couple of errors.
Famae is a right hand #### and right hand eject. It is also ambidextrous as the mag release is located in the center like an AK and the selector switch is on both sides of the rifle.
Also the RFB is configurable left or right hand cocking
I haven't fired an XCR-m so I can't really talk about it, but the other two I've had good hands on.
Famae 542:
as far as .308 semiautomatics go its lightweight, and well balanced. The sites are a bit crude and lack the ability for true precision that the rifle is cable of; the drum skips from 100m to 300m and the front post is very wide with no center line or dot. At 300m my 15 inch wide gongs appear about half the width of the front blade and were giving me issues with consistent hits. Unlike the Swiss arms, it does not have tritium dots for low light and night shooting. Fit and finish although good just doesn't hold up to a swiss arms when compared side by side.
The gun is more then capable of firing 2moa and better. It seems to run 150gr bullets well but 168gr were erratic and kicked like a mual. This gun is over gassed, plain and simple. it never fails to eject, and ejects the cases quit a distance, 20-45 feet. 150 SST hand loads that fire at 2650 FPS were hot enough to spell the end for the cases as they were mangled. What turned out to be Slightly tamer; 150 federal AE FMJs, which are listed at 2800 FPS muzzle (didn't bring the croney out to check) seem to eject about 20-25 feet and were salvageable for reloading. Accuracy from the hand loads was excellent (reference my gong shooting video) shooting consistently under about 2 MOA and the AE preformed good at about 1.5 to 2.5 MOA excluding my walkers. The rifle fires true even with a hot barrel without the typical wandering groups that I see in other rifles with lighter barrels. The muzzle break fails to eliminate any recoil or muzzle jump, I'm excitingly awaiting after market breaks to appear that don't require threading.
The trigger doesn't creak but it has a very unique pull. Its a long consistent pull that is a bit on the heavy side, at some point the sear just lets go, its not a crisp feeling release by any means. I found it was heavy enough for me to develop 45 degree groupings as I pulled the rifle while squeezing the trigger, this was very evident in the prone position were i forgo the use the of the sling to hold the rifle and place my left hand under the stock in a more classic long distance shooting position. I ended up having better luck at controlling the group in prone with a hand firmly planted and gripping the hand guard despite the use of the bipod.
With a good optic and a pair of shooting sticks I would feel comfortable taking this gun out to 500m for deer
RFB
Other then the idea i find this rifle a disappointment. It is very heavy despite its size. the requirement for an optic or clip on irons made me a little angry considering the price of the rifle and its intended role. I found it very unbalanced, more so then other bull pups I have fired (L85, tavor).
The gun never seemed to group well despite what i feed it. Factory or handloads, big and small it seemed to group around 2.5-4 MOA in the end. the only difference in bullet weight was
1)how reliably it feed
2)how much it kicked
Me and my room mate spent a lot of time playing with this gun, we burt a lot of ammo getting the gas settings right. It seemed to fire 150's alright, 168 were jamomatics and 190's wouldn't feed worth a ####. The gun required a lot of "tweaking" with pliers as many of the parts in the feed path were prone to getting dog eared and causing jams, everything from feed lips to the eject shoot. it was very common for this gun to fire 3 or 4 shots alright then jam the next round because a casings had gotten pinched in the eject system.
Velocity was an issue, with the 18.5 inch barrel it was typically shooting ammunition 200-300 FPS slower then my M14 (18.5 inch barrel as well) with the same ammo.
Between the combined accuracy and slower bullet speed,I wouldn't feel comfortable using this rifle to take a deer past 300m, and ods are with any optic suited for this gun (low power) thats as far as you would be shooting anyways.
This is a rifle that requires a lot of workup to get to a point were its a reliable fun shooter. You have to find an ammo that performs and stick with it, dropping in a different brand or bullet weight could easily spell a wasted day at the range fiddle ####ing about.
