Well, March 16 does, by the barest of margins, qualify as “late March,” and as it happens, they’re available now!

(And yes, I was damn sure to get my order in before posting anything about it.)

• One (1) stripped CAV-15 lower.

On the “To Do” side we have:

• Everything else.

Well, Bravo Company has some teaser eye-candy of my chosen upper posted to their website, along with a “late March” availability date. I’ll also be buying my bolt carrier group from them, as well as the rear sight and a carbine buffer and spring.

I went ahead today and ordered a DPMS lower parts kit from Brownells, and decided to tack on a Brownells/CMMG .22 conversion kit, since it only added $200 to a $60 parts order. And yes, this is the practical part.

My local indoor range is slightly fussy about rifles, only allowing their use on one lane and requiring that all rifle ammo be purchased in-store. And with the distance limited to 25 yards, shooting full-power .223 would be expensive and a bit silly, not to mention slightly obnoxious to my fellow shooters (noise and muzzle blast). Drop in a .22 kit, though, and I can shoot on any lane and bring in my own ammo. I’ll also be burning about a nickel per round, vs. forty or fifty cents for .223. So the kit will pay for itself in only… uh… SOON! REAL SOON NOW!

There’s also some magazines and a generic nylon M16 sling en route from CDNN. I’m hoping to get the lower put together and function-tested in the next week or two, so it’ll be ready to go once I get the upper in my hot little hands. If the stars line up just right, I’ll have everything put together just as the nice spring weather gets here.

Will blog later.

/me is very, very happy about this.

EDIT: Looks like my schedule at the new job is just too unpredictable for me to make any plans yet. If I do go, it’ll probably be a last-minute thing…

Plans for the upper have changed slightly; after consulting with a few serious AR guys I’m going to use Bravo Company’s lightweight mid-length upper once it becomes available. Compared to the RRA upper I was planning to buy, the Bravo uses a 1:7″ twist barrel (vs. 1:9″), which will stabilize basically any bullet I’m ever likely to use. I’m also assured BCM’s quality is markedly better than RRA’s, and their rating on the famous/infamous “The Chart” is far superior. Will I ever notice a real difference? Maybe not. Am I willing to spend a few more bucks anyways? Sure.

I’m trying to estimate the final weight of the whole gun, a task slightly complicated by the fact that I currently have only one part in my possession. The complete lower should be somewhere around 26 oz, with the upper around 60 oz. Add a couple more ounces for a rear sight, and 88 oz. = 5.5 lbs. I’d been hoping to come in a bit lower than that, closer to the M1 Carbine’s 5.2 lbs, but I can live with beating an M4 by a half-pound.

If anyone reading this has a complete Cav lower, could you throw it on a postal scale for me and give me an exact weight? It’d be much appreciated.

If you want one, get while the gettin’s still good. Who knows when (if ever) they’ll be back in production.

The first version of the 556 had a ridiculous railfarm handguard straight out of a video game and, inexplicably, a CAR-type telestock. I had NO interest in that model. The revised 556 Classic replaced the failtastic handguard and stock of its predecessor with sensibly-designed parts and seriously caught my eye…

Until I picked one up. Not only was it a bit of a porker at 8 1/4 lbs, it was WAY muzzle-heavy. Which makes sense when you think about it: the stock is a simple polymer folder that contains no heavy components (like an AR buffer assembly), and the gas block/front sight assembly is waaaay down at the end of a long handguard, out near the muzzle. Result: the balance point is somewhere around the middle of the flash hider.

So I scratched the 556 off my list and started looking into ARs.

Meanwhile, Sig apparently smartened up and shortened the gas system and handguard to create the Patrol model, dropping the weight by 0.7 lbs and (hopefully) correcting the balance issue. Sight radius naturally suffers a bit, but I think I can live with that. If I can lay hands on one within the next three weeks (the duration of Sig’s $300 rebate offer) and find its handling satisfactory, I may very well drop the cash.

… and then it occurs to me that I have absolutely NO idea how to run one of the damn things effectively. I mean, I know where the controls are and how they function, but all the details of proper stance, administrative handling, immediate action drills, where the cool kids are putting their support hand this week, etc… No idea. Could I safely handle the gun and make it go bang? Sure. Could I operate it quickly and efficiently? Not bloody likely.

So… where should I go to start reading up on modern carbine technique? (First person to suggest arfcom gets a nutpunch-over-IP). And yes, I know full well that books and magazine articles != actual training. I’m hoping to take Steve Fisher’s carbine course later this year. I’d like to get a bit of a head-start, though, so I don’t have to be That Guy at gun school.

I know pdb and Tam have some professional training under their respective belts. Maybe I can beg some advice from them…