EmptorMaven

Since I think the residential real estate market is bottoming out, and my family will soon need more space anyway, I recently began shopping for houses. Based on my reference post on this subject it won’t surprise people to learn that I have a low opinion of the real estate marketing cartel (a.k.a. “Realtors”).

Following my own advice I did not enlist a “buyer’s agent.” Instead I did my own searches through listings and, when I wanted to see a house, I contacted the seller’s agent directly and drove myself to the appointment.

Overall my experience with these “Realtors” continues to be dismal. Of the dozen or so licensed listing agents with whom I have interacted in the last few weeks at best only three struck me as professional and ethical. Many were incompetent, lacking basic knowledge of the houses they were contractually and ethically obligated to sell. Some were more interested in selling themselves to me than in selling the particular property they listed and in which I had expressed interest. And of course many, on learning I wasn’t being “represented” as a buyer, tried to convince me that I should let them be my “buyer’s agent.” After all, they explained, their “services” as my representative wouldn’t cost me a penny.

This argument, by licensed professionals, is not only unethical but should also be illegal: Traditional buyer’s agents are not free. They collect a substantial fee from the sellers of any house purchased by their client — usually 2.5%-3.5% of the selling price. This is known as a “co-op commission.” On a $1MM house a buyer’s agent expects to walk away with about $30k. As I asked some of these Realtors, “What could you possibly do as my representative that would be worth $30k?” It became a rhetorical question.

At best they run the same computer searches I do and contact the same listing agents I do. If I didn’t have a car I could probably get the listing agents to drive me to their showings. In fact, I consider it detrimental to have a house shown by someone other than the owner or listing agent. After all, a buyer’s agent typically doesn’t know any more about the house than I do from reading the listing, requesting copies of the floor plan, or walking through it. At least when the listing agent is showing it there is a presumption that they have studied the property and are prepared to answer questions that might be asked by a buyer. And when they don’t know the answer (as happens ridiculously often) at least I’m one person closer to the answer.

As I mentioned in my previous post, a buyer’s agent doesn’t even fully represent the interests of the buyer. I want to find a house that most closely matches my objectives at the best possible price. A buyer’s agent wants me to buy a house with as little work on their part as possible. Their interest is in getting me to make a purchase producing the biggest buyer’s co-op, so not only would they prefer I pay as much as possible, but they would also prefer I didn’t see houses with reduced commissions.

So there are already plenty of principled reasons to avoid buyer agents. But the money is the biggest: When I submit an offer on a house and make it clear that I am waiving the “buyer co-op,” it’s like adding 3% to my bid. Some Realtors may quibble that they contract with sellers for a fixed commission rate, and if the buyer doesn’t present a licensed agent to claim it then they get to keep the full commission for themselves. Hopefully neither sellers nor courts will countenance such an anticompetitive gambit. Though if push comes to shove, I can confirm that there is no shortage of licensed Realtors eager to list my old house. It won’t be hard to find one who will agree to be my buyer’s representative at settlement and refund their commission to me.

[Update: How to access MLS if you're not a Realtor. Several comments note that only Realtors have access to the MLS, and without that you can't effectively do your own searches. The reality is that you can get full access to listings with one more step: In addition to trulia.com and homefinder.com, most real estate agency web sites allow you to run searches against the entire MLS. None of them reliably come back with the complete MLS listing, but they will tell you which agency has the listing. I have found that if you then go to that agency's web site and search for the property they will provide the complete listing information, including contact info for the listing agent and often other details.]

Consumer High Speed Video Cameras

It has been more than a year since Casio began shipping the EX-F1, and it is still the fastest consumer video camera on the market. However, at its top speed of 1200 frames per second it only captures a very coarse 336 x 96 resolution.

