Saw one of these in my fun-shop for $650 with the scope and I was tempted.  It was marked FPK Romania on the receiver.  Should I?

Anybody owned or shot one of these?  What kind of groups are these things capable of?  Thanks.

JMN69

Well, they are nice weapons, capable of decent accuracy out to 500 to 800 meters.

But they are not truly sniper weapons, more like a designated marksman weapon. Don't forget, the armies these semi-autos were designed for employed them differently than NATO armies.

They were deployed in regular rifle companies to support the troops with AK's...mainly to reach out and touch someone beyond the range of the AK's. They typically were not employed as small teams on their own interdicting targets.

Also the Romanian PSL is not a Drag....it uses the same basic action and mechanism as the AK, basically its an AK on steroids. The Drag uses a short stroke piston arrangement, similiar to the SKS or M1 Carbine system. The trigger is different too.

It sounds like the one you saw was actually built in Romania which is a good thing. There have been problems with some of the US built guns...

If you realise that you are not going to shoot groups like you will with a high end bolt action true sniper set up, then it is a fun gun, easily capable of hitting man sized targets at 800m...

$650 is a pretty decent price....give it a shot...

The biggest problem with the ROMAK3's is finding decent light ammo to shoot in it thats non corrossive.  Wolf does make some decent stuff for 7.62X54R but I have a hard time getting it around my neck of the woods under 180 gr.  If you can find good ammo you can get some pretty nice groups if you take your time and dont heat up the barrel.  

I didn't like mine accuracy wise at all. I couldn't get it to fire consistent groups and it performed very poorly at 300 yards. I tried more than 4 kinds of ammunition including wolf 148gr and czech 148 grain silvertip but never could get the groups to be stable. It seemed reasonably accurate, but only half the time...lots of fliers even at 100 yards. The only scope that would zero well was the 4x24 Romanian that came with the rifle, my other two 8x42's were too nose down after zeroing and I couldn't adjust for elevation.

By contrast my NDM86 in 54r using the exact same ammunition was far more accurate and groups very well, the same 8x42 scopes zeroed properly with very little effort and the rifle has been extremely consistent even out to 600 meters.  Granted it's not a sub moa rifle, but I don't feel like I'm fighting the weapon at longer ranges, I just have to deal with the normal difficulty of distance shooting.

What puzzled me is that many people have said the PSL/FPK will shoot as well as the SVD and so when I bought the PSL I felt I had a good idea of what to expect...but for whatever reason mine never did come close the NDM. No comparison at all beyond 100 yards, the NDM dramatically outshot the PSL.

IMHO the difference between the two is like night and day, though my PSL might have been an exception, quite possibly it was a lemon. I'm glad I bought it, but would never get another one.



Z

The main accuracy problem with them IMOP is the crappy ( creepy ) trigger.  I just shoot corrosive steel case LPS ammo since cleaning the Romak for corr ammo isn't that big of deal.

The PSL was designed to shoot Light-Ball 147 gr ammo. You can shoot the heavy-Ball D 182gr ( Yellow Tip ) but it is harder on the gun.

There is a good article on accurizing the PSL in the January 10th isssue of shotgun news. They were able to get 1MOA groups after making a barrel change and a few other minor changes. I have never been really happy with the accuracey of mine.