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Posted: 5/24/2012 6:41:43 AM EDT
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Looking for a range toy for mag dump fun.
Anyone try the surefire mags yet? They look a little ridiculous, but they cost less than the alternative. Found a place with them in stock for $143 (with free overnight shipping). Surefire 100? Beta? Korean Beta Clone? |
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I've seen the surefires hang up at the last machinegun shoot I was at. Wasn't impressed. I'm fighting excessive wear issues on my Beta, 10~15 cycles into it, the feed tower is so worn, the rounds won't feed right anymore. Betaco warranties it, but you have to send it in. Mine's been back twice. I simply refuse to do that, so I've epoxied a Stainless insert in there. Not sure about the korean ones, or the 150 round ones. They seem pricey...
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| I'd stick with the surefire 60 or the beta. Beta has had less issues that I have seen, I've seen a couple of surefires hang up. But the two I've got run fine. I don't know if mine are better because they were really early models, or what. You can also get surefires for a good bit less then $143, there is a couple of guys selling them for around $90. |
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A surefire buddy of mine hooked me up with a free 60rd one. I've only shot old silver bear crap out of it..... Doesn't feed right sometimes on full auto or bump fire, the followers are jamed and require a good smack to the bottom to wiggle it loose.
I have not tried it with good brass ammo though, the 60rd is a nice edition for the AR at the range. |
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Has anyone tried the Armatac 150 rnd. polymer drum? It costs a bit more than the Beta but appears to be more reliable. It's gotta be heavy fully loaded, though, and I wonder if the mag catch would suffer with extended use. I bought one last year and one time it ran all 150 rounds and I caught it on video. It is posted on tinypic.com and not youtube so you have to click the link to view the video. ARMATAC 150 round dump The drum didn't like my 62gr SS109 reloads because the OAL of them were near max length for .223. So pretty much 55gr are good to go. If you take it apart it can be a major bitch getting the follower strings to line up correctly, more difficult than the beta mags. But it hasn't functioned 100% for me, so I don't always take it to the range. The only thing that has been flawless are 30 round P-Mags, when I start to shoot anything over 30 rounds in a mag I always have issues so I'm going to wonder if the SF100 will work when I go out to shoot in a few weeks. |
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Has anyone tried the Armatac 150 rnd. polymer drum? It costs a bit more than the Beta but appears to be more reliable. It's gotta be heavy fully loaded, though, and I wonder if the mag catch would suffer with extended use. I bought one last year and one time it ran all 150 rounds and I caught it on video. It is posted on tinypic.com and not youtube so you have to click the link to view the video. ARMATAC 150 round dump The drum didn't like my 62gr SS109 reloads because the OAL of them were near max length for .223. So pretty much 55gr are good to go. If you take it apart it can be a major bitch getting the follower strings to line up correctly, more difficult than the beta mags. But it hasn't functioned 100% for me, so I don't always take it to the range. The only thing that has been flawless are 30 round P-Mags, when I start to shoot anything over 30 rounds in a mag I always have issues so I'm going to wonder if the SF100 will work when I go out to shoot in a few weeks. Huh. So you've had issues with the Armatac? I've looked at them before, but I have beta mags that run fine for me, as well as a couple of the first run of sure fire 60's that run well. I guess if I want a longer string of fire, I'll get a beltfed. |
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Huh. So you've had issues with the Armatac? I've looked at them before, but I have beta mags that run fine for me, as well as a couple of the first run of sure fire 60's that run well. I guess if I want a longer string of fire, I'll get a beltfed. Yeah but I have had issues with the korean beta mag (it never worked for me), I even had issues with the C-Products 40 round mags. I think it might be my PAWS OA M16 mag well, I had issues with the early versions of P-mags not fitting with out altering them first. I bet I will have issues with the SF100 mag too, that's just my luck. So, I wouldn't knock ARMATAC drum at all, just stick with brass 55gr ammo and it will probably run. So you can spend about $350 for one of their drums to get up to 150 rounds or $5k+ so you can have linked ammo 
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Darren at LWRC told me a while ago that he had a pre-production example of the original $1000 Armatac drum for T&E that ran like a Swiss watch but I hadn't heard of anyone's experiences with the newer polymer version. I'd love to have a beltfed upper but it's going to be hard to justify the cost so I expect I'll try one of these once my gun is released from purgatory.
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Huh. So you've had issues with the Armatac? I've looked at them before, but I have beta mags that run fine for me, as well as a couple of the first run of sure fire 60's that run well. I guess if I want a longer string of fire, I'll get a beltfed. Yeah but I have had issues with the korean beta mag (it never worked for me), I even had issues with the C-Products 40 round mags. I think it might be my PAWS OA M16 mag well, I had issues with the early versions of P-mags not fitting with out altering them first. I bet I will have issues with the SF100 mag too, that's just my luck. So, I wouldn't knock ARMATAC drum at all, just stick with brass 55gr ammo and it will probably run. So you can spend about $350 for one of their drums to get up to 150 rounds or $5k+ so you can have linked ammo
I'd rather the linked. 