Memory bandwidth and data buffering have previously been the bottleneck of high-speed video. Pros pay tens of thousands of dollars for specialty camera systems capable of capturing high-resolution video up to 10,000fps. (Higher frame rates require lighting power that would be beyond the means of amateurs.) But now that high-capacity solid-state data drives with write speeds over 500MB/sec are shipping for just a few hundred dollars the technology exists to produce a sub-$1000 consumer video camera that can capture full-resolution video at thousands of frames per second. I can’t wait to get my hands on one.

Better Console Gaming Controllers

Ten years ago Microsoft introduced a radical new gaming controller under its Sidewinder line called the Dual Strike. Apparently nine years ago they took it out of production. I used it to play several PC versions of Grand Theft Auto and liked the controller so much that when I discovered it was discontinued I scooped up a few more boxes at clearance. The Dual Strike is the best first-person shooter (”FPS”) controller I have ever used: It combines the precision and speed of a mouse with the convenience of a single hand-held gamepad that doesn’t tie you to a flat surface.

I recently picked up a PS3 and was excited to check out the state-of-the-art in FPS games. What I can’t believe is how bad the standard console controllers are for this purpose. Apparently people who are serious about these games buy split controllers like the FragFX which basically put you back at a desk with a mouse. Not exactly the setup one is looking for when plugging a console into a home theater system and sitting back on a sofa.

Though stockpiles of Dual Strike controllers are still available they are not compatible with the current crop of gaming consoles. I hope it’s not long before the console gaming complex rolls out a FPS controller to meet this need.

Computerized Ballistic Optics

Given how cheap and compact computer power is I can’t understand why the $1500 Barrett BORS is the only integrated ballistic computer on the market. Of course a professional shooter can do ballistics in his head for any shot one could take with a man-portable firearm (i.e., up to .50BMG shooting up to 1.5 miles). And serious amateurs cobble together their own ballistic computers, typically using a combination of smart-phone ballistics applications, Kestrel weather meters, laser rangefinders, and perhaps some angle gauges. Hopefully this is the year that scope or laser rangefinder manufacturers begin to integrate atmosphere and angle sensors along with ballistic data to provide precise firing solutions, perhaps even automatically adjusting the scope’s reticle for a particular shot. Before long I also hope to see laser rangefinders that integrate laser doppler anemometers to determine average windspeed and direction over the ballistic trajectory, making first-shot hits as precise as the rifle and the shooter’s trigger finger.

Bullpup Single and Double Rifles

As a fan of bullpup firearms I was excited by Steinkamp’s SW1 double rifle. But since their pricing is over the top I’m hoping that this year some domestic manufacturers will pick up on the concept to produce single or double bullpup rifles and shotguns.

Subsonic .22LR Ammunition and Barrels

As I wrote late last year, there are significant benefits to be had with heavier subsonic .22LR ammunition. I hope ammunition manufacturers step up their offerings of .22LR over 40 grains, and that .22LR barrel manufacturers switch to the higher twist-rates needed to shoot the stuff well.

After I bought a PS3, primarily to serve as a Bluray player, I decided it was time to put rear speakers on my home theater system. I last tried this at least five years ago with several pairs of speakers priced around $100 each. None of them could keep up with the old premium Fosgate Audionics speakers I have on my front three channels, so I gave up.

This time I asked a friend who’s an A/V fanatic what to get and without hesitation he sent me to Aperion Audio, where I ordered two 6-IW in-wall speakers for $150 each. My initial impression was that they are actually superior to my Fosgate speakers. Having put them through my Pioneer receiver’s autocalibration they are a seamless part of my surround sound system.

Nominal investment performance numbers give us a false sense of how hard our money is working for us. Real returns, which are adjusted for inflation, look much worse over the long term.

One analyst also factors in the effects of taxes and fees to produce “real-real returns,” which are even more pathetic:

Garrett Thornburg, founder of Thornburg Investment Management in Santa Fe, N.M., calculates what he calls “real-real” returns, adjusting stock performance not only for inflation but also for real-world drags such as taxes and fees. Nominally, a dollar invested in the stocks of the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index at the end of 1978 had blossomed to $22.88 at the end of 2008, including dividends, a sweet gain even after the 2008 meltdown. But once estimates of inflation, taxes and costs are removed, he figures, the investment was worth $3.76.

