[ FR-F2 at the Range ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and we are out at the range today
with an awesome rifle that I honestly for a long time
didn't think I would ever get a chance
to have here in the United States.
This is a French FR-F2.
The F1 was adopted in the 1960s, it is
... a precision rifle built on the MAS 36 platform.
But it doesn't actually use MAS 36 parts, they took that basic design,
improved it, built it up as a precision rifle.
And the FR-F1 was a fantastic precision rifle chambered for 7.5 French.
Now in 1986 they went ahead and decided to update the guns again to do a couple of things.
One of them was to re-chamber them for 7.62 NATO.
And the other was to replace essentially the front end
with this polymer shield and a new style of bipod.
And if you're interested in all the mechanical elements to this,
well, check out yesterday's video where I have this on the table and I talk about its history.
What we're doing today is some actual shooting with it.
So I am shooting 7.62mm ball F4.
This is Australian surplus that I got I think it had to be like 10 years ago.
And it had a reputation at that time as being very accurate 7.62 surplus.
And so I bought some of it, and I just kind of stashed it away
figuring at some point I'll want good, precise .308.
And I think this is probably worthy of proper match-grade ammo,
but for the time being I'm using my ... should be really good .308 surplus.
So 10 round magazine. I have a paper target out there at 200 yards.
But we also have four clay pigeons that a previous shooter has left on the range at about 150 yards.
And so I think this should be pretty well zeroed at this point,
I think we're going to try hitting some clay pigeons. So let's see how that goes.
Alright, so the camera view is probably not that great because we're zoomed all the way in,
but I'm going to start with the bottom right, let's see if I can do this.
High.
There goes that one.
Let's go centre bottom.
I think that was just slightly high as well.
There we go.
Centre top.
Low.
Oh, so close.
There we go.
And there's one more on the left.
That is pretty sweet, that was really cool.
I thought I had it a little bit better zeroed than that,
I had to actually hold under them a little bit, and that's ... a problem with my zero.
But we'll get that fixed up, in fact we're going to go ahead and put a group on paper at 200 yards,
and that'll show me exactly how I'm shooting.
It is worth pointing out here that what I'm shooting with is an APX L 806-04 scope.
This is actually the scope that was developed for the MAS 49/56.
It's 3.85x power, it's really old technology.
It is essentially, I don't even want to say updated, it's essentially a German ZF4 scope
that has been re-cammed with a BDC for 7.62 NATO.
That's what the French used on the FR-F2s for the first several years of their adoption.
Eventually they would switch to more modern scopes, 1-6x, 1.5-6x, 3-12x, that sort of thing.
But for a long time the French Army used this scope, and ... it kind of doesn't make sense on paper,
but when you get behind the gun, actually it works really well.
I also want to point out I can actually load the bipod.
It's on a ... really cool pivot mount, the gun's actually hanging from the bipod here.
But I can push into it and actually get some resistance on the bipod, which is nice and helps.
Alright, 5 rounds on paper at 200 yards.
That one might have been a little bit rushed.
That felt better.
Alright, go take a look and see how we did.
It's a bit of a hike to get up here.
Alright. So, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, not my best group.
This is three separate groups, we have one here, one up here,
one more or less centred over the course of zeroing this,
Yeah, not my best, but we're talking 4 inches there,
and ... 4, yeah 4 inches, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.5.
So that's still a two by almost three, not quite three, minute group
using surplus ball at 200. Not too shabby.
I think, however, I am going to tweak the zero down just a hair.
Because one of the things that this means is I set this at 200,
and that calibrates my BDC, which is good out to like 800.
And I know at upcoming Desert Brutality I will be shooting this, I think, out to [600].
And so while ... like I can work with this for 200, I want to have it dead on
so that at [600] ... I don't have to worry about it.
Alright, to adjust the scope on this, which is kind of an unusual process,
the way you're supposed to do it is to clamp the entire gun in a solid rest.
Fire a group, and then you just look through the scope
and adjust the reticle until it's pointing at the centre of your group, boom, you're done.
Now I don't have a solid rest, I have a bipod to shoot off of,
but I'm kind of doing this the wrong way.
Now mechanically what you do, ...
this is backwards for what a lot of American shooters are used to,
I have windage on the top, and elevation on the side.
The elevation is marked only as a BDC.
You can see it goes from 0 out to 8.
I've got it set to 2 right now because I'm at 200 metres.
What I do is use this little tool. I loosen, but do not remove, these three screws.
And then there is actually an inside ring there that this side of the tool fits in, right there.
And I want to bring it just slightly down like that.
So I'm rotating it this way. This is [up], that brings it [down].
Once I've adjusted it, I'm then going to go back and gently tighten these 3 screws.
So again, if you're doing this the proper way with a rest
you don't ... need clicks or minutes, or anything.
You just look through the scope while you're winding this thing back and forth
until the pointers, the reticle, is in the right position.
It's not intended for in the field zeroing like this.
The windage, by the way, is a bit more normal, more traditional,
where I've got just click adjustments there.
The red is centre, I have this thing ... three clicks off,
and my windage has been perfect all day long.
So I'm not messing with that, got a cap to cover that.
Alright, let's see if that fixed it.
Ah, didn't quite kick that one out.
Last one.
Felt good, felt like a good group, let's see if I was able to get it zeroed to the right spot.
Oops, when I mentioned the specific directions that you roll that tool to adjust,
I got it backwards, and I actually raised my group up rather than pushing it down.
So we will fix that later off camera.
But I figured it's still worth pointing out here, that's a really nice group.
Again this is 200 metres, and I've got less than a 2 inch,
so less than one MOA of vertical dispersion.
And one, two, basically 3 inches, about 1.5 MOA of horizontal dispersion.
I will take that: with surplus ball ammunition I think that is pretty fantastic.
So FR-F2, like I said if you missed the
discussion of this gun yesterday on the table top, definitely check that video out.
And I will be running this at Desert Brutality 2021, so wish me luck.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.