South African sight settings

[JohnLewis]

Thought I would bring this up as it was intresting in a odd trivia sort of way.
Back in the early days of soldier of fortune magazine, they spent alot of time over in south africa reporting on warring party or another, and they found that in Rhodisia there was a lot of police being fired on/ambushed while out in the bush by bad guys armed with a myrid of different AK47's......an odd thing was noticed was that very few policmen were being hit. Then they starting killing a few of the bad guys in these incidents and found that the rear sights on the recovered AK's were to a one,being set for 800 or 1000meters(depending on orgin) and at close range they were shooting very high(thus missing everything they were trying to shoot) turns out the word amoung the bad guys was if you set the rear sight to the maximum....."it shot harder"(had more power) lol who knew we had varible power AK's? :rofl_smal

[preokc]

hey John, interesting story. sorry to get off subject but your story brings up two questions i bet you can answer.1,i have a book that shows south african troops with a galil variant called a R4. who produces it? 2, on the rear sight of my ak/mak rifles all the way back is a D. if i move the adjuster to the D it raises the sight up higher. what is this setting for? thx for any info. PE

[JohnLewis]

the South African government had hardships with embargos due to their policies on human rights.....Overnight they had to get really good at producing everything from small arms to 155mm self propelled weapons systems. South Africa did work with the Israel in the 70's and 80's on a number of projects.
the R4 is a modified IMI Galil(made by the Vector company in S.A.) the big change was a longer, sturdier buttstock. A detachable bi-pod was issued with every weapon(like Galil ARM model) the R5 was the short version(like Galil AR) and there was was a LM4 and LM5 that were semi auto only (for police)
and a R6 that was super short(like a Krinkov) It was 1982 that the R4 series replaced the FN FAL and HK G3 in South African service.
Your second question has to do with the rearmost position setting on your backsight........that is your battlesight setting, ment for use from 0 to 300 meters in combat(it would keep the POI somewhere in the confines of the upper torso without having to constantly fiddle with the rear sight settings in combat.
yes, close it will shoot high and at 300 it will be a little low....but still upper torso. its a comprimise setting.....some M1 Garand sights have the same thing for the same purpose.

[Packrat]

R4 is a variant of the AK, or more properly of the Israeli Galil, produced in South Africa. We have a forum for those 2, along with the Valmet: the Terrible Trio (at least if you're facing them). The proof that they could build accurate AKs.

The sight marking nearest to you, marked with a D or a Cyrillic P (a tall box open at the bottom) is the "battlesight"; this is where you keep your sight set in combat. It's about 350 m (if you adjusted your sight in metres; if you sighted in on a US range, it's about 350 yds. Aiming at the center of mass, you should hit somewhere in the torso. This isn't quite as bad as setting it o 8 or 10, but close. I think a more practical battlesighting is to set the slider on 2. That keeps your bullet approximately +/- 4" out to 250 yds (or metres). On a rifle that was "acceptible" in the old Soviet Red Army (15 cm or 6" from a prone rest at 100 m) 350m would give a 52 cm or 20" circle. Though at that distance you would probably have time to estimate range and adjust your sights. But +/- 4", and that in vertical stringing, would be a reasonable shot.

[JohnLewis]

:mad_small ...I have to remember not to post in Latin, as my posts require an entrepreter (By the way 350 meters is 382.765 yards!....thats about maximum for an Ak anyway,so I'll just set mine to "8" as it makes it shoot harder..)