Testing, testing, two, three, four...

Back in October, I intended to do the shooting portions of ECQC with my carry gun, a Glock 19 Gen4. In the first string of fire, I remembered just how much of this course was shot from the Two...

You'll see that Craig has a good mechanical index there, with his elbow up, a locked wrist, and his strong-hand thumb flagged along his pectoral muscle. (Sharp-eyed folks who enlarge the picture will notice the bullet impact, the spent case, and the shadow of the spent case on the target.)

When I do that with my Glock 19 carry gun, the muzzle line is...slightly behind the parts of me that are farthest forward. Now, this is not a safety problem as there is rather a lot of horizontal offset, but still, I had a longer-barreled Glock 17 in my range bag and a couple hundred rounds of muzzle blast over the course of two mornings' worth of shooting...

So I swapped over to my Gen2 17.

Now, that 17 hadn't been cleaned in...I'm not opening my spreadsheet to check, but it may be as much as 3,000 rounds. More importantly, it hadn't been lubed probably since I shot it in that Tom Givens class more than a year ago. So the gun was drier than a popcorn fart and pretty dirty, and I was shooting it in the blowing grit on a range in the high desert, in a one-handed hold that I don't practice near as much as I should...

On top of it, I blew off shipping ammunition out to New Mexico, and so the night before class, we hit a seedy gun shop in Albuquerque and I picked up a few hundred rounds: A couple boxes of Estate brand 9mm 115gr FMJ and the balance in Independence 115gr FMJ. I had no idea that, in addition to lousy shotgun ammo, Estate also loaded awful pistol ammo, but they do.

So...combine the gun being drier than a popcorn fart, uncleaned for almost 3000 rounds, blowing New Mexico grit, weaksauce 115gr range ammo, and all that shooting from Two, and I had probably nine or ten FTFs in only 275 rounds.

I held some of the Estate and Independence out from the class to do chrono testing when I got home and, in addition, the Atomic Nerds sent along ten rounds of the 9x19mm Georgia Arms "Canned Heat" remanufactured ammo they'd been shooting, just out of curiosity.

Tuesday morning I took this motley assortment of ammo, along with fifty rounds of Federal Premium 124gr +P HST and a hundred and fifty rounds of Winchester 124gr "NATO" FMJ, down to Marion County Fish & Game to do some chrono testing.

At ten til eleven on a Tuesday, I had the entire facility to myself.

Here are the numbers:

Estate 115gr FMJ
LO: 1148
HI: 1189
AV: 1174
ES: 40.75
SD: 14.38

On the weak side for 115gr FMJ, but so is most cheap plinking ammo these days...

Independence 115gr FMJ
LO: 1127
HI: 1172
AV: 1158
ES: 45.01
SD: 14.14

I would have sworn on a stack of bibles that the Independence had more ass behind it than the Estate, but there you go. Both are still pretty marginal. Now let's look at the remaufactured Georgia Arms stuff...

Georgia Arms 115gr FMJ
LO: 1174
HI: 1237
AV: 1215
ES: 62.94
SD: 17.52

Definitely hotter, but more erratic than either of the factory new loads. Incidentally, with the rounds sitting nose-down in the "egg carton" cartridge tray in the box, you could tell that bullet seating depth was pretty variable.

And the factory new stuff I had along for the test? Well, the Winchester Q4318 performed like it usually does.

Winchester 124gr FMJ "NATO"
LO: 1135
HI: 1198
AV: 1178
ES: 63.27
SD: 20.73

Even more erratic in velocity than the Georgia Arms reloads. I wish I were surprised.

Finally the Federal Premium 124gr +P HST hollowpoints...

LO: 1213
HI: 1253
AV: 1227
ES: 40.60
SD: 13.67

Had to snug the left grip screw down. It hasn't loosened since.

There were no malfunctions of any type to report.

This makes 830 rounds since the weapon was last cleaned or lubed with no malfunctions of any type. 1170 rounds to go.
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