Quote:
Originally Posted by Aguila Blanca
Having carried a "real" M16 with integral carry handle for awhile in southeast Asia, my take is that I haven't yet encountered a bolt-on carry handle that has an opening large enough for adult male fingers to fit through so the carry handle can actually be used as a carry handle. (And I don't have especially big hands.) If you're looking to actually use the carry handle as a carry handle, IMHO you'd be better off buying an upper with a carry handle. If you just want the carry handle as a base for some optic or other, then pretty much any carry handle should do the job.
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I strongly agree with the above. You can probably put your fingers in there but it is tight to the point where it's uncomfortable, is almost trying to break you fingers.
Carry handle upper and fsb is a nice iron sight combo. Flat top upper and forward fsb is commonly found but isn't a great combination (the better simple thing is a flat top gas block with a rail on it, then you can have iron sights, an optic, or back up iron sights with an optic even).
Also carry handle mounted optics are not on there particularly well, is not really an ideal base and is much higher than it needs to be.
If I wanted an optic on that sort of rifle, without going into a free float guard and all that, I'd go to a different gas block that had a little rail on it instead of the sight, barely more $$ even installed by a gunsmith really compared to a quality rail mount carry handle.
Carry handle uppers are available too, but admittedly the upper alone is about $200, very few complete uppers are found in that configuration - at least in a carbine, mostly they come with 20 inch barrels. I ended up assembling my own to make a carbine version.