[ Yugo-Albanian "Marksman" AK ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the IRCGN,
the central ballistics lab of the French Gendarmerie,
taking a look at some of the really cool guns in their collection.
And their collection is multifaceted, it includes not just experimental French military designs,
as well as, of course, guns that were seized in various criminal proceedings.
But it also includes some interesting stuff that was brought back to France
by French military special operations teams.
We looked at some of that cool stuff before, like the North Korean
Type 73 light machine gun that they have, which is awesome.
I'll link to that video at the end of this one if you're interested in it.
But this is something that I just happened to notice in the collection this time we were here.
And it's just such a fantastic conglomeration
of AK parts I thought it would be really cool to share with you.
This came back with a French military team from ... the former Yugoslavia in 1999,
and it is a complete hodgepodge of AK parts.
So the base rifle is an Albanian AKM,
reputed to be (and rightly so) the worst of all AKMs licence produced anywhere.
But then it has been accessorised with a number of Yugoslav parts or Serbian parts.
More specifically, it has the bipod off a Zastava M72 light machine gun.
It has the scope off a Zastava M76 sniper or DMR rifle.
And it has the top cover, weirdly, off of a long-action Valmet. So let's take a closer look.
The thing that first caught my attention on this rifle of course was the bipod.
That's not normally found on a short 16 inch barrel.
And in order to accommodate it on the handguards,
whoever put this together did a nice bit of little wood removal there
to relieve space for the bipod feet on both sides of that lower handguard.
In order to make that bipod fit they had to actually sleeve the barrel with a larger diameter sleeve here,
because the M72 has a much heavier barrel than a standard AKM.
And then they went ahead and gave it the front sight off of a Yugoslav AK as well.
So it's got the front flip up night sight from an M70 or M72.
The rear sight however, is the windage adjustable type from an RPK,
which ... normally it would be like that's a ... good idea,
it gives you the ability to do some windage adjustment either to zero the rifle,
or if you are making long shots and you want to adjust for wind, you can do that.
However, it is a bit more of an unusual choice given that the top cover has an iron sight on it
albeit one that is substantially higher than the standard iron sight.
So you can see through the scope mount to see this.
And you can see the front sight through it.
But if you are doing that your front sight is set up to be zeroed with this, not with that.
And so you are going to be zeroed for something like [800] metres,
if you actually use this as your rear sight.
And as long as that's there, you can't see your normal rear sight.
The short version being, the whole point of a nice rear sight and see-through irons
on your optics mount are all useless because none of the sights actually line up with each other.
The scope here is the 4x power ZRAK scope from the M76 DMR.
It's intended for 8mm, and
in fact we can see on the elevation dial that it still has a BDC cam for 7.9mm M76.
So that's an 8mm BDC cam, it is not going to give you
appropriate drop for 7.62x39 out of a 16 inch barrel.
The top cover is really the most unusual element of this build.
And it's got two distinctive features, it's got this sort of notch in the front
and it's got this reinforcement at the back.
Where does that come from? Well, that comes from a Valmet.
Specifically a long-action .308, or possibly civilian .243 calibre Valmet.
That's where that top cover came from, and this optics mount was a standard component.
That was a top cover made for civilian sale Valmets that were intended to take scopes
with a little Weaver rail up here, just like this has.
Then if we take the dust cover off, we can see the rest of the trunnion markings.
This is a matching bolt carrier and trunnion, '94 date there.
And like I said, Albanian, so a pretty rare pattern of AK ... to see in most of the world.
But of course not that uncommon in the Balkans, where Albania actually is.
And of course the Albanian guns have sort of a Chinese pattern,
or Chinese style of grip and shoulder stock.
Not to mention the early style of gas tube and sling attachment.
Alright, obviously this is not something that has a specific military provenance,
this is not an official pattern from anything.
But I think it's a really creative and interesting setup
of parts from different AKs that were available at the time.
So where exactly the Valmet top cover came from I'm not sure, that one's a bit of a mystery,
everything else here is Serbian or Albanian, all coming from the Balkans.
And one can certainly understand how it gets put together,
and one can certainly understand the intention.
Like you've got a scope, you've got a bipod for stabilising the rifle, scope for good shots.
The adjustable rear sight's a little odd with the scope mount, but OK, whatever.
And you keep it on a 16 inch barrel, a neat little package.
So I mean I guess I could say if Brandon Herrera doesn't start
making copies of this immediately I will be a bit disappointed.
But anyway, I thought it was a neat piece.
Just something that jumped out and tickled my fancy, hopefully you guys found it interesting as well.
A big thanks to the Gendarmerie for letting me take a look at this and film it for you guys.
Thanks for watching.