feeding issues L1A1

[Brian Dick]

I'd guess he is from Newcastle Peter but he's now displaced to the Peoples Republic of California. I met him once at a show in Reno and I could tell from his accent that he ain't from around here! What say you Charlie?

[Ex Crab]

I own an L1A1 as issued and it eats anything and everything in 7.62*, however it appears to prefer German military ammo. I know other club members who own either L1A1s or the FAL, none of them have feed problems. Ejection problems can almost always be solved by altering the gas setting. If I remember rightly we were instructed to change the setting by 2 numbers. I leave mine on 5 all the time.

As has already been said, if your SUIT works and doesn't fall off (like mine does) then you really have hit the jackpot.

* means British RG ammo, Prvi Partizan, Lake City, some gash Portuguese stuff, German military ammo plus a selection of reloads.

[tankhunter]

[QUOTE We can still own magazines![/QUOTE]

Yeah, Like Tractor weekly, & Scrap Metal Monthly!.........................

[mrclark303]

I own an L1A1 as issued and it eats anything and everything in 7.62*, however it appears to prefer German military ammo. I know other club members who own either L1A1s or the FAL, none of them have feed problems. Ejection problems can almost always be solved by altering the gas setting. If I remember rightly we were instructed to change the setting by 2 numbers. I leave mine on 5 all the time.

As has already been said, if your SUIT works and doesn't fall off (like mine does) then you really have hit the jackpot.

* means British RG ammo, Prvi Partizan, Lake City, some gash Portuguese stuff, German military ammo plus a selection of reloads.

Our UK spec Straight pulls like different brands, both of mine enjoy a healthy full grain diet of NATO spec GGG, giving great extraction and accurate groups, but Partizan (in fact all thin wall civvy stuff) is terrible in mine, that said ex German surp MEN ammo is also terrible!

Is the MEN stuff thin cased I wonder, I would have thought that all NATO ammo was of a similar spec, or is that not correct??

[Peter Laidler]

I wonder if our resident ammo technical men could comment on the specs of what we call '....NATO standard'. Are you there Bombdoc or Ensci? We were using a varied selection of 7.62mm until recently

[Ex Crab]

Nato Standard is something of a joke in this context. I can't remember which web site it was but I once read through the entire list of Nato 7,62 manufacturers and their ammo specs, which varied quite a bit. The bottom line was that whoever made it, the ammo had to work in all Nato 7,62 rifles. mrclarks303s comment is interesting because the Prvi Partisan that I used is Berdan primed, there is however also Prvi 308 Win which is Boxer primed. Apart from the primer I have no idea what the difference is. Suffice it to say the Berdan stuff works but is a real b1tch to reload. The German DAG ammo is very easy despite being Berdan.
For Peter Laidler, I know where Bombdoc also lurks. I could either ask direct or start a thread and see what happens.

[Peter Laidler]

I'll speak to bombdoc. We were both at XXXX together with Ensci. But the point about NATO standard was always a bit of a myustery......... as was STANAG! Mind you some of the 7.62 stuff we has was dire...... I remember some 762 blank in the early 80's that came in wood boxes with green/white/green lines along the outside (Pakistan? Kenya? at a rip-off trade deal) was so powerful it ejected so hard from the old Brens we were still using, it was churning up the ground and shaking the guns to bits. And that's saying something for a Bren/L4!

[bombdoc]

Hi Folks,

NATO STANAG calls for two symbol markings on small arms ammunition.. The "Cross in circle" mark is the NATO Design mark, meaning that the ammunition design conforms to a STANAG.. 2310 for 7.62x51. This is a pretty general agreement, which is just a conformation to a design standard, with no testing of interoperability..

The "Quadrefoil" mark - a sort of four bladed propeller is the NATO Interoperability mark. Ammunition bearing this mark is supposed to be able to safely fire in guns conforming to the standard.

The amount of variation in ammunition is however difficult to control across a range of propellants and bullet designs. To obtain true ballistic compatibility via NATO STANAG is probably as possible as producing NATO standard tea and coffee - drinkable (with care...) but definitely not the same...

...as with many things in NATO, good in theory, but falls a bit short in practice!

Does this help?

[browningautorifle]

Does this help?

It's exactly what we were asking.

[Peter Laidler]

Thanks for that Bombdoc. Hope you and yours are well. Now a quick question...... How does some of the dire stuff ever get past the Ammo Depots in-inspections to the units? How do you get to know about it and withdraw it - as was the case of the foreign blank we were required to back-load. Word of mouth or from a feed back form (never seen one.....)

Talking of NATO standard tea and coffee, there seems to have been a strictly controlled STANAG at the REME end of the Army. NATO standard was heaped spoon of coffee of whatever strength it came in or size of mug it was going into, two spoons of sugar, regardless of spoon size or size of mug and a slosh of whatever milk was available at the time, regardless of whether it was fresh, tinned/carnation/condensed or squeezed from a tube/sweetened. As for the tea they sloshed up..............