aray
09-22-2011, 12:42 AM
We’ve all read countless reviews of what is the best self defense ammunition that cover: muzzle velocity, delivered impact energy, expansion, weight retention, shooting through denim, ballistic gel and water jug videos, etc. No way I’m going to tread that well trod ground – the many excellent reports are available for all to peruse.
However, completely for my own purposes, I recently conducted tests on characteristics of ammunition that in addition to the above are also important to me. Those characteristics are:
#1 Felt Recoil. In a life or death situation both control and speed are important. Too much recoil and I’ll spend too much time reacquiring my front sight and placing it on the target. By far this is the most important criteria for me.
#2 Muzzle Flash. I might need to shoot in a darkened room at an acquired identified target. I don’t want to be blinded by the muzzle flash; that would hamper my ability to quickly reacquire my front sight, just like above.
#3 Sound Volume. Self defense situations will not occur at the range where I get to put on earplugs & hearing protectors first. Instead it might be in a small enclosed room like in my house. I’d love to be able to survive the gunfight with some level of hearing undamaged.
I didn’t try to test every possible ammunition – no way I could do that. I just ran through what I had available to me at the time, so I’m not claiming this is a comprehensive comparison. All testing was done at the same time (I alternated loads in the same magazine) and through my Kahr CW9. With a couple of exceptions I avoided +P loads and stuck with standard pressure loads since I’ve already determined that, for me, +P loads slow down my cycle times between firing and reacquiring the front sight again. I also tried to stick with 124 gr. as best I could. The 9mm ammo I tested is below:
* Federal Hydra-Shok 124 gr. P9HS1.
* Federal HST 124 gr. P9HST1.
* Gold Dot (standard barrel) 124 gr. 23618.
* Gold Dot Short Barrel +P 124 gr. 23611.
* PMC Gold Starfire 124 gr. SFHP 9SFB.
* Corbon Pow’R Ball +P 100 gr. PB09100.
* Winchester Ranger SXT 147 gr. RA9SXT.
* Control: Winchester FMJ ball 115 gr. This is the inexpensive target practice ammo available at Wal-Mart in the white box and is of course not SD ammo. It was used as a control at the low end.
Results:
Without going through each and every load 3x let me just summarize the results and some of my interesting observations:
* The Gold Dot Short Barrel rounds had significantly more felt recoil than the Gold Dot normal rounds. No doubt this is because in order to compensate for the short barrels like you typically find on CCW weapons, they increased the pressure so that the bullet will leave with as much velocity and energy as possible before it reaches the end of the barrel. It shows. Likewise the sound volume on the Short Barrel round was louder than the standard round. The muzzle flash, however, for both varieties was less than any of the other brands. If you’ve seen the high speed photos others have taken, rather than a real flash it was more of those little squiggly embers that shoot out.
* I was surprised to see that the Federal Hydra-Shok had a larger felt recoil, larger flash, and a louder bang than the Federal HST. Given that the HST is the more modern round and carried by several law enforcement agencies, I just figured they’d pack more punch in on each round. That didn’t seem to be the case. In every aspect I thought the HST was a better choice than the Hydra-Shok from an ergonomic perspective.
* Starfire – This was a nice round from a felt recoil perspective – less than many of the other brands. It did have a pretty large muzzle flash however.
* Pow’R Ball – I didn’t like this round mostly because it had the largest felt recoil of all of the rounds I fired. Muzzle flash was in the middle of the pack, but in its favor it had less volume on the bang than many of the other brands.
* Winchester Ranger SXT – This was probably the surprise of the lot. It had among the lowest felt recoils of all of the SD brands I tested. Nothing about the flash or bang was out of the mainstream of the other brands. I know it is the logical descendant of the famous Black Talons and is used by LEO today so it seems like a good choice. (FYI I still have many boxes of Black Talons squirreled away before they were taken off the market. I shot some off last year just to see if they were still good, they were, but I didn’t include them in these tests.) One other note: it was the only 147 gr. round I included in my testing. I tried to stick with just 124 as much as possible for consistency sake but this round only comes in 147. Dunno if that had anything to do with what I felt/saw/heard or not.
Conclusions:
For now I’m going to go with the Winchester Ranger SXT. They’re loaded in my CW9 as I type this. I plan on ordering a couple more boxes and load them in my Beretta 92s sitting around the house as well.
Second tier - I’d feel good carrying the Federal HST, and PMC Starfire as my alternate choices. Third tier for me would be Federal Hydra-Shok and/or Gold Dot standard. All of these are excellent rounds and I’d be comfortable with any one of them.
The only ones I’d really stay away from would be the Gold Dot Short Barrel and the Corbon Pow’R Ball. For me the felt recoil was just way too high, decreasing both my control and my speed. Not surprisingly, these were the only +P pressure loads in my testing.
