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Awesome insights! I've been doing some research on the .280 cartridge and was wondering what your thoughts are on the cartridge's performance, especially with recoil/blast, accuracy and terminal effects. I haven't encountered many people that have shot it before! Would it have made a decent assault rifle cartridge?
Does anyone have any additional information on this rifle?
The book "EM-2 Concept & Design; a rifle ahead of its time" by Dugelby is a good resource, though it is pretty hard to find these days.
Maybe Ensci could answer the .280 cartridge questions as we both used it at Shrivenham but he's the ballistician and I'm an engineer. Over to you Ensci!
Venezuela adopted the FAL in a 7mm cartridge which was very similar to the .280 second optimum cartridge and also pretty close to the modern 7mm-08 from Remington. Some years after adoption, they rebuilt them to standard 7.62 NATO.
Back when Australia still had a sense of humour about guns, a mate of mine rebuilt a couple of L1A1s in .243Win. Getting the gas porting correct was interesting, as the port pressure in the .243 runs substantially higher than the 7.62 NATO / .308Win. They worked quite well as long as you used long-ish projectiles to assist feeding. Quite a different sound and bugger-all recoil. I tried to talk him into doing a .284Win version but to no avail. The SAFN 49 in 458Win Mag and the M-1 Carbine in 44Automag were interesting to shoot as well.
As I remember it, the first "FAL" bullpups from the early 1950s took the German 8 x 33 cartridge from the StG series. That was before the rolling fiasco of selecting the NATO cartridge really got going. These bullpups were mechanically more of a transition from the SAFN-49 construction than a true FAL type.
Somewhere in the archives, I think I have a picture of an L1A1 experimental bullpup built by a student at Duntroon, the Oz Officer factory. Can't quite see that happening these days.
As a matter of interest regarding the video clip above. The man firing the Vickers is Warrant Officer Arthur 'Jack' RUMBOLD (remember him Ensci ?) and the man firing the .280 machine gun is a man called Harold Turpin. Never heard of him............? You should have. He was the 'T' in the word STEN, of Sten gun fame
Venezuela adopted the FAL in a 7mm cartridge which was very similar to the .280 second optimum cartridge and also pretty close to the modern 7mm-08 from Remington. Some years after adoption, they rebuilt them to standard 7.62 NATO.
Back when Australia still had a sense of humour about guns, a mate of mine rebuilt a couple of L1A1s in .243Win. Getting the gas porting correct was interesting, as the port pressure in the .243 runs substantially higher than the 7.62 NATO / .308Win. They worked quite well as long as you used long-ish projectiles to assist feeding. Quite a different sound and bugger-all recoil. I tried to talk him into doing a .284Win version but to no avail. The SAFN 49 in 458Win Mag and the M-1 Carbine in 44Automag were interesting to shoot as well.
As I remember it, the first "FAL" bullpups from the early 1950s took the German 8 x 33 cartridge from the StG series. That was before the rolling fiasco of selecting the NATO cartridge really got going. These bullpups were mechanically more of a transition from the SAFN-49 construction than a true FAL type.
Somewhere in the archives, I think I have a picture of an L1A1 experimental bullpup built by a student at Duntroon, the Oz Officer factory. Can't quite see that happening these days.
Obviousli I didn't remember correctly:
The FN No.1 carbine was a conventionally configured rifle in 7.92 x 33, and the No.2 was the bullpup in .280/30 designed as a "competitor" to the EM-2.
Somewhere in the back of what remains of my cartridge collection should be some .280-30 rounds and fired cases. The "-30" part of the designation comes from the change to the design of the extraction groove / rim. The earlier '280 had a rim design similar to the 7.92 x 57 / .30-06 style. The ".30" (NATO) went with a much thicker rim and larger groove, apparently to enhance reliability. The .280-30 uses this later rim design; hence .280-30.
One of the more interesting documents I have seen in Australia is a general arrangement drawing for a Bren in ".30" calibre; not .30-06 as per Taiwan, but the experimental .30 that was to become the 7.62 NATO. This drawing was dated to the early 1950s, and, no, I didn't manage to get a copy, just a few quick scribbled notes
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Originally Posted by Bruce_in_Oz
