My Range Report
Been waiting to write this for a couple months and finally got my rifle last week. After a thorough cleaning involving some rust removal from the trunion and cleaning up the wood on the hand guards I took her out today. After reading these and watching the videos I was mostly concerned with accuracy and I was hoping to pull off anywhere from 3-5 MOA which would be right where a rifle of this type should be. Always difficult reading other people's opinions and seeing their groups because I have no idea what their baseline level of shooting is.
I have a couple hundred thousand rounds down range in the last quarter century (mostly thanks to the tax payer) and have competed for Her Majesties favor a few times in my life at Connaught so without betraying my requisite Canadian humility my skill with a service rifle is on the right hand side of the bell curve so maybe I have something to add to this discussion for would-be buyers.
I bought this rifle for one reason only: it was the closest thing (in appearance) I can get in Canada to an AK, full stop. I have ARs up the yang for playing dress-up at my Neptune Spear recreationalist society (jokes) and other "tactical" rifles so this is definitely not filling a hole in my collection. As crazy as this sounds I actually wanted a crappy commy built rusted up rattling corrosive fed bullet launcher. I have had a lot of AK time during my penance and there is something about taking a POS gun and making it dance. Anyone can win the race in a sup'd up Ferrari. So I jumped on this.
Handling this thing is actually not really all that much like an AK, save for manipulating the magazines (which are much further forward than the trigger guard making spetznaz reloads tricky). I guess I would say it "fits" like an AK in the shoulder but the operations are very different. The safety switch is completely without merit. Putting the rifle on safe is like trying to push a fat chick over a roll of concertina wire. 180 degrees is excessive to say the least and although it is nice to have it on the thumb side (for righties) trying to run it like an Ak is not possible until someone comes up with an AK style safety/cover to replace this one. Currently it is completely unusable and I can't imagine trying to do any sort of run and gunning without relying on 2nd digit manual dexterity.
For zeroing my setup is pretty simple: support the rifle as best as possible and get the best ammo you can find. I don't have a bench vice and have not modified the rifle for a bipod at this time. The sights adjust using a standard SKS tool and I don't know why everyone was ragging on the hooded rear sight; I kind of like the thing.

I always get a rough zero at 50m and the initial group was just barely on the paper.
After the necessary adjustments I put 10 more in and came up with this group:

Although I was only 15 rounds in I took a quick break to stretch and question my life choices. This thing even kicks on gas setting 1 and I opted for the folding stock making for a sub-optimal time. In fact this is probably the least friendly rifle I have ever fired. To put that in perspective I first started shooting on an #4mk1 and the FNC1A1 at the tender age of 13 (this rifle actually made me a little nostalgic for the old "right arm" given the gas setting and that feeling of "what have I got myself into" after the first group). Since then I have put on a few pounds. For those of you who might think I am being a bit of a man-baby I will just say I am 220lbs and can bench much more than my weight (not bragging about my physique only that I have some padding in the upper torso) and this thing still gave me pause for thought. It is by no means a fun or comfortable gun to shoot IMHO in it's current configuration and with this ammo. Which by the way was:

After I got over myself and manned up I tried to repeat my previous group at 50m but was unable to reproduce it:

Going to the 100m increased the spread exponentially:

I have a picture of a paper target but have reached my photo limit and this is just as good.
As a point of order I should note that I adjusted the gas system to setting 2 and I was unable to hit steel at 100m; the group moved that much between the settings. Not sure if this is something that others have encountered.
At the end of the day I both love and hate this rifle. I will definitely keep it and use it to torture new shooters and myself from time to time but I have no intentions of using it for much more than a collector's novelty. In hindsight I wish I would have gone with full wood instead of the folding stock. As much as I have a slight feeling of satisfaction for owning something somewhat maybe kinda maybeish like an AK that itch hasn't been fully scratched and I hope that one day we will fix things with our laws or, much more likely, I will move to the states. Until then there is the type 81.