Hogan carbines?

[F-Trooper05]

Does anyone know anything about Hogan carbines? There's a few at my LGS (a couple 7.62's and a 5.56) and they look sweet, but I've never heard of them before, and I can't find much info on them. I'm not interested in buying one, I'm just curious if they're any good. They're going for between $1,500 to $2,500.

[jstyer]

It's an in-house short stroke piston design... I know nothing about them whatsoever, but based on that information only, I'd skip em.

[F-Trooper05]

Do in-house piston guns have a bad reputation?

[jumpthestack]

I've never heard of them. Even if they were awesome, I'd pass, because you'd be dependent on them for parts/service. If they ever went out of business, you'd be out of luck. In comparison, parts for a standard direct impingement AR are widely available and inexpensive and anything you might need to do can easily be done by yourself or a local gunsmith. If it were a radically different design, it might be interesting to explore, for fun. But shelling out 2k for a proprietary AR doesn't really make sense.

[jstyer]

In the words of Larry Vickers, (yanked from his SME section on m4carbine)

"Piston AR's have their place- to determine if you need one ask yourself four questions;

1) Do I need a barrel length shorter than 14.5 inches
2) Do I need to run my gun suppressed a lot
3) Do I need to shoot a lot of full auto
4) Do I need to shoot a wide variety of ammo"

That's a pretty specific criteria list. He then follows it up by saying that the ONLY piston AR platform gun he recommends is the HK416 (or the civilian equivalent, MR556) or perhaps the LWRC piston guns. Though he says he has much less experience with LWRC.

Personally, I'd rather have a well designed DI gun such as DD, BCM, or Colt than a questionably designed and untested piston gun.

[LittleLebowski]

They and POF (maker of piston ARs) are involved in a lawsuit. Looks ugly. How about a nice DI (direct impingement) AR with optic for the same price as a piston gun sans optics?

[Odin Bravo One]

If they are squabbling with POF over something, that says a lot.