Your mileage may vary, but I thought my review on ergonomics, seldom discussed in ammunition range reports, might be an interesting and new perspective.
However, completely for my own purposes, I recently conducted tests on characteristics of ammunition that in addition to the above are also important to me. Those characteristics are:
#1 Felt Recoil. In a life or death situation both control and speed are important. Too much recoil and I’ll spend too much time reacquiring my front sight and placing it on the target. By far this is the most important criteria for me.
#2 Muzzle Flash. I might need to shoot in a darkened room at an acquired identified target. I don’t want to be blinded by the muzzle flash; that would hamper my ability to quickly reacquire my front sight, just like above.
#3 Sound Volume. Self defense situations will not occur at the range where I get to put on earplugs & hearing protectors first. Instead it might be in a small enclosed room like in my house. I’d love to be able to survive the gunfight with some level of hearing undamaged.
I didn’t try to test every possible ammunition – no way I could do that. I just ran through what I had available to me at the time, so I’m not claiming this is a comprehensive comparison. All testing was done at the same time (I alternated loads in the same magazine) and through my Kahr CW9. With a couple of exceptions I avoided +P loads and stuck with standard pressure loads since I’ve already determined that, for me, +P loads slow down my cycle times between firing and reacquiring the front sight again. I also tried to stick with 124 gr. as best I could. The 9mm ammo I tested is below:
* Federal Hydra-Shok 124 gr. P9HS1.
* Federal HST 124 gr. P9HST1.
* Gold Dot (standard barrel) 124 gr. 23618.
* Gold Dot Short Barrel +P 124 gr. 23611.
* PMC Gold Starfire 124 gr. SFHP 9SFB.
* Corbon Pow’R Ball +P 100 gr. PB09100.
* Winchester Ranger SXT 147 gr. RA9SXT.
* Control: Winchester FMJ ball 115 gr. This is the inexpensive target practice ammo available at Wal-Mart in the white box and is of course not SD ammo. It was used as a control at the low end.
Results:
Without going through each and every load 3x let me just summarize the results and some of my interesting observations:
* The Gold Dot Short Barrel rounds had significantly more felt recoil than the Gold Dot normal rounds. No doubt this is because in order to compensate for the short barrels like you typically find on CCW weapons, they increased the pressure so that the bullet will leave with as much velocity and energy as possible before it reaches the end of the barrel. It shows. Likewise the sound volume on the Short Barrel round was louder than the standard round. The muzzle flash, however, for both varieties was less than any of the other brands. If you’ve seen the high speed photos others have taken, rather than a real flash it was more of those little squiggly embers that shoot out.
* I was surprised to see that the Federal Hydra-Shok had a larger felt recoil, larger flash, and a louder bang than the Federal HST. Given that the HST is the more modern round and carried by several law enforcement agencies, I just figured they’d pack more punch in on each round. That didn’t seem to be the case. In every aspect I thought the HST was a better choice than the Hydra-Shok from an ergonomic perspective.
* Starfire – This was a nice round from a felt recoil perspective – less than many of the other brands. It did have a pretty large muzzle flash however.
* Pow’R Ball – I didn’t like this round mostly because it had the largest felt recoil of all of the rounds I fired. Muzzle flash was in the middle of the pack, but in its favor it had less volume on the bang than many of the other brands.
* Winchester Ranger SXT – This was probably the surprise of the lot. It had among the lowest felt recoils of all of the SD brands I tested. Nothing about the flash or bang was out of the mainstream of the other brands. I know it is the logical descendant of the famous Black Talons and is used by LEO today so it seems like a good choice. (FYI I still have many boxes of Black Talons squirreled away before they were taken off the market. I shot some off last year just to see if they were still good, they were, but I didn’t include them in these tests.) One other note: it was the only 147 gr. round I included in my testing. I tried to stick with just 124 as much as possible for consistency sake but this round only comes in 147. Dunno if that had anything to do with what I felt/saw/heard or not.
Conclusions:
For now I’m going to go with the Winchester Ranger SXT. They’re loaded in my CW9 as I type this. I plan on ordering a couple more boxes and load them in my Beretta 92s sitting around the house as well.
Second tier - I’d feel good carrying the Federal HST, and PMC Starfire as my alternate choices. Third tier for me would be Federal Hydra-Shok and/or Gold Dot standard. All of these are excellent rounds and I’d be comfortable with any one of them.
The only ones I’d really stay away from would be the Gold Dot Short Barrel and the Corbon Pow’R Ball. For me the felt recoil was just way too high, decreasing both my control and my speed. Not surprisingly, these were the only +P pressure loads in my testing.
Your mileage may vary, but I thought my review on ergonomics, seldom discussed in ammunition range reports, might be an interesting and new perspective.