The first item on today's agenda was to op check V's Hi Power. I replaced the stock hammer with a Cylinder & Slide "no bite" hammer and the stock safety with an extended safety. V was having trouble engaging the safety with her strong hand thumb, the extended safety is easier for her to manipulate. Everything worked as expected. V had a couple items of her own that she wanted to get done today, so we will have to wait until the next range trip to find out how she likes the modifications.
Next up was the first field test of the Wilson Combat Elite Tactical Magazine and the CobraMag. You can find my initial comparison of these two magazines here. Today's field test included one of each magazine. As I have no ammo sponsors (hint, hint) and only a limited amount of ammunition I wanted to keep this first field test simple. One example of each magazine, three types of ammunition and three different drills. The ammunition I used today was Federal HST 230 gr. +P, Fiocchi 230 gr. round nose, and my hand-loads (230 gr. RNF Precision Bullets over 3.9 gr. of Hodgdon Clays). The drills included one magazine of slow fire, one of draw and fire one round, and, one of draw and fire double taps.
I started with the Federal HST and the slow fire drill, no problems. The magazines functioned well in both of the drills from the holster using the HST also. On to the Fiocchi, and the first failure.
During the draw and double tap drill, I experienced one failure to eject. It looked similar to the above re-creation. The empty casing was left on the breech face and under the extractor. This was round #7 in the Wilson Combat ETM magazine.
Next in line were my reloads, and another failure. This time it was during the draw and fire one shot drill. The malfunction was a failure to eject, and once again it was round #7 in the Wilson Combat ETM magazine.
I had two rounds of each type of ammo left, so loaded one in each magazine and rapid fired three rounds. 75 rounds through each magazine, 150 rounds total with two failures. Each failure was the 7th round in the ETM magazine. This was a very small sample size, and I am not at all ready to blame the failures on the magazine. Perhaps someone with a bit more knowledge than I will chime in and offer an opinion on the cause of these failures.
When I finished field testing the magazines, there was still plenty of day left so I moved down a couple of bays and uncased the AR. Granted, 200 yards is not very far, but it sure is fun to ring a gong with an open sighted rifle at that distance.
1 comment:
Hmmm...still a big fan of the Sig P220. It never complained, no matter what ammo I fed it. Of course, I didn't try aftermarket magazines, but I didn't feel the need to; the stock mags worked flawlessly with a variety of ammo/shooting conditions.
Interesting experiments...
Post a Comment