Hillslam

Meant to get to this last night but got tied up at a business dinner. Will post them tonight. Sorry for the delay.

Gundrosen, you could file or dremel off the plastic channel on the side of your receiver. Then you could cut and bend some soft sheet metal into a channel and bolt or adhesive that to the side of the receiver and use your metal charging handle. Would that work? Let me know if you need dimensions on the CA charging handle's channel. What are you thinking in terms of springs to return the handle to forward? On the CA a small arm goes into the body to compress a hidden spring affixed to the top of the mechbox, see pic: does the metal charging handle you bought have that arm? H

How about putting the pics in a local (arnies) gallery to avoid bandwidth issues. 3/4 of the pics are red x for me as well.

Not as far as I know - it just looked like there was a red dot on the rear adjustment knob. Could have been a trick of the camera.

Looks good. Does the sight clear the rail, usable? Looks like it does. Does the rear knob have a red dot in the middle? You know, I just thought: Gundrosen, pretty soon at the rate you're going you're going to end up with like what 10% of your original gun left? Its looking nice.

Can't help you with a solution, but the workaround is so eloquent: shoot lots. Maybe your SAW is giving you some gentle prodding to let her unleash her wrath. Eh. Me, I wouldn't consider that a "problem" - I'd consider that a "reminder".

Hey, this is the second or fourth time I've seen a comment like this in this thread. Fellow SAW gunners, you need to change that mindset. Free yourselves from the shackle of the rifleman yoke. Let go of your sniperman round-counting inhibitions. Think like a support gunner. Start to feel the power of support gunnage. Accept the power. Embrace it. Let it flow. Feed it, feel it, love it, BE it... Lay down the fire. 10k rounds per game, easy. smack em, yack em

Maybe this is a dumb question, but looking at your graphic, zero, why aren't you cutting horizontally thru the downward protruding tab and not vertically thru the floor of the body to remove the material. Are you creating a hole you don't need to, or is there no other way to cut off that piece?

That aimpoint looks good on there, static. Here you go (see attached). As you can see, on the MkII stock it touches (at least on mine). The piece in question itself on the MkII is metal though, not plastic, and I believe is a common part between the MkII stock and the para, so I would surmise the para is the same. The MkII stock has a plastic hollow sleeve attached to that metal mount capped by a metal buttplate/shoulder support. Anyway - the pin bridge support meets the spring guide almost dead center, with material just below the centerpoint and all the way to the top o

*double post*

This is may be a function of the para's shorter barrel not making use of all of the piston/cylinder's compression stroke. My bet is the bore+stroke on the Star's para and MkII mechbox's are the same in the interest of savings and commonality. I assume the color mechboxs soon to be sold are just going to be "m249 flavor" and not "para or mkii flavor". But (and I'm guess here) the inner barrel on the para will be much shorter than the MkII's. Much better to have a piston/cylinder volume matched to the longer barrel and have the shorter barrel shortchanged (pardon the pun) and lose some compressi

This is spectulative: I would be hesitant to do this. The reason being that when you push the spring guide in in that fashion, the catch will be carrying the entire spring load as well as the percussive and concussive forces of firing. Also- the load on the mechbox then is tranferred at a point off center from the piston thru the relatively small catch pin axle. In the normal position, the stock itself is a supplemental support (I would say its the main support, from my looking at it) to the back of the spring guide itself, and thusly the receiver body takes some of the cycling load

Sorry for the off topic question: Is the stock Star spring variable pitch?

I can't confirm but it sounds like most all the parts in the mechbox are interchangeable between PCG/CA. (Star's mechbox apparently has the same off-size cylinder groove the CA does, a stock TM piston works fine). Except for the bushings. On the CA they're 8mm bearings, on the Star they're 6mm(?) oily steel?

