northny
.40 S&W
In a practice session for an upcoming Appleseed, I ran into a problem with my rifle with a dedicated .22 AR upper. Suddenly I could not shoot it for anything. (Meanwhile I was cruising along comfortably with my 10-22)
Put the rifle on the bench, and I was shooting 1.5 inch groups at 25M. Rot Roh. Went home, checked everything, tightened everything, cleaned it and back to the range. Same old 'stuff', I could not buy a group. (this rifle usually shoots about .5 inch at 25M.) Checked the 10-22, still fine.
Now for each rifle, I have an ammo box that I take to the range. Mags, sling, small tools specific to that rifle, and the ammo I plan to use. I ran out of ammo in the .22 ar box, and grabbed a box of ammo from the 10-22 box. You guessed it, problem solved. AR was shooting like a dream again.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
So I go home and inventory the vault, how many different lots of CCI SV do I have? (I had kept empty box of "bad ammo" to get the lot number.)
Ignoring the lots of two boxes from the Obama years when you could only buy two (most of which is already shot up), I had 12 lots of CCI SV. Mfg lots are from 2015 to 2018.
Plus I had one lovely 50 round box of the suspect bad lot left. I color code all the lots, make up some targets with color coded 3/4 inch dots for targets, headed back to the range and I shot two five shot group from each lot. If I considered a human error in a shot from either of the first two groups, I fired a third. No sight corrections were made through out the test. All shooting done at 25 yards.
THE GOOD
the first good news was 10 of the 12 new lots tested I would use to shoot a match. The elevation of all the lots with in the upper half of the 3/4 inch dot, I would use them all without a sight adjustment when switching lots. (more variation from my prone, sitting, standing than lot change) In all the good lots, 4 if not five of the bullets contacted the dot. The good lots were 0.5 inch plus or minus .1 inch and the plus is usually me.
THE BAD
So I did shoot the known "bad" lot three times. To begin, in the middle, and at the end of the test. The smallest of the three groups measured 1.1 inches and not even one of the five bullets in that 'group" hit the intended dot. Lot number of that lot is A02Y90. I can't say where I bought it, but I can say since I acquired any of this ammo it had been in the same controlled temp and humidity storage.
And THE UGLY
So for the two lots I would not shoot a match with, one I am going to retest, because it reviewing the results the group size was a little larger that norm, but for whatever reason I did not shoot a second or third group, and as it was the last lot of the day it may have been me. I suspect it will be fine.
The one UGLY lot was E15X02. The group were .6 to .7", fairly consistently. I shot four initial groups. I later followed up with three more groups with same result. What made it UGLY was I had four failure to fires in the first twenty rounds, and two more is the following up 15. So six out of 35 rounds failed to fire. All seemed to have good firing pin strikes, and all six fired when struck a second time. What really condemned this lot was I had a box if it in my 10-22 kit, and that I had starting using. Only 10 rounds used but I had written a note on the box, "watch for misfires" so I must have had at least one with the same lot in the 10-22. It should be noted that the misfires with the lot were the only misfires that occurred during testing. I will say that the larger groups size could be a loss of my concentration from all the misfires.
My intention with this lot is to burn it up in practice. I should get plenty of practice in emergency action drills to clear that weapon when shooting for score on the clock.
Put the rifle on the bench, and I was shooting 1.5 inch groups at 25M. Rot Roh. Went home, checked everything, tightened everything, cleaned it and back to the range. Same old 'stuff', I could not buy a group. (this rifle usually shoots about .5 inch at 25M.) Checked the 10-22, still fine.
Now for each rifle, I have an ammo box that I take to the range. Mags, sling, small tools specific to that rifle, and the ammo I plan to use. I ran out of ammo in the .22 ar box, and grabbed a box of ammo from the 10-22 box. You guessed it, problem solved. AR was shooting like a dream again.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
So I go home and inventory the vault, how many different lots of CCI SV do I have? (I had kept empty box of "bad ammo" to get the lot number.)
Ignoring the lots of two boxes from the Obama years when you could only buy two (most of which is already shot up), I had 12 lots of CCI SV. Mfg lots are from 2015 to 2018.
Plus I had one lovely 50 round box of the suspect bad lot left. I color code all the lots, make up some targets with color coded 3/4 inch dots for targets, headed back to the range and I shot two five shot group from each lot. If I considered a human error in a shot from either of the first two groups, I fired a third. No sight corrections were made through out the test. All shooting done at 25 yards.
THE GOOD
the first good news was 10 of the 12 new lots tested I would use to shoot a match. The elevation of all the lots with in the upper half of the 3/4 inch dot, I would use them all without a sight adjustment when switching lots. (more variation from my prone, sitting, standing than lot change) In all the good lots, 4 if not five of the bullets contacted the dot. The good lots were 0.5 inch plus or minus .1 inch and the plus is usually me.
THE BAD
So I did shoot the known "bad" lot three times. To begin, in the middle, and at the end of the test. The smallest of the three groups measured 1.1 inches and not even one of the five bullets in that 'group" hit the intended dot. Lot number of that lot is A02Y90. I can't say where I bought it, but I can say since I acquired any of this ammo it had been in the same controlled temp and humidity storage.
And THE UGLY
So for the two lots I would not shoot a match with, one I am going to retest, because it reviewing the results the group size was a little larger that norm, but for whatever reason I did not shoot a second or third group, and as it was the last lot of the day it may have been me. I suspect it will be fine.
The one UGLY lot was E15X02. The group were .6 to .7", fairly consistently. I shot four initial groups. I later followed up with three more groups with same result. What made it UGLY was I had four failure to fires in the first twenty rounds, and two more is the following up 15. So six out of 35 rounds failed to fire. All seemed to have good firing pin strikes, and all six fired when struck a second time. What really condemned this lot was I had a box if it in my 10-22 kit, and that I had starting using. Only 10 rounds used but I had written a note on the box, "watch for misfires" so I must have had at least one with the same lot in the 10-22. It should be noted that the misfires with the lot were the only misfires that occurred during testing. I will say that the larger groups size could be a loss of my concentration from all the misfires.
My intention with this lot is to burn it up in practice. I should get plenty of practice in emergency action drills to clear that weapon when shooting for score on the clock.
