- Yeah. - But the Poles never put them on, so you can't do it.
Wrong! It's somehow morally illegal.
[ wz.88 Tantal on the Range ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are out at the range with a Polish wz.88 "Tantal".
Of course ... Tantal was its developmental code name.
In service it was just the wzór 88, but most people continue to call them Tantals anyway.
So, we took a closer look at the history and the development of this rifle yesterday.
If you're interested in that, and ... the subtleties of this being more of an AKM in 5.45 than an AK-74,
if you'd like to know more about how that happens check out yesterday's video.
But today we're going to do some shooting with it.
So of course the most distinctive practical difference between this and any old AK-74 or AKM
is that the Poles decided to basically divorce the safety and selector controls.
So, we have our typical AK dust cover on the side here, but that acts as safe and fire.
And then on the left side of the gun we have the selector switch,
which allows us to ... rotate between full-auto, semi-auto, and 3 round burst.
The fire control mechanism is completely non-interchangeable on these with standard AK-74s.
It does not have a rate reducer, so it's a little bit of a fast gun in full-auto.
Which is probably why the Poles wanted that 3 round burst-limiting capacity.
So, let's start it off in semi.
Alright.
5.45 AKs are great, very pleasant to shoot, light recoil, they're awesome, it's a great cartridge.
Much like 5.56 is a very nice cartridge for this sort of purpose in a rifle.
Now let's switch it up to full-auto.
By the way, I hate the stock, it's short and uncomfortable and ick.
They are bouncy, they're less bouncy than 7.62 AKs, but we can work with that.
But we also have a 3 round burst.
Huh, OK, it's 3 round burst until you only have 1 round left in the magazine,
and then it's 1 round burst. Yep, we are empty.
Alright, let's try 3 round burst again now that we have more than 4 rounds total in the mag.
Alright, so I guess from a philosophical standpoint I'm not a huge fan of 3 round burst.
My thought is, if you're going to use the gun in full-auto,
you should practice enough that you can use it effectively in proper full-auto.
And then if you want 2 rounds you fire 2, if you want 3 you fire 3, if you want 8 you fire 8.
What 3 round burst does however
is ... on the one hand it allows you to simplify training.
... Like, it takes a lot of practice to be able to control full-auto that effectively.
And you can kind of bypass that training requirement
for an army by having a 3 round burst.
And sort of the way you would use it in best practice
would be get one sight picture, pull trigger, fire 3 rounds.
And then it's just down to how good is your recoil control
to try and keep all 3 of those rounds on target.
Or your dispersion of those 3 rounds makes it perhaps more likely
that one of them will hit whatever it is that you're trying to shoot at.
Or you could just teach people to use semi-auto,
which is in almost all circumstances the most effective way to shoot.
But we'll go back to full here for you guys.
And we're out again.
There's a neat little ricochet.
So, Tantal, overall? A very pleasant gun to shoot,
with the exception of this annoyingly short stock with the annoying wire brace.
These were actually designed with a rear trunnion that is
completely compatible with all standard fixed AKM/AK-74 stocks.
However, the Poles never actually issued it
or manufactured it with anything other than this folding stock.
So in theory if you have one you could swap it out, even though that's not technically correct.
Personally, I kind of like 2 round burst.
I find that it keeps your magazine lasting longer,
it's a little easier to keep 2 rounds on target instead of 3.
And there are guns out there that have 2 round burst switches, just not this one.
So, since the 3 round burst is the defining ... practical handling different factor on the Tantal,
we'll go ahead and finish this out in 3 round bursts.
Thanks again to Woody's Weapons and Sienna Armoury
for giving us the opportunity to do some filming with this. Hopefully you enjoyed it.
Thanks for watching.
And I'm out.