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The Original Article can be Found at Ammo-Land
Finally got out to the back 40 to Test out Freedom Munitions .223 60gr VMAX Load.
The 60gr VMAX Load is a Polymer Ballistic Tip Round that comes screaming out of the barrel at 2975 fps with a muzzle energy of around 1229 ft. lbs. At 100 yds the FPS drops to around 2698 with a muzzle energy of around 970 ft lbs.
A fun fact for you: This is the preferred round for the Vertex Helicopter Feral Hog Eradication/Control Program. The round is flat shooting and hard hitting!
The Weapon I was using was a Bushmaster XM-15 10.5″ Barrel Enhanced Patrolman’s AR Pistol. It has quite a few mods, but the sights are Magpul MBUS’ and a Truglo Red Dot.
I started out from a bench rest position at 100 yds with a “Dirty Bird” target just to see where I was at. As you can see with this three round group, 1 MOA is not a problem.
Covering those holes up with markers, I then tried some offhand standing shooting at 100 yds, as expected the group opened up, but not much! With this 5 shot group, I averaged just a hair over 1.5 MOA.
Covering those holes up, I did a “quick-up” Contact Drill. This is where I start with the weapon at low ready and then as quickly as possible, mount the gun and engage. I always do this drill with no set number of rounds, but typically never exceed 5. Here I put 4 rounds in a “zipper” pattern, with the first 2 almost touching and the other two in a nice vertical string. The ideal is to “Zip” the target starting at the sternum and working up, putting as many rounds in the vitals as you can.
Next I moved out to 150 yds and changed targets this is LE Targets DT-ANTQ-A. I like these because of the varied numbered colored shapes (great for Discretionary Command Drills) and the main target has the vital organs outlined. This 5 shot group was shot offhand while doing another “quick-up” Drill. Though the “groupings” seem larger here, you should remember that this is at a further distance and also this was a COMBAT drill, not a Marksmanship Drill! Note almost all the rounds hit a major organ and 3 of them hit the spine.
Covering those holes up I moved on to a “Controlled Pairs” drill at 150 yds. The first two were center punched and I broke protocol and sent three down for the head shot, putting the first two right on top of each other.
The last drill I did was a standing to prone drill at 150 yds. The first round as a head shot with the remaining 3 taken from prone. They averaged 1.5 MOA.
Overall, I had ZERO malfunctions with the ammo. It fed smoothly and ejected cleanly. I would like to take all the credit for the accuracy, but obviously the ammo was superior! Well Done Freedom Muntions and Hornady!
I would not hesitate for a second to use this as a hunting or self-defense round in my AR.
Stay Alert, Stay Armed and Stay Dangerous!
Freedom Munitions recently sent me their .45ACP 230gr Hornady XTP Hollow-Point load to field test for you guys.
Just as a little background, here is a break down of Hornady’s XTP Bullet, to put it bluntly, she is one nasty round and I DO NOT want to get shot with it!
From Freedoms ballistics data page this round leaves the bbl at 890fps with 405 ft lbs. of energy.
I did the test with my trusty Glock 21SF, the Target I used was a Paul Howe CSAT, The Range was 15 yds standing, which might seem a tad far for a pistol, but I wanted a good medium distance just to get some baseline data.
I fired an entire magazine, 13 rounds, for a G21SF. The first cold bore set was to the head, I fired 3 rounds right next to each other right above the square. The following two rounds were a bit spaced, impacting to the left and 3″ below the square. I then moved to center of mass, as my sights settled dead center of the box, my first round went exactly where I was looking and punched it center. The following three shots were rapid and hit below it in a string left to right. The next four shots were errant and spaced, but still within the “kill box”, the first three vertically strung up the left side and then an errant shot to the right. The biggest “gap” between groups was 3″, although in combat pistol shooting I find the ideal of “groupings” and making “smiley faces” asinine, but since this was a field test, I included it 🙂
Overall, I was extremely pleased with the ammo, it fed extremely well. Not one Failure to Fire or Failure to Eject. Had even powder burn on all rounds, and as an added bonus, this ammo is extremely clean; almost no residue in the barrel after a few mags…so much for that “dirty, cheap” stuff, huh!
As this is a Self-Defense Round, I would have liked to do some penetration testing, but I just did not have the equipment at the time. In the future I plan to do some interesting “DIY” Penetration testing with these field test, just to give you guys a rough ideal what this stuff will do to soft (and hard) skinned targets, so stay tuned.
Until Then…
Stay Alert, Stay Armed and Stay Dangerous!
