STAR / ARES FN FNC Para Review

By Brandon
July 12th, 2010

Real Steel History:

“Following the market failure of their previous 5.56mm caliber assault rifle, the CAL, famous Belgian company Fabrique Nationale began to develop the new assault rifle for 5.56mm NATO cartridge in the early 1970s. The final design, called the FNC (Fabrique Nationale Carbine) was produced circa 1978 and was consequently adopted by the Belgian Armed forces. It was also adopted by Sweden and Indonesia, and both those countries purchased the licenses to build more or less modified FNC carbines at their own facilities. Swedish version is known as Bofors AK-5 and Indonesian version is known as Pindad SS1. The FNC also was sold to some police forces around the world, and, in limited numbers for civilians – as a “Sporter” model, limited to semi-automatic mode only.

The FNC is a sound design which accumulated best features from other famous designs, such as Kalashnikov AK-47,  Colt/Armalite M16,  and others.

The controls of the FNC consist of the 4-positions safety / mode selector switch on the left side of the receiver. Available modes are Safe, Single shot, 3-rounds bursts and Full automatic fire. The cocking handle is attached to the bolt carrier at the right side and does reciprocate with the bolt group when gun is fired. The rear part of the cocking handle slot, cut in the upper receiver for cocking handle, is covered by the spring-loaded cover which automatically opens by the handle when it goes back and automatically closes the opening when cocking handle returns forward.

FNC is equipped with side-folding buttstock, made of steel and covered by plastic. A solid, non-folding plastic butt is available as an option. The pistol handle and the forend are made from plastic. FNC is equipped with sling swivels and can be fitted with special bayonet or with adapter for US M7 knife-bayonet. FNC can be fed from any STANAG (NATO standard) compliant magazine, and issued with 30 rounds magazines. If required, FNC could be fitted with 4X telescope sight or various IR / night vision sights.”

• Caliber: 5.56x45mm NATO
• Action: Gas operated, rotating bolt
• Overall length: standard model 997 mm (776 mm with folded butt); “Para” model 911 mm / 680 mm
• Barrel length: 449 mm (363 mm “Para” model)
• Weight with empty magazine: 4.06 kg  (3.81 kg “Para” model)
• Magazine capacity: 30 rounds (accept all STANAG-compatible magazines)
• Rate of fire: about 700 rounds per minute
• Effective range: 450 meters

Real Firearm Information From World.Guns

Movie Appearances:

While it is a relatively subtle gun, the FNC has had a couple notable roles in film.

Most commonly, the FNC is associated with the absolutely epic firefight in Heat, directed by Michael Mann.  Al Pacino uses a shortened carbine version (Dubbed the FNC-80) to run around being awesome.  Seriously, go spend $5 at walmart and pick up a copy.

Surprisingly, the FNC had a tiny cameo in the IRA gun locker in the first Boondock Saints

Finally, this was so campy that I had to include it, a pimped out Vin Diesel carries a ridiculous looking FNC with a Beta C magazine and a C-More sight.

Really Heat has the only non-novelty use of the gun around, but the excellence of the scene makes up for it.  I’d wager to say its what convinced me to throw my nickel up to buy this replica.

Initial Impressions

So, on to the replica.  As is rapidly becoming the case, I tacked this on to a bulk order from EHobby Asia with my co-writer, Mike.  I’ve always been curious about the FNC since STAR put it out so many years ago, and this one was easy to justify at a flat $200.00 from EHobby due to a sale).  Approximately 2.5 days after green-lighting the purchase, the gun was in my apartment in Denver.  It should be noted that EHobby’s shipping is incredibly fast.

Unboxing the gun is interesting, as Ares has packaged it in a very sturdy box with an excellent foam cutout insert to keep the gun nice and safe when traveling in its box.  Included with the gun are a standard magazine, A Tokyo Marui Style tube loader, and a sheet of paper that tells you where you can go download a manual.  I’m a little puzzled as to why a gun that was originally $500 comes without a manual, but really that is a minor nitpick.  The packaging is excellent, and the included bits are pretty standard.

Pulling the gun from the box, you’re greeted with a well detailed, excellent feeling replica.  I noted no rattles, creaks, or other audible signs of poor build quality. This replica has a full steel receiver which is powder coated a shiny black.

The trademarks are excellent as the gun wears full FN trademarks throughout.