Which, after all the hyperbole and 3rd hand non-owner storytelling in reality translates to: 1 - hopup that can be overadjusted and cause a jam, resulting in piston wear or stripping of a $6 part. 2 - a microswitch for the trigger that was faulty (sticking on) for some owners. And thats it. Funny how all the "I knew a guy..." made it seem more, 'innit? And we loves it.

Yes but an M249 support gunner goes thru a number of rounds in one skirmish that the typical M4 touting rifleman fires in a year. Always have to remember to think like a support gunner. Volume, volume, volume. *thumbs up* and keep laying that (suppression fire) smack down, fellow SAW gunner. Hooyah.

First: My recommendation: if you're buying a "team" or a "shared" weapon, buy the Star. Less money out of pocket and it operationally so far seems to be the same. Don't worry about looks, its a team gun, besides from 10' they look all the same. Plus it weighs less, so the younger/skinnier team members (if there are any) can tote it. Saves your money for other personalized non-shared gear or for more of the shared stuff. Second: If you want technical user data on the CA - don't read thru a Star thread (namely, this one) expecting real data. Go here and here. There you'll find actual ow

Nice shot, Warmonger. Here's my CA, just added the railed feed tray today and plopped on my Leapers reddot on for a quick pic. How did you mount it? Tap the cover and use metal screws? What'd you do to the rear sights? Were they molded to the tray-cover? Did it leave a hole? Any event, your gun looks good. I recommend Red Dots for anyone trying to shoulder-fire the SAW, the sights are hard to get your cheek down low enough to look thru unless you're prone using the bipod. Red dot is perfect. Birddog - at that fps (I assume you're above 450fps) with 6mm bushings I'd monitor tho

By normal do you mean 6mm, 7mm? Those are way easier to find.

And are they 8mm? On the CAs, the bushings seem to do well up to a Prometheus 135 (what I'm using, fps at about a PDI 190%) although there was one owner (forget who) who noticed excessive wear on the stock bushings pretty fast (though I don't know what spring). I'm still using the stock bushings (again CA) but I've bought a replacement set from vxb for when I start noticing excessive wear. Kanzen doesn't make 8mm bushings yet but you can go to www.vxb.com and order a set to be safe. And there you can specify different sizes depending on the thickness of the mechbox material for a good fit

Then you're not reading all the Star posts then, are ya? Go back a couple pages in this very thread for a nice juicy pic of a split-entirely-in-two Star M249 piston. Hey look, both are good guns. I'm not knocking the Star at all, but before you get done knocking the CA on anecdotal evidence we can do an easy experiment to demonstrate what the extra ~$350 buys you: Lets both go outside and run our guns into a brick wall or tree (happens all the time in events, banging equipment into stuff - so its a fair experiment), or heck even just drop them. Just stand right up and let er go. Then com

So then you're not counting the posts, some in this very thread, of new Star owners with problems: melted leads, tempermental power connectors, broken sights, split piston....? Good thing you avoided the CA, those piles of junk practically crumble when you lift em out of the box... whew that was a close one. Oh, and: 70k rounds and counting.

Exactly what I was going to say Thrasher. UrPeaceKeeper, your friend obviously is doing something wrong; too high a spring with the wrong supporting parts, or some other misuse or bad recipe of components. I feel safe in saying if he tried the same cocktail of bad ingredients in a STAR it would fair no better. And I'll repeat it again - I like this Star gun, but don't think the CA isn't worth its money: I am closing on 80k skirmish rounds put thru it with all but the first 5k rounds fired at over 400fps - a good chunk well over But then, I read the manual and don't over adjust my hopup

Thx for the pics guys. Think I'm going to pick up one of these: http://www.tadspoles.com/catalog/53-Alumin...-p-2169947.html Its just wide enough to take the gun (needed to be 7-8" deep) and long enough to take the gun without teardown, and room for some accessories along with it. Along with enough foam to let you carve out a profile for the gun and gear. This is my current case, it works well, but it doesn't stack easily and has no "presentation". Plus no room for accessories and the gun only fits upside down. But it is at least a hardside, secures and protects it and at a low