Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, I'm here today at the Rock Island Auction Company
where we are taking a look at a Romanian PSL rifle.
Now this is a PSL that was made specifically
for sale on the US commercial market,
however, this was actually a Romanian military rifle.
Well, not just Romanian, but also exported to a bunch of
other military organisations around the world.
This has its origin ... well really in the late 1960s, in 1968 specifically is when really the story behind the PSL starts.
And that is because in 1968 the Warsaw Pact, led by Russia, invaded the country of Czechoslovakia.
Now not everybody in the Warsaw Pact, there were a couple of countries there that objected,
and the most vocal objector was Romania.
Ceaușescu in Romania made a speech pretty much denouncing this action on the part of the Soviets,
and well, that sort of thing has repercussions.
And the repercussion was that technology transferred to Romania maybe slowed down a little bit.
So while Romania was totally up and running making Kalashnikov standard assault rifles.
They made a lot of them, and they were actually quite good AKs.
They had been anticipating that, "Yeah, we'll probably develop ... and manufacture
our own version of the Dragunov as a designated marksman rifle."
This had only been adopted by the Soviets in 1963, and by '68 it's one of those things that,
"You know, in the next few years probably, maybe, we'll pass this along to you and you guys can start building it.
Well, if you're not going to support what we're doing, maybe we're less inclined to give you cool guns like the Dragunov."
And so the Romanian military is in a position where if it wants a designated marksman rifle,
it's gonna have to figure out how to do it by itself. And that's exactly what they did.
They took the Kalashnikov design, scaled it up from 7.62x39 to 7.62x54 rimmed and, hey presto, you have the PSL.
This would go on to be really a fairly popular rifle. It is less expensive to manufacture than a Dragunov.
A lot of people are going to say that it's less accurate than a Dragunov,
but I think a lot of people have overly high expectations of how well a Dragunov can actually shoot.
I would say the Dragunov is definitely the more sophisticated rifle,
and certainly capable of being a better rifle, but the PSLs are not ... slouches. They're pretty good.
You can typically expect about two minutes of angle from this rifle,
and for a designated marksman's gun, that's not bad at all.
So, this is not intended to be, we've talked about this before, the sort of thing
where like a sniper team the way you would think of it today, where you've got a sniper and a spotter,
and they crawl out into the bush for like a week, and they're hiding, you know, under a tree
waiting for one high-value target to drive by three days later and they shoot him, and one bullet, that's it. They're gone.
Instead this is the sort of gun that's issued out to one member of an infantry unit,
... whose job is to provide long-range precision fire, or even close-range precision fire, to cover the unit.
So as part of a combined arms squad, the way you'd give one guy maybe an RPK light machine gun,
you'd give one guy a PSL. And for that sort of purpose two minute of angle is really just fine. ...
Let me go ahead and show you the internals, and then we'll come back and talk about
why there are so many of these in the United States right now.
We'll start by looking at a few of the markings here.
This is obviously a commercial receiver, as you can tell by the fact that it says "Made by Romarm SA/Cugir".
Cugir, which I'm probably mispronouncing, is ... basically the commercial name of the factory complex that was making these guns.
Made in Romania, and it was imported. CAI is Century Arms International, one of the ... biggest importers of firearms into the US.
Now if this were a military receiver it would have been marked on the underside at the front right here.
And it would have a Romanian arsenal mark, which is a triangle with an arrow in it, very similar to the Russian Izhevsk mark.
And then a serial number and a production date. But it's a commercial receiver so it has nothing down there.
So instead it has the rest of the information over here on the left side. Got a serial number,
model designation PSL-54C, and calibre which is 7.62x54 rimmed.
That PSL abbreviation is an original Romanian one, it stands for "Puşcă Semiautomată cu Lunetă",
or basically semi-automatic rifle with scope.
In its military role the PSL was equipped with a relatively long muzzle brake out here, as well as a bayonet lug.
Now this commercial import has the muzzle brake,
however, the little ribs, little guide rails, have been ground off the ... bayonet lug here.
So this no longer will actually attach a bayonet, and that was part of the requirements for importation.
These have iron sights, basically identical to the AK, going out to 1,200 metres.
The safety and magazine release both work exactly like an AK.
That's safe, covers up the slot in the receiver. That's fire.
Of course there is no ... centre position, nor is there a full-auto position, because these are only semi-auto.
