The CZ-2000 project in the Czech Republic (derived from the Lada developed in the late years of Czechoslovakia) envisioned a full suite of infantry arms, much like the AK as used by other countries. There would be an SMG-type compact weapon (akin to the AKS-74U “Krinkov”), a standard infantry rifle, and a light support weapon. It’s that last one that we are looking at today, with a longer barrel and bipod.
Surviving examples of CZ-2000s are extremely rare today, as the system never went into production and only early trials examples and prototypes were made. Many thanks to CZ for letting me take a look at the excellent historical artifact from their archives! See all their social media here:
https://www.instagram.com/czguns/
https://www.facebook.com/CZfirearms
If I hear one more pronunciation of Uhersky Brod, I’m going to cry. Nice rifle.
Oh c’mon, he is doing quite well. It could be worse – something like Ukherska Prod or Stra-kho-nichi. Did you try to say something in Swahili for change? 🙂
Personally, as a native English speaker, I blame all you foreigners for talkin’ funny…
I grew up with a Slovenian stepdad, and as such, I’ve got a tick for trying to pronounce non-English names and words “properly”, but the damn problem is, “properly” is in the eyes of the beholder. Seventh-generation Czechs living in the US pronounce their Czech names the “English” way, or they spelled ’em differently than at home because the letters don’t match the phonemes in English. It’s a pain in the ass; when I run into “them weird foreign names/words”, I usually just ask the owner of said name how they want it pronounced, and then go with that. Nine times out of ten, by the time you’re into the second- or third-generation…? It’s the default “English bastardization”.
I honestly blame the whole thing on everyone using the same alphabet for widely divergent phonemes, and the unfortunate tendency of the English language to follow other languages down dark alleyways, knock them in the head, and then rifle their pockets for the odd word or phrase. So many of the problems with English pronunciation and spellings stem from this issue; the original spelling makes sense in the original language, but you transliterate that to the English phonemes represented by those letters in English, and you’re screwed.
Guns in this series were pronouncedly ugly and that is what military (as opposed to civilian) guns should be. They were built purposeful and nothing more.
To compare look at the current series of Bren1 and Bren2 rifles – so far apart. They are meant to be visually attractive; for better sales of course. And yes – they do sell. CZ-2000 did not.
“(…)look at the current series of Bren1 and Bren2 rifles – so far apart(…)”
Such comparison is not entirely far, this one is one of prototypes, whilst mentioned rifle are produced serially. It might become looking different after going into series, but that never happen.
How much does sight radius contribute to accuracy?
With basic iron sights? A lot.
Much is dependent upon the rest of the factors going into sight/weapon design, as well. The relatively short radius on the Browning machineguns is less of a factor because the sights are sitting on top of a receiver that’s sitting on top of a tripod/T&E system that’s pretty rock-solid. You adjust the T&E, and many of the issues that make a longer sight radius on your usual infantry longarm mo’ bettah go away.
It’s honestly a lot more of man/machine interface issue than it is the basic sight “inherent accuracy” issue. The “sight radius” of an optical sight is a hell of a lot shorter, but the human factors with the sighting issues are different with optical than they are with iron sights.
Has anyone built a drum magazine with a constant-pressure spring?
Actually HK manufactured their own hundred round 5.56 drum mag for the 13 and 13E in the late 60s early 70s I think.They look very similar to theBeta mag c which came out in the mid to late 80s.
There looks to be rails under the gas block like those under the front sight. Could the bipod also be mounted mid-point there?
That mag dump finale is really not mandatory, Ian. I’d rather see some paper targets comparing 3-rd and full auto bursts. Just my country upbringing, I guess.
Ehh, Ian must have some fun besides all work 🙂
I feel the same. I may be boring with this, but I rally disdain those long bursts. They do NOT work for me. During my service, we shot short bursts of 3-5 rounds at 200m target probably to enhance hit probability; frankly, they were little worth.
Sorry to say this, but I feel they are expression of infantile retardation. Typical murican stuff; a hangover from Nam. Now I feel little better:-)
I think that the audience for the sort of thing that you and I would enjoy seeing is probably incredibly small. I’d love watching videos comparing the various T&E/tripod systems with all the machineguns Ian gets to fire, but that crap is so flippin’ esoteric that he’d probably get two or three hits: Yours, and mine.
Some of the things that we “enthusiasts” would prefer to see are so “inside baseball” that the general run of audience member would be bored spitless and wind up abandoning the whole thing. In my case, were I doing the videos that really interested me…? It’d probably be “Oh, my gawd… He’s doing another interminable M60 rant… Sweet Jesus, how long can this guy talk about tripods?”
Sooooo… The interest (and, the money…) is on the mag dumps. Blame the Philistines in the audience. Or, alternatively, blame the niche nature of what you and I might be interested in… That’d probably be a lot more fair to our fellow audience members.
Is this “utreon” the new platform to watch your films? This has got to be the worst player I’ve seen in a long while.
It is the new alternative platform to YouTube he uses. It combines functions of PAtreon (donating money) and video delivery. The user can also sort his videos in tiers for different levels of support. The site still needs some work I agree though. And of course it does not have as strong a server infrastructure as YouTube.
Just this August Ian did a video about Utreon: https://www.forgottenweapons.com/utreon-good-video-hosting-for-both-viewers-creators/
I got it. Just found it hard to navigate/fast forward in that player.
Biwak? As in tenting?