All of this might be enough to put investors off stocks entirely, until they consider the long-term alternatives. Measured over the 1978-2008 period, rather than over just one decade, stock performance in real-real terms actually is better than that of just about any other major investment class, Mr. Thornburg found: 4.5% a year. Stocks’ ability to keep up with inflation over the very long haul may be their best selling point.

In real-real terms, stocks did better over that period than municipal bonds (2.5% a year), long-term government bonds (2% a year) and corporate bonds (0.2% a year). Real-real home prices were unchanged over those 30 years. Both short-term government bonds and commodities suffered losses.

Last year I recommended TIPS funds as particularly attractive for tax-exempt investment accounts.

TIPS have gained substantially since then, but from a historical perspective the current 10-year TIPS break-even rate of 2.1% is still low. (”Break-even” is the realized inflation rate above which an inflation-protected security will pay more than its non-inflation-protected equivalent. In the case of TIPS that would be regular treasury bonds. A break-even rate of 2.1% means that ). Since inflation protection is valuable insurance in a market like this, with low current inflation but exploding money supply (which could easily lead to surprisingly high inflation in the next few years), one might expect TIPS break-even rates to run above the long-run expected inflation rate, which is around 2% per year. Indeed, it is still cheaper to buy TIPS than to buy treasuries and hedge against inflation with options.

However, as I noted earlier, TIPS aren’t a perfect inflation hedge. Bill Tedford, a successful treasury bond portfolio manager and inflation bug, has other ideas on investing for protection against inflation:

In his own portfolio, Mr. Tedford has begun shorting 30-year Treasurys, expecting the prices to fall as interest rates begin to rise. For clients, however, Stephens is encouraging the use of exchange-traded funds to own exposure to real assets. Mr. Tedford says a 5% or 10% position overall “is big enough to protect a larger portfolio.”

Among ETFs, Stephens likes the U.S. Gasoline Fund, the iShares Dow Jones U.S. Oil & Gas Exploration & Production Index, SPDR Gold Trust, PowerShares DB Base Metals Fund and the PowerShares DB Agriculture Fund. The firm also likes Plum Creek Timber Co.

Though Treasury inflation-protected securities, or TIPS bonds, would seem a natural bet, Mr. Tedford says his group just this month sold off its TIPS investments. Real yields on TIPS are barely above 1% now and Mr. Tedford expects those yields will increase as inflation mounts, hurting prices, which move in the opposite direction.

The likely result: “The return on your TIPS could fall 10% or 15%,” basically wiping out the bond’s inflation protection.

I would personally steer clear of gold as an inflation hedge because it is particularly prone to speculative bubbles, and has less intrinsic value than most other commodities. But diversified investments in energy, industrial metals, and the agricultural sector should also serve as good long-term inflation hedges.

I suppose you can’t fault Wall Street for catering to demand, but as I explained a few years ago hedge fund clones are ridiculous investments. Nevertheless, the WSJ reports investors are still lining up for these offerings and banks are still rolling out new ones.

While most clones have so far generally kept pace with broad hedge-fund indexes, their performance has been all over the map. Between March 2008 and Sept. 30 of this year, clones studied by researchers at Haute Ecole de Gestion in Geneva and Bank Julius Baer & Co. delivered annualized returns ranging from -21% to 6%. And some clones this year have sharply underperformed broad hedge indexes. State Street’s Premia Fund was up less than 2% in the first 10 months of this year, compared with a 10% gain for the HFRI Fund of Funds Composite Index.

Even Andrew Lo, one of the originators of the “clone” concept, and current manager of a replication fund, has to admit that this concept is missing a big piece of the game:

Being restricted to easily traded holdings, replicators may not capture a big chunk of hedge-fund performance. Anywhere from 10% to 60% of hedge-fund returns may come from a premium earned by holding illiquid assets….

