Ah, alright.
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten Weapons.
Today we're out here with the Yugoslav M84 copy of the PKM light machine gun.
We did some looking at the mechanics of this thing yesterday, and today
we're out here on the range doing some shooting with it, courtesy of the fine folks up at Marstar in Canada.
So the PKM is arguably the best light machine gun in service today,
I'm really looking forward to do some shooting, so let's just dive right in.
Yeah, these things are really slick. You know, it's gonna have the recoil of a full power
rifle cartridge like the 54 rimmed (which I should probably keep out of the sand here),
but what the PKM does really well (or the PK in its pre-modernised version),
is give you the firepower at a minimum of weight, reliability, and controllability.
These things are just excellent all around compromises of
the different factors that go into a light machine gun.
There are two different ways that you can load and make a PKM ready.
The one I'm going with is opening the top cover,
and I'm just setting the first round in the belt in the extractor claw right there.
And then close the cover, charge the handle back and you're good to go.
If you don't want to do that, your other option is to
start with the gun closed,
take the end of the belt,
feed it through - we're going to feed this through till we get to some live rounds,
right there, now we have to cycle it twice. While pulling on the belt.
So that dropped the bolt forward, now one more charge.
and now we have a round in the extractor claw ready to fire.
This is almost a boring gun. You just point it, and it does what it's supposed to do.
Alright, I know you guys are gonna ask about this, so we're gonna try doing this Rambo-style.
The PKM's far from the heaviest machine gun out there, but it's still pretty heavy.
There's no handguard to hold it from the shoulder really.
You could fold the bipod and hold it that way, but we're going to do just the Rambo thing from the hip.
Alright, put that on safe.
So, I'm not gonna hit anything past about 15 yards with this.
It looks cool in the movies, not a practical way to do it.
You'll notice that I just have this belt hanging down here.
There is, of course, a hanger bracket for a belt bag for a 100 or 250 round belt of ammunition,
which I don't have on at the moment, but that's how you would actually carry this.
And sure, if you're a military guy patrolling with this thing, and you were just carrying it like this,
and you run into something at very close range, yeah, you can dump some fire this way.
It'll get someone's head down, that's for sure, and allow you to get out of
wherever you are, and set it up into a proper firing position off the bipod.
All right, I lied, we're gonna try it with the bipod grip as well. You ready?
All right, so
got to be a little careful where you're touching the gun, this stuff all gets pretty hot. This is OK. This is OK.
That's actually a lot more feasible than I was thinking it would be.
I mean you're not target shooting with it this way, but you can definitely aim it and fire it.
And ... the balance and the weight are such that, especially braced on a knee like this,
you can do that actually, kind of to my surprise.
So I guess that just goes to show that's one of the really nice characteristics of the PKM,
is its balance and handling to make something like that possible,
which is a lot less possible with a lot of other guns.
I hope you guys liked the video, I hope you learned something about the PKM today.
And I would very much like to thank Marstar up in Canada
for allowing me access to their Yugoslav M84 PKM here.
If you guys enjoy this sort of thing, if you're in the shooting fraternity up in Canada,
definitely check out Marstar.
And tune in again for more cool Forgotten Weapons.