[Jeff Higgins]

Well, my other son's DSA made FAL arrived last week so my two sons and I hied off to the gravel pit to give it a workout. He ordered some upgrades with it, including a better rear sight and trigger. Both proved to be worthy upgrades over the purely mil-spec Imbel built rifle. Which is to say, at least as far as the trigger, it's been upgraded from truly horrible to just horrible. Anyone raised on U.S. or European sporting rifles will struggle with these. Probably better for troops not raised around firearms, but for the rest of us, well... The rear sight, however, did provide much easier windage adjustment, but at the expense of giving up all elevation adjustment - that is purely in the front sight on this rifle. Not very convenient, and certainly not "battlefield adjustable" which, again, is probably better for troops who didn't grow up shooting.

We mounted optics to both FALs, a Leupold 1.4-4x variable with bullet drop reference points on the Imbel, and some military-ish "tactical" thing on the DSA. My M1A is the shorter "Scout Squad" version, which came with a short, barrel mounted picatinny rail just ahead of the receiver. I removed that immediately when I got it, and even replaced the upper hand guard (that had a cutout for it) with a standard hand guard, minus the cutout. My sons talked me into putting it all back on and mounting a 2x "scout scope" just to try it out.

We learned a few things about these rifles. The optics revealed just how inaccurate these FALs really are - they are, at best, maybe three or four minute rifles. I suppose that is "good enough" for their intended purpose, and reliable function and ruggedness trump accuracy, but - really? Is that the best they can do, in this day and age? My M1A managed about two minutes, but that still isn't anything to write home about.

I wound up removing the scout scope when I got home, along with the picatinny rail. Mounted that far forward, I found even a 2x scope has such a small field of view as to be almost useless. I can see why this never really caught on. I'll stick with the peep sights. Oh, and we did find the scopes on the FALs to be repeatable as far as return to zero when removed and re-installed. That's good news.

So, I guess all in all, I'm happy that my sons like their FALs. Just not my cup of tea, however. Maybe if a "match" version were available, with a truly nice trigger and decent accuracy, I might be interested. I suspect someone out there must build one, but I bet they get a bit spendy. For now, though, I'll just have to stick with my M1A - it's notably more accurate and has a far better trigger. I'm not really a "black rifle" guy anyway. The M1A might wind up being my only foray into those waters.