Freitag, 14. Dezember 2012

Review: PK-AS (ПК-АС) (by Gruppa-L)

The PK-AS is a versatile, compact and waterproof sight with a rather unique working principle made by BelOMO (БелОМО) in Belarus.
Often people refer to it as reflex sight or red dot which does no justice to its capabilities at all. Why? Take a look at these two photos:


The the ocular and objective have way different diameters. At this point it should be pretty obvious that it is not just another reflex sight. In fact it is uses an extremely complex lens system to increase the field of view. The edges of the scope virtually seem to disappear:
Compared to a regular reflex sight like the Aimpoint CompM2/4 the advantages of this design really begin to show:
  • Due to the lens system the visible image takes up 100% of the ocular, you can not see the ‘inside’ of the sight
  • The black reticle is always visible, the sight can be used without a battery. So there is no need for backup sights either
  • The reticle and the red dot will not get bigger when increasing the distance between the ocular and the eye. Very much like on holographic sights by EOTech, though they use laserlight to archive the same effect.
  • The elevation to compensate bullet drop can be changed on the fly
The reticle consist of a 1 MOA black dot enclosed in a elliptical range-finder circle. It is always visible without the use of battery. A 1.5 MOA red dot can be used on demand.

 
There is a different sight which uses the same reticle: The PKS-07 (ПКС-07) sniper scope. The PKS-07 (left photo) is used on the SV98 and sometimes SVD Dragunov rifles. Both are made from the same company in Belarus. In fact the PK-AS is basically a non-magnified version of this scope.
 
To zero the sight in the whole optic is adjusted like on the Elcan Specter DR. It also has an cam wheel for adjusting the elevation in the field. It is marked with different from 0 to 3000 meters. Adjusting the windage on this sight can be a bit tricky. It reminds me a bit of the AK front sight where you have to move it back and forth until its zeroed in correctly.
The sight is powered by two D-357 button batteries for a total of 3V of power. The brightness adjustment knob uses the typical Russian 8 mode off-on-off layout  (0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-0)
You will often see an additional letter at the end of the label. This refers to the mount base which is used:
The original mount for the PK-AS is off-bore to left, the PK-AS-W (which is the one in this review) has a 22mm mount base. The PK-AS-V uses a centered BP-02 based mount. It should be worth mentioning that the sight itself is screwed onto the different mounts so you can change between these three. I personally only use the W and V mount since I don’t see any benefit in the off-bore mount.
As for now the PK-AS is not adopted by the Russian military, but is in used by gru und police units.

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