Sorry, Russ. If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. Hire someone to go through the tech support questions if they annoy you so much you omit useful features from your rifles.
That's like saying adjustable seats on cars are a bad idea because stoned morons push their seats so far back they can't see the road anymore. More configuration options are good, and idiots doing things wrong with them are none of your concern unless you're one of said idiots.
Because the Stoner 62/63 also had to be an actual machinegun, and the AR15 gas system is inherently awful for that application, as Stoner probably recalled from various experimentation and prototyping. Ever seen a picture of that one belt-fed AR10? It was a colossal hunk of shit.
I don't think it is, considering that the AR10/AR15 is basically the best way to build the action in question. Arguably there's some institutional/economical inertia and people aren't that ready to say, beef up the gas-key and what not and be That Guy who makes his AR15 incompatible with normal parts, but that's not the design's fault.
Or you can pre-set it on a marked setting which you know works well with Wolf, Tula, etc, and then tell people to figure out which works best with their preferred ammo.
Your average WWSD user doesn't have time to set their gas settings between prepping their wife's bull and throwing a kettlebell around to train for the Pride Day™ 2GAC match.
I meant for Russ to do it.
The analogy of car seats only really works for things like adjustable stocks, we let people adjust controls or seating because everyone has a different body. Can you imagine how fucked every car would be if we put a knob on the dash that let people adjust the air fuel mixture? Or the suspension? You can really fuck up a car by messing with important functions and even make it dangerous.
Apparently, Stoner moved away from the DI/internal piston system is because Colt owned the rights to it, but I still feel like it's never going to be seen in anything outside of the AR-10/15 and their derivatives (other than that one Korean rifle).
Nobody can convince me that an adjustable stock is a good idea. I've seen what happens when you let some dipshit mess with the stock and it's never good. The only way it ever works is if it's 2 position adjustment with a retracted and an extended length. Anything that reduces the length of pull is a one way trip to malfunction city.
A stock is not equivalent to a gas system. One is vital to the function of the gun the other is not. Also, I'm not against giving people options, an adjustable stock for example is a must, but there are aspects to a design that should be left alone.
An adjustable gas block isn't going to hurt the gun, the worst it will do is make the gun unreliable. But the onus for figuring out how to configure the settings for best operation is on the end user, not the manufacturer, and taking away the ability to make changes from the end user is a terrible slippery slope that gets us iPhones.
I'll reiterate that a lot of the trouble can be avoided by providing a pre-marked setting tested to work with most common off the shelf ammo. Label it "General" or something, then if someone complains the rifle isn't running, tell them to try setting it to General and see if it works, if someone wants a "Goldilocks" setting then tell them that because of how ammunition is such a wide variable, they need to discover that themselves based on the ammo they shoot and how it works in their gun.
The gas system is unironically the worst part of the AK.
Adjustable gas systems for the AK have been a thing for a while.
Real Men™ fire only long recoil, anyway.
Imagine having to refill the tank on your gas operated gun in the middle of a firefight.
Where are my Tesla Coilguns, Elon?
Man, if that coil gun that Ian was testing just moved the trigger mechanism to the side of the gun it could have fit another coil on the underside.
It's really battery + coil-charging that's the hangup. More coils does equal more power, but also more time between shots and fewer shots per charge.
