It’s the Monday before Thanksgiving, and there’s a lot to be thankful for. I’m not sure if it’s been an eventful year because of the pandemic or if it’s been an eventful year despite the pandemic. Either way it’s been a hell of a ride. We appreciate everyone who’s stuck with us.
I cannot remember if I mentioned the news about the 2021 SHOT Show being cancelled. It happened around the time we were moving, and getting settled in. So many of the big announcements that were likely being saved for the SHOT Show are being trickled out now. (This actually has been the industry norm for sometime, but more so now that SHOT is not happening)
Vihtavuori has release the N550 power. This is an addition to their N series of powders which are double based rifle powders. They cover the full burn rate from fast burning rifle powers and slow burning magnum powders. I personally am a fan of N570 in 338 Lapua as it is one of the few powders I can hit 2700fps with 300gr pill and a 24in barrel. However N570 is difficult to meter with traditional powder throwers, N565 is suppose to be and improvement but I have not tried it yet. You can find more information on their N500 series of powders here.
There continues to be waves made about True Velocity’s ammunition. Last years SHOT Show had the announcement that they were teaming up with Sierra Bullets to offer a line of polymer cased ammunition for the commercial market. These cases are a bit unique as they have a steel case head, with a polymer case molded around the head. The more current news is they are joining SAAMI as a voting member, and they are working with both Australian and the US Military. All of this was reported by The Firearms Blog.
Having True Velocity as a member of SAAMI is likely a very good thing for the industry. Since SAAMI establishes voluntary guidelines that the majority of US Manufactures adhere to, we are likely to see some new SAAMI guidelines on the manufacture and testing of polymer cases. The big benefit to polymer cases over brass is the weight and the reduced cost. It might not seem a big deal to hunters, but to soldiers on the ground, a load out of 200+ rounds weighs a fair amount. Reducing that by 60%+ is potentially a big deal and could allow a solider to carry more ammunition, or maintain the same load out, and cover ground faster with less fatigue.
A year ago (I know it was an eternity ago) Sig Sauer was promoting their new 3 part case design in the 277 Fury, which boasts a service pressure of 80kpsi and uses a combination of steel and brass to lighten the ammunition while boosting performance. True Velocity is promoting their 6.8TVCM for military contracts and it seems they are trying to compete somewhat with the Sig 277 Fury, as this has been their statement to multiple publications.
True Velocity’s ammunition – and particularly our 6.8 TVCM cartridge – are changing the paradigm,” Tedford said. “It turns out you don’t have to operate at unsafe chamber pressures in order to generate increased velocity, enhanced terminal performance and improved accuracy. Our cartridge achieves all of these things, while maintaining safe operating pressures and drastically reducing the overall cartridge weight.”
True Velocity President Chris Tedford
Personally I still see some limitations of polymer case ammunition, which will not be foreign to anyone who is familiar with firearms design and their workings. For one, the spent cartridge case acts as a heat sink and by ejecting the case you are ejecting a lot of latent heat that would otherwise be soaked up by the chamber. This is one of the design failures of most caseless ammunition. Plastic is not a particularly good conductor of heat, so what mechanism will be that heat sink and allow for sustained fire without over heating the barrel? Is the steel case head a sufficient heat sink? The second problem I have is the melting point of most polymers is well within operational temps of many automatics. What does this ammunition do when it is left in a hot chamber at the end of a firefight? None of these issues are groundbreaking revelations, I’m just curious as to the solution.
It is still something to see if polymer cased ammunition is accepted in the commercial market. I for one have preference for ammunition that I can reload. I will pay a little extra to buy Boxer primed ammunition over Berdan primed ammunition, unless I’m tight on cash, and low on reloads, it would be hard for me to justify purchasing poly cased ammo. Further more a lot of people see polymerization of many items lessens the quality of that item. It took time before polymer framed firearms became the mainstay of the firearms world, and people still dog on the introduction of polymer framed variations of their metallic counterparts. I suspect a good deal of the market may be like that until the it is adopted in some form or fashion by the US Military. Like it or not, when it comes to trends in firearms the success or failure in US Military trials has a big weigh in on whether or not a new idea gains steam or falters.
Bringing this back home to updates on projects. We are 95% of the way there on conducting our first test flight. We received the spare batteries and props from Flite Test today. I am waiting on an airspeed sensor. The original one I ordered, I couldn’t get to work with the Pixhawk Cube flight controller. I’m still not sure why, but I ordered another one from a different company so we will see. Should arrive this week, maybe next if USPS is as slow as it was on this last package.
The construction of the thing has been a small lesson on trying to get lots of different components to talk and work together. It has been a bit of a challenge and it has been fun. We’ll have a write up detailing some of these challenges and also what our solutions were. We will also include the results of the first few flights, or first flight if we crash. We still have to add in the airspeed sensor and perform some final calibrations prior to that. Exciting times.
That is all for this week. As always if you are looking to get in touch, best way is to send me an email jay@theballisticassistant.com. You may check us out on Parler, Facebook, Instagram, and I am also on MeWe, but I have not done much with it yet. If you’d like to submit a load to our load database the instructions are here. I may be updating this form in the future to streamline the submission, for now continue to use the spreadsheet.
Thanks for Subscribing and Stay Safe Out There!
The Ballistic Assistant