The stock is again, steel tubing, and locks open extremely solid.  The stock is spring loaded on its swivel, and locks in a notch-and-groove fashion.  Its pretty easy to see from the picture below.

In terms of folding the stock, the situation is slightly different.  When I initially got the gun, the stock was incredibly stiff on its hinge, and would lock folded solidly just due to friction.  I shot a bit of silicone spray into the hinge to loosen the stock up (so I could lock it open), and it worked a bit better than I would’ve expected, and now the stock rattles a bit when closed.  Another bone to pick with the designers of the real firearm is that the stock covers the magazine catch when closed.

I mentioned the mag release earlier, but I also mentioned that it was hiding behind the stock.  Here it is clear as day.  Note how slab sided the receiver is, and again how nice the body’s metallurgy appears.  Also note the pretty standard FN style grip, and late FNC trigger guard (early FNC’s didn’t have the notched triggerguard).

Interestingly enough, they labeled which way to fold the stock on the rear sight.  That or the gun wants you to cover the right…  In either way, its tough to tell if this is present on the real gun, or a weird touch from STAR.

Another interesting feature to note is the spring loaded dust cover on the receiver.  When the bolt is pulled, the dust cover rides up and over the cocking handle, which is also solidly attached to the fake bolt.

Here’s a closer shot, where you can get a better idea of how this works.  Its nice to see that STAR decided to actually replicate this function as opposed to their SAW, which had a fixed charging handle.

But what’s under the bolt you ask?  Well lets see…

Oh no!  Is that the gearbox?  That’s right, the FNC is one of STAR’s plastic gearbox ‘experiment’ guns.  How did it hold up?  We’ll save that for later.

Moving forward a bit, we get to the FNC’s bizarre stamped front end.  The shape is pretty iconic, and STAR has recreated it well.  It looks to be a bit shinier on the realsteel, but again minor nitpicking.  STAR has used stamped and rolled steel for this bit, which lends to the excellent aesthetic of this replica.

The flashhider is a solid blued chunk of steel, and STAR replicated the proper FN hider for the replica, not the AR birdcage seen on Al-Pacino’s chop job above.  Also noteworthy is the sling swivel mounted to the tiny barrel extension.  The barrel extension screws into the front site post on a 14mm threading, and the flashhider screws onto that.  The sling swivel can rotate around the extension 360 degrees.  Its also not particularly sturdy feeling.  I wouldn’t test it if you get one.

This replica also faithfully recreates the grenade leaf site on the gas block.

It does simply flip up, and doesn’t lock into place or anything, but it is a faithful recreation of a feature from the real gun.

The rear sights are fairly standard flip sights.  Anyone familiar with an AR of any sort will feel at home.

Rear sight adjustment is for windage only, and adjusted by the large wheel on the left side of the sight.

As I said before, the sight picture will be familiar to AR users.

So we’re back to the receiver, and until now, I hadn’t touched on the four positions for the fire select.

Let me explain in the most patronizing way possible;

Safe

Semi

3 Round Burst

Automatic

Indeed, this gun has the holy grail that is 3 round burst.  When the trigger is pulled though, it must be held down to complete the burst (akin to the TM Type 89).   This is a pretty cool feature, though it has perils, explained later.

Here’s a gratuitous shot of the magazine.  Its everything you would expect an AR magazine to be- unmemorable.  In fact, I’d wager you probably don’t have many expectations of your AR mags.  I will say that it is made of a similar powder coated stamped steel to the rest of the body, thus, very pretty. It also works.  Its a 68 round standard, but I’m sure if you’re looking at a gun like this, you’ve probably had an AR banging around your collection before, so I doubt mags will be an issue for many.

Another important thing to know about here is the disassembly process.  So far, STAR’s workmanship has been relatively top notch, but here is where we see the design on the gun start to stumble.

First, by pulling back on the retaining ring, the foregrip can be removed.  This gun takes standard 8.4v smalls, or a variety of small form factor LiPo batteries.

Next, remove the two pins in the body, and you can slide the receiver forwards off the gun.

Or can you?  Have a look at the angle of the inner barrel.  That is parallel to the lower, but the upper slopes to the rear of the receiver, forcing you to angle the receiver down as you pull it off the gun.  The problem here is that there is a rigid barrel in place, which must bend slightly to be able to wiggle the upper off of the gun.  The process is awkward at best, and feels like you’re damaging the gun as you do it to be more honest.  You also have to be careful with the wire, so as not to strip the heatshrink coating holding it together.