I recently reviewed the new U.S. version of the Steyr AUG/A3.  At the time I noted that Microtech Small Arms Research (MSAR), which has spent several years rolling out its “STG-556″ AUG clone, would probably retain a pricing and innovation edge over Steyr.  During the recession MSAR cut its wholesale price from above $1400 to $1050.  Then, in just the last few weeks, MSAR dumped their entire inventory on distributors at even lower rates, allegedly because they are moving their operations from Bedford, Pennsylvania to Raleigh, North Carolina.

Since I was already thinking about getting another receiver or barrel, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to get an entire bullpup carbine for under $1100.  Following are observations on the fourth-generation STG-556 I purchased, shown here below my Steyr AUG/A3 USA.

I was struck by a number of small but clever improvements MSAR has made to the AUG design:

• The MSAR 16″ barrel uses 1:8 rifling, which is sufficient to stabilize up to 77gr bullets.  (The AUG only comes with 1:9 twist, which is marginal for bullets over 70gr.)
• The MSAR is more than half a pound lighter than the AUG/A3.
• The MSAR has quick-detach sling loops on both the receiver and the stock pin.  (In contrast, the AUG’s front sling loop is held in by a coil pin so it cannot be easily removed when not in use.  Its rear loop can be switched from side to side by removing the entire stock pin, but cannot be completely removed.)
• The MSAR stock has two QD sling loop attachment points molded into the stock, underneath the pistol grip and under the toe.
• The MSAR trigger pack actually locks into the stock.  You have to press the bolt catch to release it.  (The AUG’s trigger pack just falls out.)

The MSAR beats the Steyr not only on price but also with these design enhancements.  The only two things the AUG has going for it are (1) the support and reputation of Steyr-Mannlicher, and (2) the fact that it has met the production and performance standards of many professional militaries for many decades.

Other observations:

• A new MSAR is tighter than a new AUG in a several dimensions: You actually need the help of the recoil spring to get the receiver to pop out of the stock during disassembly.  And magazines do not drop free when released unless nearly fully loaded.
• The MSAR bolt locks open on an empty magazine, after which it can only be closed using the bolt catch just above the magazine release.  In contrast, the AUG bolt can also be released using the slide-cocking handle.
• The Gen-4 MSAR has no forward assist.  The AUG’s slide-cocking handle can be used as a forward assist.
• Sadly, like the AUG, the standard STG-556 barrels use metric muzzle threads, so you’ll have to buy an adapter to use your American suppressors.

Important notes when purchasing an STG:

1. MSAR’s fourth generation starts with serial number 6500.  MSAR has manufactured at least five thousand Gen4 STG-556 guns.
2. Earlier STG-556 versions have a Stoner-style Forward Assist (”FA”) and some compatibility problems.  Therefore I would avoid serial numbers lower than 6500.
3. Don’t confuse the STG-556 with MSAR’s STG-E4.  The E4 is a Gen4 variant compatible with AR-15 magazines — quite like the Steyr NATO conversion I described previously.  It comes with many more rail mounting positions and runs at least another $250.
4. The Gen4 STG-556 works with AUG magazines.  (It also appears to work with Steyr’s NATO conversion kit, although I only confirmed that its receiver fits in mine; I haven’t test fired it.)
5. It ships from the factory with 5 MSAR magazines.
6. MSAR STG-556 magazines do not work with AUGs without some extra machining.

Precision shooters know that keeping bullet speeds out of the transonic region preserves accuracy. The pressure dynamics around the sound barrier can upset a ballistically efficient bullet on its way to the target.

It turns out that the round nose and stubby heel of a typical .22LR bullet make it remarkably aerodynamic at subsonic speeds. Consequently, match-grade .22LR ammunition is typically designed to leave a rifle barrel well under 1000fps.

