Finally, finally made it to the range after work tonight. Outdoor ranges in my AO are ass, so for time's sake I opted for an indoor range right by work. I brought five types of ammo:
-Remington UMC brass
-Igman brass
-Wolf Gold brass
-Tula steel
-(not pictured; pulled loose from an ammo can) Wolf/Barnaul steel
I also brought four surplus IMI mags in various conditions, as well as a new manufacture commercial IWI mag.
After 100 rounds, I had no failures or other hiccups of any kind. The action is smooth and all the mags locked up with little to no play. This is one gassy B - launched cartridges about 30 feet away at the 2 o'clock position. Being indoors I wasn't able to salvage any to inspect case damage. I will say, being so used to the AK manual of arms, the muscle memory to push the mag catch housing instead of the lever itself was a painful reminder this isn't
quite a Kalashnikov. A nearly dislocated thumb knuckle ensures that won't happen again.
At 25 yards standing, offhand without a sling, I was fairly satisfied with the initial groups. Not great, not terrible. I'm so used to optics, it took a bit to get used to the aperture sights, especially in a dimly lit range shooting into shredded black rubber. I may swap in some tritium Meprolight sights. Here are the initial five-round groups from each ammo batch. Love me some Russian Barnaul. RIP...
The first batches of these SARs had reports of trigger slap. That seems to have been improved with different FCGs in these later batches. There's some grit on the initial take up but resets are pretty crisp. I expect it to smooth out a bit with use. It feels in line with a standard surplus AK trigger - not great but serviceable for sure.
All in all, I'm happy with the purchase. It's not as nice as the Galil ACE 22 that I love, but it's not meant to be. And with the muzzle extension and surplus tube stock it really puts off those classic Israeli vibes. I'll keep putting it through its paces and see if I can't elicit some malfunctions, but the thing seems pretty tight and well built overall. Initial reaction is that STG did a good job with this batch and is consistently improving its QC batch over batch. And did I mention that buttery Galil action?