And there it is, finally apart.  The most expensive plastic gearbox gun I’ve bought.

Shooting Impressions

On to shooting, and here’s where things continue to go south.  This gun was released when star was on a kick of creating their gearboxes from polycarbonate (or in other words, clear plastic).  This style of gearbox also starred in their L85 and SAW replicas, until poor reliability, and difficult to source spares started to garner criticism from players.  Star has long since abandoned the polycarbonate gearbox, returning to traditional V2s and V3s.

So, this is a gun with a gearbox so revolutionary, it was made obsolete by what it was designed to replace.  That being said, this gun’s skirmishability  has suffered at the hands of that contemptible machination of a gearbox.

First off, the gun shoots 400 out of the box.  Call me a prude, but seeing what a 400 FPS spring over time will do to a V2 box, I would much rather have my gun detuned to a slightly less wear-inducing FPS.

Also, my gun has an enormous problem with jamming.  Every 100 trigger pulls or so, My gun’s switch unit seizes inside the gearbox, requiring me to do the painful takedown process mentioned above each time to prod into the gearbox with a screw driver and try to unstick the switch unit.  I’m told there is a button on the back of the gearbox to reset it, which is reachable through the body, but that seems somewhat besides the point.  Why not design the gearbox not to have a silly fault like that in the first place, as opposed to designing a clever trick to fix it.  This problem has left me in the middle of a skirmish without a working gun, which is more than mildly aggravating.  Note, when this failure happens, you cannot hear the microswitch style trigger switch click on and off for contact, as the part of the switch that moves sticks, and won’t contact the microswitch.

To be fair, there are some good sides to this gearbox, useless though it may be.  One is the quick change spring guide on the back of the gun, which simply rotates out of the back of the gearbox, and lets you swap springs on the fly.  Also, is the design of the hopup, which on the FNC is molded into the gearbox as well.  This creates a really efficient airseal compared to a multi-part hopup.  A very very used spring from a very very used rental at DMZ was borrowed for the day of skirmishing and testing. I felt like this sort of spring would generate minimal FPS (hopefully in the 250s,  to be unquestionably field legal).  When I chronoed the reassembled and spring-swapped gun, I got 343 FPS mean.  No gap between the hop and gearbox means less places for an airseal inefficiency.  The hop is also relatively good, and straight trajectories can be had for quite a ways (I was able to ping a metal post about 130 feet out).

Conclusion:

So, for my just over $260 shipped, I got a very pretty gun that isn’t much for shooting reliably.  I rated it on the criteria below;

Performance: 1.5/5 With the plastic gearbox, I really feel like it will give out spectacularly at any moment, but that’s not what killed the performance here.  Its the jammy trigger.  I just can’t fathom why STAR couldn’t use a normal trigger system like other gearboxes, and getting left high and dry in a skirmish repeatedly by this gun was incredibly frustrating.  When it does shoot, it shoots quite well, but these high times are punctuated with anger.

External Design: 4.5/5 This may be the highest I’ve ever ranked a gun’s externals.  The gun is beautiful, and the only nitpick I have is the paint flaking off the aluminum barrel extension too easily, and the stock rattling when folded.  Other than that, I have nothing.  Rock solid, and well made externally.

Value: 2.5/5 For $260 (though originally around $500…) I would expect a working gun, not a product that seems half finished.  Its like two completely different teams with completely different mindsets took on the externals and internals.  As a collector, its got quite a bit of value to me, but I can definitely see how someone who skirmishes more often would be disappointed, and probably sell out of it relatively quickly.

Overall: 3/5 Averaging the 3 ratings gives us a result which is skewed by how highly I rated the externals.  I don’t think the average is very representative here, so lets try that again:

The Real Overall: 2/5 I feel like its a bit of a tease to put unskirmishable internals in such a pretty and solid set of externals, enough so to be annoying.

The Final Word:

I plan on keeping mine for sure, as the three round burst is awesome, the gun is solid as a rock, and very well detailed.  Maybe with some minor tweaks to the gearbox, I can get the trigger to stop locking up.  That way, I can enjoy it until the gearbox explodes….