Competitive rimfire shooters aren’t the only ones who have discovered advantages to subsonic ammunition. Anyone who fires a well suppressed gun will note that even if the muzzle blast is fully contained in the baffles of a silencer a supersonic bullet makes a significant amount of noise of its own: As it travels down range the supersonic pressure waves in its wake produce a “sonic crack.” Since .22LR cans are so light, cheap, and efficient, there are a lot of suppressor owners opting for subsonic ammunition to keep shooting sessions as quiet as possible.

Anyone who has pulled a subsonic .22 bullet has probably been surprised at how much empty space is in the case. It takes less than one grain of powder to propel the standard 40gr .22 lead bullet to the sound barrier. With all that extra room in the cartridge, why not add some more mass to the bullet? After all, holding all else equal, mass is your ballistic friend: It increases ballistic coefficient, which increases a bullet’s effective range by helping it retain velocity and resist atmospheric disturbances. Extra mass at the same speed also increases energy, which enhances terminal ballistics.

At some point you’re bound to notice a peculiar offering in the .22 marketplace: Silver boxes of Aguila-brand subsonic .22LR ammunition with some odd-looking 60gr bullets. Based on all of the preceding observations, you might justifiably exclaim, “Ah ha! There’s a great idea! I’ll put those in my rifle and enjoy all of the benefits of subsonic shooting for pennies a round, but with improved ballistics!”

And you would be right, except for one problem: Virtually every .22LR barrel is made with 1:16” rifling, and that is not adequate to reliably stabilize those longer 60gr lead bullets. In fact, I have looked long and hard to find anyone who makes a .22LR barrel with faster rifling that is also threaded to accept a suppressor. (The closest you can come is to buy an aftermarket specialty barrel from a place like Green Mountain, and then pay another $100 to get someone else to thread its muzzle. Or buy a .22LR conversion kit for a .223 rifle, many of which have 1:9 twist threaded barrels.)

Do some more research and you will also conclude that Aguila does not enjoy the most stellar reputation in rimfire ammunition. And yet they are the only company that makes .22LR bullets heavier than 50gr (and there are only a tiny number of other specialty loads heavier than the standard 40gr).

.22LR is by far the most popular consumer cartridge. Every .22LR shooter with a silencer, and many without, would love to be able to buy reliable and accurate 60gr+ bullets, as well as threaded barrels with sufficient twist rates to stabilize them.

So my open question to the firearms industry is: Where are the reputable bullet manufacturers selling cases of plinking, varmint, and match-grade 60gr .22LR ammunition? And where in the vast marketplace of .22LR guns and parts are the 1:12 twist .22LR barrels with threaded muzzles to shoot those bullets?

You may have a big collection of AR-15 magazines.  Or maybe you don’t want to spend upwards of $40 apiece to build a collection of Steyr magazines that will only work with your AUG. In either case the Steyr NATO stock is a welcome option.  I bought a conversion kit, which consists of a modified stock and trigger pack (a.k.a. “hammer group”), from CDNN for $300.

Top: Original AUG stock, trigger pack, and magazine. Bottom: NATO conversion kit, shown with an L5 magazine.

Shown here (top) is the original AUG/A3 stock and trigger pack and (bottom) the NATO Conversion stock and trigger pack, with Lancer’s transparent L5 AR-15 magazine. Like all AUG stocks the NATO stock is molded with a bump on the top receiver end. To accommodate the A3 receiver’s extended top rail this stock bump has to be cut down — an operation I was able to complete in just a few minutes with the careful use of a belt sander.

The trigger packs are identical except for a spring-loaded tab on the AUG pack that locks into the rear of their proprietary magazine. Because AR-15 magazines are designed for side latches the NATO stock has several differences from the standard stock:

1. There is no bolt release. The only way to get the bolt forward after it locks back on an empty magazine is to use the cocking slide on the front of the gun.
2. Only the right-side trigger bar reaches all the way to the trigger pack. The other is cut off somewhere before the magazine well.
3. It has a magazine release button, which is actuated by the standard AUG mag release lever. The button is flush with the stock so it probably wasn’t designed to be used directly, but from a shooting posture it is easier to push than the lever behind the magazine.
4. It can’t be adapted to left-hand ejection. Where the standard stock has a rubber cover over a left-hand port the NATO stock is molded solid.

