I recently had a chance to order 3 100 round boxes of AAC (@PalmetoStateArmory) 9mm ammunition. Today I shot 293 rounds of it as a test.
The test pieces,
two glock nines.
Attached FileA 19.5 and a 19.5MOS with RMR. Between the two I've shot approximately 6k rounds, with the MOS getting about 2/3 of that. Both guns started out clean, though the MOS has been carried every day, sweated on, exposed to body powder, stored in a hot truck, etc, for a week since last cleaning. All mags are standard capacity factory Glock brand, a mix of 19 and 17, Gen 5 and Gen 2-4.
First, does the ammo group? I shot groups with the MOS offhand from 10 yards. Middle group was first shots fired and serves two purposes. 1) I was checking zero after having to reinstall the plate and RMR because vibratite sucks. That is so close to RTZ that I didn't bother adjusting it again. (C&H Precision has
gained a customer.) 2)
Comparison. The middle group was shot with Norma Range/Training 115 gr. FMJ. That has been my preferred ammunition since I first tried it a few months ago.
Attached File*The 2 shots with an asterisk were both called "miss, 6 o'clock" before I even saw where they hit. What this means is that if I'd been shooting a plate rack, I would have sent a makeup shot without waiting for any kind of feedback from the steel. These are caused by my failure to manage the Glock trigger properly, is 100% me, and yes, that is very annoying. Every other shot fired was called dead nuts.
Second, does the ammo run? The rest of the shooting (272 rounds) was evenly split between the two guns. I ran lots of drills, got the guns hot enough that I couldn't handle either of them for a few minutes with ~100 rounds left. Drills included Bill drills, one handed shooting (including weak hand), moving and shooting, etc. USPSA fundamental stuff that I need to work on. Just as test I fired full mags from both guns limp as I could shoot safely. Held the grip with middle finger and thumb only, and left my wrist as lazy as a San Francisco handshake.
There were no malfunctions of any kind at any time throughout the range session.Before I get to my one negative comment (and there is a singular negative comment) I'm going to skip to my conclusion:
AAC has gained a customer.My stack of 9mm practice/match ammo will get backfilled with AAC from now on (unless I run into a problem). It will be all I shoot by the end of the year for practice and matches.
Now, my one negative comment. You probably noticed that I only fired 293 rounds in this review. This is because PSA/AAC's current pack and ship SOPs for this ammo are incompatible with UPS' current material handling practices. I received from UPS a trashbag with a bunch of cardboard that at some point I'm sure had been a shipping box, filling, and 3 100 round cartridge boxes, along with 293 loose rounds. I'm sure the guy who sweeps the floor at the UPS hub appreciates the 7 loosies he found in his dust pan. I would recommend AAC adopt the packaging practice currently used by Norma (and Geco, and ZQI) for 50 round boxes and offer 1k bulk packs in the same type of box/bag as the CCI ammo PSA sells sometimes. The bulk tubs Ammo Inc. uses are also serviceable in my experience.