I'm playing catch-up today
Back from serving as assistant
teacher in a rifle class this weekend, and am just beat. My back
hurts; my chiropractor has been making a mint off me for the last
few months, as I seem to injure myself with greater regularity as I
age!
Students reported that ammunition (this class required 700 rounds) was extremely difficult to find, particularly in .223 (5.56mm, if you prefer.) It wasn't so much the price - although ammo prices are high, and getting higher by the minute. No, the major stumbling block was availability; they almost couldn't find what they needed in sufficient quantity for the course.
As a result, we saw a lot of "second tier" ammunition in this class: Fiocchi, Sellier & Bellot, and Wolf.
Luckily, no major ammunition problems presented themselves. In the past, S&B .223 has shown a disturbing tendency to lose the primer cups during ejection. Invariably, those little things would work themselves into the trigger mechanism, and tie up the action. This time we saw none of that. Perhaps S&B has gotten their act together (again)?
Fiocchi seemed to work fine, and the Wolf steel cased is....well, Wolf. I'd personally restrict its use to those guns (Communist-bloc) designed for steel cased ammunition, as the steel is rough on extractors designed for a diet of brass cases. If you insist on using it I'd recommend you keep a spare extractor on hand.
After working these classes for the past several years, and seeing all kinds of autoloading rifles used to shoot large amounts of ammunition over a weekend, I've come to a conclusion guaranteed to raise hackles amongst rifle debaters: the AK-47 series of rifles have proved to me that they aren't as reliable as scuttlebutt makes them out to be, and the AR-15 series of rifles aren't as fragile as that same scuttlebutt says they are. This particular class proved that again: two AKs experienced problems while all of the ARs ran flawlessly.
Boy, am I gonna get hate mail for that one!
(Final thought: if you have a Ruger Mini-14, use only Ruger magazines. Period. Nothing else will be reliable in that model. This opinion is validated in nearly every class, as it was again this time. Yeah, I know Ruger only makes 20-rounders; if you want more, get a different rifle!)
-=[ Grant ]=-
Students reported that ammunition (this class required 700 rounds) was extremely difficult to find, particularly in .223 (5.56mm, if you prefer.) It wasn't so much the price - although ammo prices are high, and getting higher by the minute. No, the major stumbling block was availability; they almost couldn't find what they needed in sufficient quantity for the course.
As a result, we saw a lot of "second tier" ammunition in this class: Fiocchi, Sellier & Bellot, and Wolf.
Luckily, no major ammunition problems presented themselves. In the past, S&B .223 has shown a disturbing tendency to lose the primer cups during ejection. Invariably, those little things would work themselves into the trigger mechanism, and tie up the action. This time we saw none of that. Perhaps S&B has gotten their act together (again)?
Fiocchi seemed to work fine, and the Wolf steel cased is....well, Wolf. I'd personally restrict its use to those guns (Communist-bloc) designed for steel cased ammunition, as the steel is rough on extractors designed for a diet of brass cases. If you insist on using it I'd recommend you keep a spare extractor on hand.
After working these classes for the past several years, and seeing all kinds of autoloading rifles used to shoot large amounts of ammunition over a weekend, I've come to a conclusion guaranteed to raise hackles amongst rifle debaters: the AK-47 series of rifles have proved to me that they aren't as reliable as scuttlebutt makes them out to be, and the AR-15 series of rifles aren't as fragile as that same scuttlebutt says they are. This particular class proved that again: two AKs experienced problems while all of the ARs ran flawlessly.
Boy, am I gonna get hate mail for that one!
(Final thought: if you have a Ruger Mini-14, use only Ruger magazines. Period. Nothing else will be reliable in that model. This opinion is validated in nearly every class, as it was again this time. Yeah, I know Ruger only makes 20-rounders; if you want more, get a different rifle!)
-=[ Grant ]=-
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