Top: AUG Magazine. Bottom: L5 magazine.

For comparison purposes I have used L5 magazines on the NATO conversion. These cost $13 vs. at least $39 for Steyr’s 30-round AUG magazines. The L5 plastic shell is much thinner than Steyr’s uniformly thick body, but it has metal feed lips and a rubber base to help it survive drops.

My NATO conversion kit had a sticky trigger in addition to an even heavier trigger spring than normal, resulting in a out-of-the-box trigger weight of over 12 pounds (in contrast to the standard AUG trigger of “only” 9 pounds)! Fortunately Steyr has agreed to look at this. I will post details on fixing and improving the trigger soon.

[Update: Steyr's Alabama technical services group took just two weeks to fix this up beautifully. Now the stock's trigger is smooth and the sear spring breaks right at 9 pounds. Of course, a 9-pound trigger is still nothing to brag about. Coming soon: A Review of the TriggerTamer.]

This is my Steyr AUG/A3 SA USA, with a NATO conversion kit (covered in this separate review), and sporting an EOTech 512 sight.  The AUG/A3 is the latest version of an Austrian 5.56mm tactical bullpup carbine, first produced more than 30 years ago, that is used by police and military units around the world.

Bullpup firearms have always struck me as a great — even obvious — idea:  After all, why cantilever the entire barrel and action forward of the trigger, using the foot or more of stock between the grip and butt for nothing more than a cheek rest?  Moving the action behind the trigger gives a much more compact and balanced weapon for a given barrel length.

The NFA gives us an extra incentive to pursue bullpups:  Since unregistered firearms with stocks have to carry barrels of at least 16″, a standard rifle design is going to far exceed the minimum overall length (from butt of the stock to end of the barrel) of 26″:  An AR-15 with a 16″ barrel and a 12″ length-of-pull is 36″ long.  The AUG, with the same barrel and length-of-pull, comes in at just over 28″.

Of course there are some complications in the execution.  The most significant for autoloading guns is where to throw fired cases.  The FN P90, a pistol-caliber bullpup PDW, can eject straight downward because its magazine sits on top of the gun.  But when the magazine is inserted underneath the action that path is blocked.  FN’s F2000 and Kel-Tec’s RFB actually eject the cases forward into a chute that eventually drops them in front of the gun’s body.  Like the SA-80, TAR-21, and FAMAS (also military bullpup rifles, but ones that are not currently available in the U.S.), the AUG uses a conventional side-ejection action.

Some people are fazed by the fact that the ejection port is just opposite the shooter’s head when the gun is shouldered. Having already put a few hundred rounds through mine I can attest that you won’t even notice.  A religious tactician might complain that this gun can’t be shot cross-shoulder.  You definitely would not want to fire it from the left shoulder (unless you like eating hot brass) but when tactics require it the gun can be thrust forward and fired from the left-hand side — particularly effectively when equipped with a good holographic sight.

In 1989 the federal government decided to apply a provision of the GCA to ban the importation of a number of foreign-made “assault rifles,” including Steyr’s AUG.  A few thousand AUGs that had been imported prior to that date became collector items that traded for $3-4k apiece.  After the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban expired in 2004 two domestic companies began to develop AUG clones: TPD’s AXR and MSAR’s STG.  Soon Steyr decided to join the action by teaming with Sabre Defense to assemble bona fide Steyr AUG’s domestically to serve the U.S. market.  These began shipping in 2009 as the Steyr AUG/A3 SA USA to indicate that they are Semi-Auto A3 variants assembled in the USA. (Their serial numbers all include “USA.”)  In September I discovered the price had fallen below $1900 so I promptly grabbed one at a gun show.  The complete AUG USA package includes a chrome-lined 16″ 1:9 barrel, two magazines, a soft case, sling, and a cleaning kit that fits in the rear of the stock.

