Back in my day… The picture below is of a partial ammunition box that was purchased over 25 years ago. I was in college and I was working a part time job for beer and ammo money. I read the magazines and they said that you have to find what brand is the most accurate and reliable for your own equipment.

If you read my post yesterday, then you would know the weather has been pretty crappy lately. When I set my plans, I was going to go to the outdoor range to do other things. But, we also have an indoor range that almost nobody uses. The primary use is the target leagues which meet on weeknights. It has heat and light which sounds pretty good on a windy and snowy day.

I suspect that it would get more use if it wasn’t restricted to 22LR (or air rifle) and under 150 ft/lbs of energy. Apparently, the backstop has a limit of 150 ft/lbs. If you know what that means, then good on you. The only way I really know is to actually measure and calculate the energy.

I thought that I would measure some velocities out of a little pistol that I like to carry around. I also thought that I would like to compare the pistol to a rifle and check its capability to the cartridges potential and so that is what I did (for the most part). Along the way, I learned a bunch more things as well. The first thing I learned was that it had been almost five months since I had been to the range. When I was looking at the data, my last entry was in October. That is too long.

During the Obama years and one of the recent and lengthy ammunition droughts, for some reason premium 22LR ammunition was still on the shelf. I suspect that being 10X the cost of bulk had something to do with it. But, that led me to do extensive reliability testing for my pistol with all different brands of ammunition. I settled on two that I liked CCI Stinger and Aguila Interceptor.

Despite firing and cycling reliably, I didn’t really have a standard for performance. I wanted to measure velocity and calculate energy. I thought that instead of freezing my butt off, I would do some scientific work. Unfortunately, the Stinger caused too much flame to reliably measure on my chronograph. But, through a 16″ rifle barrel, it generated 186 ft/lbs of energy. Too much for this range. I didn’t know that and I never would have if I didn’t calculate it.

I don’t think the Stinger would be a problem out of the 3″ barrel because in my next test I compared Remington Thunderbolt. In that case, I got 152 ft/lbs out of the rifle and 37 ft/lbs out of the pistol. I was hoping that maybe I could build an offset with several other brands and apply it to the Stinger. But I was running a little short on time.

The other test I did was with subsonic ammunition using the Aguila Colibri. What I found interesting with that is that my pellet rifle actually generates more energy. It is definitely quiet and I bought this ammunition before I owned my Crossman Optimus. My thought being that I could reload much quicker that pumping eight times for a follow-up shot with the Crossman Legacy. But, the Colibri didn’t cycle the action in a semi-automatic. It is weaker than an air rifle and I haven’t seen it on the shelf in years. The data says, use an air rifle but it was good to know.

The last thing I learned was revisiting my first test years ago. I want to say that in my head my pistol reliability was just as reliable as a rifle, meaning most of the variability was with the ammo itself. I have to say that pistol did not prove as reliable as I liked. Not only were there more failure to fire in the pistol. But I saw a trigger reset problem that occurred about 10% of the time.

I took everything apart and cleaned it when I got home. I saw no visible or obvious reason for the trigger problem. But, a cleaning more than once every couple of years can’t hurt. I do plan to do more of this so this is something to keep an eye on. Right now, I have to consider that pistol’s reliability suspect.

End Your Programming Routine: I found a new load that I want to test. It is the Federal Punch. This is a specifically designed self-defense, 22LR load. What I thought to be true, may not be exactly so. But, this is why I try to do the most scientific and realistic testing that I can. Truth can only be decided with real data, the rest is just anecdotal.