Nav wrote:

That being said the weapon is ridiculously expensive, complicated,
heavy and far too powerful to make a good assault rifle.


Yes, I agree the recoil is (was) not well enough controlled to make it a
great automatic weapon. It was also not that accurate I(MHO) as compared
to the .303 I shot in competition. However I often ended the day with a
sore shoulder from firing .303 in a shirt and never had such a problem
with the FN SLR. People still use .303 for hunting here -how about in
Canada?

Indeed the gas operation takes up a lot of the recoil, and for a lot of people this
makes the FN, or any other gas operated semi-auto more accurate for that person, (less afraid of
a sore shoulder), even though the weapon is in fact inherenltly less accurate. Yes we still use .303, quite a few
"sporterized" Lee Enfields out there.



I'm still not able to get out of Doug exactly what this FN FAL weapon
was that fired an (accurate?) automatic 3 round burst. From my
recollection of the firing meachnaism I don't see how it could be
accomplished without a major rework of the trigger and selector
mechanisms.

Indeed, I think it was slip on Dougs' part, I can't recall seeing any version of the FAL in Janes
that has selective 3 round burst, he must have been thinking of another weapon.

Cheers
Marty
I wonder if it would be worthwhile to do such a thing with
better automatic weapons around.

Cheers