And the magazine release is right down there. The PSLs use a 10 round magazine.
This looks very similar to a Dragunov magazine, but they are not interchangeable.
Ten rounds of 7.62x54. Some of the imports came with 5 round magazines, but that's not a military thing.
The buttstock design is very similar to that of the Dragunov. It has a cheek rest built into the stock on this side.
Unfortunately this means it's quite an uncomfortable rifle to shoot left-handed, it is really intended to be fired right-handed.
And of course the sling attachment is here inside the stock.
This thumb hole design has nothing to do with the US import regulations as one might suspect.
Instead this is how the gun was originally designed in Romania.
This is also how the Dragunov was originally designed.
I would presume because they wanted to lighten the stock and they also wanted it strong enough.
So that this extra thumb hole style of reinforcement made sense.
One difference we do have from the standard AK receiver are these pair of reinforcing plates on the back end.
And that's just there to reinforce the back end of the receiver for the extra recoil that it's going to be enduring
because of the larger cartridge that this uses compared to a regular AK.
And you can see at the front we also have the bulged trunnion and the enlarged front end of the receiver
as was basically designed for the RPK light machine guns.
That was relevant for a 7.62x54mm variation of the rifle as well, so they went ahead and used that larger trunnion design.
In the military these were equipped with a Romanian LPS 2 scope. It's a 4x power scope.
Basically a copy of the Soviet PSO-1, except the PSO-1 has a battery-powered illuminated reticle,
the Romanian scope actually had a tritium illumination on the reticle, but of course,
you know, those were made like 30 years ago now, and the tritium is all long dead in those.
So instead you have a non-illuminated reticle for these guys.
You have windage adjustment here on the side for zeroing, and you have a bullet drop compensator here on the top dial.
That allows you to go from point-blank, or more likely 100 metres, out to 1,000.
There is 1,000 in 50 metre increments, once you get up into the higher increments.
And what that knob is going to do is just ... raise actually, the reticle in the scope.
It's not actually moving the scope itself, it's just moving the reticle inside.
Lift this lever up, and then open it back, and then the scope slides off.
These rails do actually hold zero, despite doubts from some American folks.
That's actually quite a good and secure optics mounting set up.
And then we can disassemble this exactly the same way we would disassemble an AK.
Push the spring in, top cover comes off.
Recoil spring comes out.
And the bolt carrier comes out.
One cool addition to the PSL that you don't see on a regular AK is this little block right here.
And that is the magazine hold open.
So when I insert a magazine and it's empty,
the tab at the back of the follower pushes this up, that's going to block the bolt and prevent it from going forward.
And then ... tension on that will hold it in the upward position, locking the bolt open even after you take the magazine out.
You can then put in a loaded magazine, give the bolt handle a little pull back, and it'll drop.
So that's a cool feature you don't get on a standard AK.
Don't believe me? Think there are no AK platforms that'll do that? Well,
bolt locks open, take the magazine out, give it a little pop
and there it goes.
Other than that, the internals of this thing, the mechanics of how it actually works,
are exactly identical to an AK, just enlarged. So rotating bolt, long stroke gas piston.
None of these parts are interchangeable with an AK because they're all bigger,
but they are all mechanically exactly the same design.
After the breakup of the Warsaw Pact, the Romanian factories were really ... pretty darn good at making AKs,
and they would continue to make AKs for export to anybody else who was interested in them.
And the same thing applies to the PSL.
And these came into the US for many years under a variety of different names, PSL, the Romak III,
the FPK, the FPK Dragunov, one of the import names.
It's not a Dragunov, but they did tack that name on because it looks like one.
The SSG-97, which apparently was supposed to be like Scharfschützengewehr-97,
but ... that's a commercial made-up designation.
There was the FPK Paratrooper that came in with a shortened barrel. That's also entirely a commercial thing.
Basically because these rifles were semi-automatic only, there was no problem importing them into the US.
Where AKs they had to be making different receivers in semi-auto,
or cutting up military guns and selling them as parts kits. This sort of thing comes into the US just fine.
And so as a result, we have a bunch of them here.
So if you would like to get more information on this one in particular,
take a look at the link in the description text below. That will take you to ForgottenWeapons.com, and from there
you can forward yourself on to Rock Island's catalogue page, where ... they have their pictures,
their description, their price estimate for this, and everything else you might want to know about it.
Thanks for watching.
[ sub by sk cn2 ]