Condor frame and ETAC mod

I am a fan of Marmot Miltia’s ETAC, I have been since he posted about it for the first time.

I have owned three of them, all canted, one long and two short.

For those of you who are new here and do not know about the ETAC’s, they fit between the valve and bottle and lenghten the length of pull, add a gauge and fill nipple and you can get them straight or canted.

The canted model gives you a off cast to the bottle to lower the bottle and move it away from your face, the result is you get a more ergonomic cheek weld and can use lower scope mounts, to lessen the scope to bore difference which on the AF Condor is usually around 3 inches.

I have sold all but one of my AirForce rifles and now just have the 25 Condor with the short canted ETAC. I really like the way I have it set up, but I could not remove the bottle from the gun, when I wanted to work on the valve unless I removed the grip assembly to get at the two grub screws at the bottom of the frame.

I removed those screws several months ago and drilled and tapped two screw holes thru the side of the frame so that I could remove the bottle and collar together. It worked but had downsides, ie., you have to have a allen wrench with you, and you have to remove the collar, sometimes requiring a pair of pliers to get it loose if you have it screwed on tight.

The gauge ETAC’s are small and not too accurate, the most accurate one I have had was still 200 PSI off, but truthfully most of the bigger gauges are not all that accurate either.

The gauge on the one remaining ETAC I have is off 500 PSI, I need reading glasses to read it so I was not too reluctant to remove it and replace it with a plug, so that I could do a scuptured mod to the frame to allow me to unscrew the bottle. If I kept the gauge, I would have to remove more metal than I wanted, not that it strengthens the frame at that point, but it takes away from the flow of the ascetic design.

This morning I removed the gauge, replaced it with the afore mentioned plug and then started on the frame with my dremmel and a cutter.

I no longer have a gauge on the ETAC, but I have four SCBA tanks with gauges, and a Booster with two gauges, and at 61 and 11 months, I can still count 30 shots, so to me it is not that big of a deal.

What it did for me though is to allow me to unscrew that bottle again, and by replacing the two bottom screws on the collar and using the two I had already drilled and tapped, it gives me four screws on the collar to secure it.

This is what I it looks like now.