera- tor. To exchange the barrel one has first to field-strip the rifle (the bolt head has to be withdrawn from the locking ferrule of the barrel, and lower receiver has to be detached from the bottom rail), then to unscrew six barrel fixing screws and withdraw the barrel. It can be done in field conditions, but it is by no means a quick-change barrel – any way it takes a torque wrench to reassemble it in a rigidly-regulat- ed sequence. Whoever changed a barrel on SCAR, knows the drill. The A1 and A2 barrels are identical save for the length and theoretically they can be exchanged freely – but in reality the Army ordered the rifles in final configuration with no spare bar- rels. It is then a modular system, but not an oper- ator-configurable one. The bore is 6 groove, one right hand twist in 7 inches. THE BARREL AssEMBLy

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