Real Deal SOPMOD M14
Submitted By B 2/75
A very sweet little sewing machine put together by the good people at CRANE NSW, issued through USSOCOM to the CJSOTF-AP and ultimately into my hands in the late fall of 2003. Not on the rifle, but in the kit, was a Harris bipod and a Trijicon scope that I didn't care for. But the PEQ-2 and the Trijicon Reflex were for me a good combo (I had a set of AN/PVS-14 on my helmet for night time).
While this is essentially a Sage, you'll see that it has none of the markings on the right side of the stock, and there are some small differences (less holes) that don't amount to much. There was no plastic grip cover. At the time this was called a SOPMOD M-14, and there were actually only a handful of them in existance. I was indeed a very lucky guy to be able to get my hands on one, especially to be able to have it outside the wire.
The downside was that while we had had contact with Hadji every damn day for months, when I got the sewing machine it suddenly became very very quiet, and I never got to shoot it at anybody. LOL... I guess that actually was a pretty good thing... sortta depends on yer perspective, doesn't it? I did fire four mags to get acquainted, though, before going out the gate, and as expected it was a nicely behaved, selective fire sweetie. Autofire did best with 3 round bursts... anything more than that was like shooting a Thompson... a bit wild.
Anyway, it was a very sweet, very early Sage, and I wish I could have kept it. This pic was taken around January of 04, just before I finally got to go home.
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