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I have a Korean Beta Mag Clone and it worked great the one time I loaded it up and tried it out. I've got four Betas now but have never gotten around to trying them ... I do have good luck with the pre-'94 PMI 40-rounders: The five I have still run 100% on FA, and they cost a whole lot less than either Betas or the Surefire 60's. 
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I have a Korean Beta Mag Clone and it worked great the one time I loaded it up and tried it out. I've got four Betas now but have never gotten around to trying them ... I do have good luck with the pre-'94 PMI 40-rounders: The five I have still run 100% on FA, and they cost a whole lot less than either Betas or the Surefire 60's.
I have a bunch of those pre-ban PMI mags as well. I have probably a dozen-ish PMI 40s NIW I have never shot and two the have been regular range mags for the better part of 10 years and they never flinch and have hardly ever been cleaned. Have a couple of the C Product 40rds that work well also and a couple Betas that i would say are decent but not 100% reliable but I dont run them all that much because they are a pain in the ass to load. The most reliable beta I have is a ban-era MP5 beta mag I bought from Gemtech a couple days after the ban expired in 04. That one beta is about as close to 100% out of the ones I own. |
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I have a Korean Beta Mag Clone and it worked great the one time I loaded it up and tried it out. I've got four Betas now but have never gotten around to trying them ... I do have good luck with the pre-'94 PMI 40-rounders: The five I have still run 100% on FA, and they cost a whole lot less than either Betas or the Surefire 60's.
I have a bunch of those pre-ban PMI mags as well. I have probably a dozen-ish PMI 40s NIW I have never shot and two the have been regular range mags for the better part of 10 years and they never flinch and have hardly ever been cleaned. Have a couple of the C Product 40rds that work well also and a couple Betas that i would say are decent but not 100% reliable but I dont run them all that much because they are a pain in the ass to load. The most reliable beta I have is a ban-era MP5 beta mag I bought from Gemtech a couple days after the ban expired in 04. That one beta is about as close to 100% out of the ones I own. Have you had that many issues with beta's? I've got a couple, both 5.56 for M16's, as well as 9mm for M16's as well as MP5's. I can't remember ever having a problem with them. Not that I run them every time I go to the range, but I do run them a couple of times a year. |
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I have a Korean Beta Mag Clone and it worked great the one time I loaded it up and tried it out. I've got four Betas now but have never gotten around to trying them ... I do have good luck with the pre-'94 PMI 40-rounders: The five I have still run 100% on FA, and they cost a whole lot less than either Betas or the Surefire 60's.
I have a bunch of those pre-ban PMI mags as well. I have probably a dozen-ish PMI 40s NIW I have never shot and two the have been regular range mags for the better part of 10 years and they never flinch and have hardly ever been cleaned. Have a couple of the C Product 40rds that work well also and a couple Betas that i would say are decent but not 100% reliable but I dont run them all that much because they are a pain in the ass to load. The most reliable beta I have is a ban-era MP5 beta mag I bought from Gemtech a couple days after the ban expired in 04. That one beta is about as close to 100% out of the ones I own. Have you had that many issues with beta's? I've got a couple, both 5.56 for M16's, as well as 9mm for M16's as well as MP5's. I can't remember ever having a problem with them. Not that I run them every time I go to the range, but I do run them a couple of times a year. The main issue is rounds getting hung up when feeding. I honestly attribute it to the crappy plastic feed towers. If Beta Towers were stand-alone-mags they would be pretty bottom of the barrel and as other posters have mentioned they chew up feed towers in 5.56. I always though about taking a nice steel mag like an HK Maritime that runs perfect and making a custom tower out of it. But as you said I mess with them a couple times a years at best so it's not high on my priority list to cut apart a good mag and tig it into a beta feed tower. The worst one is the M16/9 version in my experience. It maybe dumps the whole mag less than 50% of the time. It has the worst amount of drag pushing the rounds up the longest feed tower and all the weight bouncing around hanging out the bottom I speculate wiggles the 9MM mag block around causing rounds to nosedive into the ramp or getting the ejector slightly out of whack. The MP5 mag has a much shorter feed tower and less material to wiggle and twist as well as less friction to overcome and is no way tied into the ejector like the M16/9. Overall they are good for a giggle shooting things that dont shoot back at you but there is no way I would ever stake my life on a beta mag. |
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Ran the 100 round Sure Fire mag today, with 55gr brown bear, both times was flawless with no hang ups.
I let my buddy shoot the ARMATAC 150 round drum with one trigger pull today with no hicups. Anyway the SF had no issues and my 150 round drum ran fine today too. |
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