Thanks for posting this.
I’ve had decent results with Federal Hydra Shok in my very picky Walther PPK/S.
The cartridge designations incorporating "ACP" were obsoleted by SAAMI prior to WWII and replaced with the "AUTO" designations. Where have you and most of the uniformed gun writers been for 75 years?
To paraphrase James Carville, "Its the head stamp, stupid"!
Go to "SAAMI.org" to learn the correct designations of all American cartridges.
It matters not how many examples of other folks that you can find that are also ignorant of proper cartridge designations. And, do not waste your time, or others, by providing a listing of other folks using incorrect cartridge designations. Lots and lots of wrongs never make a right.
It is no more appropriate to use an obsolete cartridge designation than it is to address a married woman by her maiden name.
Gimmicks are gimmicks.
Before mine fell in to a lake the best I used were golden sabers. Hydrashocks jammed in feed. My, now drowned mouseguns, never worked reliably with conical head bullets. Only ball shaped like the sabers.
Regardless of my experience. Spend the money and fire your weapon to learn what works with it. No sense in having the best ammo with a stovepipe to clear.
Mostly, a .380 is best used with the rounds it will feed. Lots of theory is nice, but if you need it, you need it very badly and you can’t afford jams; an FMJ that fires is better than a hollow point that hangs up on your feed ramp.
But, by all means, be sure you get your vocabulary items right; clearly, some people get very, very, very, very tense about that, and we don’t want to appear to be rank amateurs.
Yes, the right word is sometimes elusive for us rank amateurs. I myself have only been shooting for fifty years, and haven’t yet mastered the use of those terms, but... you know... they’re important!
2.5 to 2.8 inches of barrel has no effect on bullet performance.
There is so much difference between handguns that a lot of times a shorter barrel well give higher velocities then the longer barreled one.
Example 5 different 44 mags that I own between 4 and 7.5 in barrels.
Same load 315gr hard cast max load of H110 the fastest velocity is out of the 5.5 inch. The 3 7.5 inch barrels are consistently 30 to 50 fps slower then the 5.5.
3 tenths of and inch barrel wow.
What this shows us is the velocity in this peculiar hand gun and barrel.
But that aside he did take a lot of time and shot a lot of ammo to come up with these results.
I always like looking at shot bullets and see how they perform.
Just that the reason for doing so dubious.
Fantastic...gonna go shoot up my Remington Golden Saber carry ammo.
I shoot the Federal Hydro’s in my compact 9 and this is my carry load. The cost of these makes it hard to put many down range at the club. I do always finish with a couple of mags after popping a couple of boxes of much cheaper rounds as I believe it’s a good idea to practice with what you carry but, factoring in price, range time would be a lot less if I just shot hydro’s.
The article was great but the author needed to add cost to his analysis.
Excellent post and very helpful - THANKS!
Good work Servo. I appreciate the effort you put into your research. It’s good to know these things so you can have confidence in your handgun and ammunition.