This was a private range day I was sharing with about 15 fellows from the bureau (they are the ones in polo shirts and khakis), they all shot the MG34 and some of the other WW2 firearms (G43, G33/40, K98) I brought out, even two female agents - all were smiling afterward.
Ammo results:
Worked great with 1955 Yugo - 1960's Yugo
Failure to fire with Equadorian - which was lucky because when they did fire in my K98, they seemed horribly over powered.
Obviously avoided Turk ammo - read any of the forums on these semis and the Turk ammo accounts for many damaged semi 8mm's.
Tried some West German 1960's ammo - fired but failed to cycle.
Slipped some wartime German 1943 ammo through it successfully.
Found some Romanian which it ate up hungrily.
About 350 rounds total, as the weapon became carbonized, we had some sear issues, so I felt that was a good time to put it away.
It is a DOT 1944 front end, almost all matching, where it doesn't match the offending number has been X'd out and a matching serial electro penciled in.
The belts were 1937-1940 dated.
The TNW semi system appeared to work great, although at times it felt like a long delay between trigger release and ready for battery - the tolerances are pretty exact with the MG34 and by about the 250 rounds mark, there was a carbon build up and it did affect certain aspects of the mechanism function (much to the amusement of the spectators) - even with an oil and wipe down.
It did work better we found; if you used two fingers on the trigger, in the upper and lower positions, full and semi, and squeezed in that manner, as opposed to a single finger liker a regular rifle.
It was a blast shooting the 600 meter plates, nothing like the huge clouds of dust to help correct.
