Friday, December 23, 2016

Stoppage!

Headed over to Indy Arms Co. on Thursday morning with the Gen4 19 and a hundred rounds of ammo: fifty rounds of the Winchester 124gr Q4318 "NATO" ammo loaded in the two ETS magazines and fifty rounds of Wolf Polyformance in the Magpul 15-rounder and a few factory G19 magazines.

Even this far into the the test, I have to really lean on my mechanical thumb to get that 15th round of Wolf Polyformance into the factory Glock mags, much more so than with regular brass-cased ammo.

The 30-round ETS magazine experienced its first failure yesterday. Round #18 in the mag nosedived at the top of the tube. This was the 288th round through this magazine.

Incidentally, this was a malfunction that would not have been cleared with a "tap-rack-bang". Repeated racking of the slide didn't dislodge the round from its nose-down position. Spare magazines for a pistol are as much for use in malfunction clearance as they are for reloads, and actually more so in the case of CCW guns. Guns malfunction in defensive shootings a lot more often than they run out of ammo; odd grips and fouled slides create exciting malfunctions in pistols that have never ever choked standing on an indoor range.

We'll note the malfunction in the total and, as usual, leave it to the reader to decide if they want to charge it to the gun or the magazine. I'm just here to give you the data.

Other than that, the range trip was entirely uneventful. I'm kinda happy with the Wolf FMJ in the head box at ten yards; I'm normally not that good with the janky factory sights. I need to put some real sights on this gun.

That makes 846 rounds through the Gen4 19 since it was cleaned or lubricated with one failure-to-fire (#205) and one failure-to-feed (#814). 1,154 rounds to go.
.