According to Steyr the majority of the AUG USA’s components are made in Austria.  Of the 12 components made in the US the two major ones are the stock and the barrel assembly.  All other parts are imported and undergo final assembly by Sabre Defense.

One unfortunate specification being preserved in the AUG USA is the European M13×1 muzzle threading.  Ratworx sells a thread adaptor for the 1/2×28 threading used by suppressors here, and Steyr said they are also working on releasing one. I suggested to Steyr that they instead work on a 1:7 twist 16″ barrel with 1/2×28 threads for this market since most tactical shooters now prefer heavier bullets that require tighter rifling, and we would then have two reasons to buy a new barrel group!

The A3 variant comes with a nice main rail for sights and a small forward rail at 1:30, which would be great for a laser or light. One drawback of the main rail is that it sits awfully close to the charging handle (a.k.a. “cocking slide”). The manual repeatedly instructs the user to operate the slide with an upward-facing palm to avoid scraping knuckles against the corners of the rail. I simply capped my unused rails with low-profile rubber Falcon covers ($2/6″ from Botach) and this is no longer an issue.

The AUG features an ingenious modular design. With no tools it quickly breaks down into 5 component groups shown here: Barrel, receiver, bolt carrier, stock, and trigger pack. (The butt pad and stock pin have been removed from the stock group as part of the take-down procedure.)

I was always enamored of the AUG because it was a beautiful and clever bullpup, and I am even more drawn to it since I have sworn off direct gas impingement actions (because they’re too hard to keep as clean as I like my guns): The AUG uses a two-position gas piston, so all the carbon fouling is limited to a small regulator, piston, and spring next to the front handle on the barrel assembly.

About that trigger…

The AUG trigger is notoriously bad, with a typical out-of-the-box pull weight of 9 pounds!  Contrary to some conjectures this is not a problem intrinsic to bullpup configurations.  Having studied the trigger pack I don’t believe it is even a consequence of constructing the sear and hammer out of plastic(!), although that may be an impediment to achieving a truly match-grade trigger.  Steyr has simply constructed this gun with a trigger spring far heavier than necessary.  This is probably a holdover from their original two-stage select-fire trigger system, which uses a partial trigger pull to discharge a single shot and delivers full-auto bursts with the trigger pulled fully to the rear.

For semi-auto AUG’s the trigger spring can be safely and significantly lightened.  But at present the only aftermarket part available to do so is the TriggerTamer: A patented plastic piece that replaces the rear tab on the trigger pack to engage the trigger spring at a slightly less compressed angle, resulting in a one-third reduction in trigger weight.

Sight

With the combination of its compactness and heavy trigger the AUG is ideally suited to CQB or the emerging “Personal Defense Weapon” (PDW) roles.  Given the difficulty of triggering precision shots I think a magnified optic would be poorly suited to this gun.  The ideal sight is a holographic red-dot, which gives the shooter the widest field of view and greatest ease of sight acquisition because one’s head does not have to be aligned with the sight: If you can see the dot anywhere in the sight window, it’s covering the point of impact.  I ponied up $350 for an EOTech 512 from Botach.  This sight combines proven military ruggedness with my favorite red-dot reticle: A large 65 MOA circle for fast targeting and a 1 MOA center dot for more precise sighting.  Many other red-dot sights have larger center dots, which cover too much of a target for precise shots at longer distances.

Current Market

With the Obama-fueled gun-buying spree winding down and the economy bottoming out gun inventories are starting to climb. Apparently Steyr is now releasing the A3 to distributors for $1750. Meanwhile MSAR has dropped the wholesale price on its STG to $1050. MSAR is also doing some clever things with their fourth-generation (”E4″) models, including standard NATO magazine compatibility and multiple calibers. Steyr will probably not be able to keep up with MSAR’s innovations because the AUG USA is a tiny portion of their business, and also because they are very wary of crossing any lines with the ATF.