A&K SR-25

[Fingers]

The real steel SR-25 is a 7.62mm Knights Armaments M16 derivative with a free floating barrel, solid stock and RAS front end. It was designed as a semi-auto only sniper rifle where a quicker rate of fire was required to the M24.

I picked this up second hand with a faulty mag catch (threads gone so glued together). It was 2 months old and skirmished twice on single shot.

Initial impressions / Externals

A&K pack this in a basic moulded box with foreign charger, a mini 9.6v battery, cleaning rod, vertical foregrip, 400Rd Hi-Cap, QD Silencer and RIS flip-up iron sights.

The only ABS on this gun is the stock, butt plate (just like a G&P) and pistol grip. Everything else is metal with no wobbles at all. The pistol grip & stock look very similar to TM in texture, so not as nice as CA or G&P.

Put next to my G&P M16, the stock itself is slightly shorter, but the receiver is quite a lot longer, both behind the pistol grip and at the magwell. The latter is obvious as it's to cater for a longer bullet. The distance from the butt plate to the pistol grip is about an inch longer than a standard M16A2.

The upper receiver is railed, has no forward assist, or shell casing deflector and look a lot more angular than an M16. The charging handle pulls back a (cheap) shiny black fake bolt to reveal the hop-up.

The lower receiver has no trades and has just the usual Safe/Semi/Auto markings on both sides. The receiver has a "stopper" at the fire selector to prevent auto selection. However the fire selector fitted is recessed to "go over" this stopper to allow full auto.

The upper and lower receivers are attached with the two normal pins. They have allen keys to hold them in place like a CA. Removal of the front pin is all that's required to expose the one piece V2 gearbox, metal hop and inner barrel. The 400round hi-Cap is quite a tight fit and feeds well.

The RAS comes without any covers, Bipod (there is a vertical grip though), or sling loop. There is a railed gas block with fake gas tube. The barrel extends about six inches further than the gas block. There are no etched "Tnn" markings between any of the rails. There is no flash hider or any threads to fit one. The QD Silencer slots on and is spring loaded so there's no rattling. Overall, with the silencer fitted, the gun is about 6 inches longer than an M16.

How does it perform?

Apparently it fires just over 400fps out of the box. I had a few shots at our site last weekend with 30's and full hop wouldn't stop it arccing down a bit. I suspected the hop needed attention. I acquired the gun from him this week and had a go today. With my garden range at about 35 yards, the hop wasn't functioning properly, so it's performance wasn't good enough.

Improvements I've made

With some M16 spares lying around, I replaced:

The broken mag catch (M16 one is identical in size)

Fitted a Guarder metal Hop-up and rubbers to the existing barrel (from a previous project)

Replaced the A&K fire selector with a TM one, so I can no longer select full auto.

Attached some rail covers.

Fitted RIS bipod & 3-9 x 40 scope.

The performance is transformed. It's now consistently accurate at my garden limit of 35 yards. My mate lives about 100 yards from me and I recon I could wake him up for work with a little tap on the window :D

Conclusion

Because of the mag catch, I got it for £110 which I'm delighted with. This is much more solid than my A&K M249, they seem to have come on leaps and bounds since then.

With my M4 Commando as back-up, my next day out should be fun.

I'll let you know if it becomes a pile of poo in the field