dawg180
11-27-2004, 08:13 PM
I picked up one of these and tried it out today- boy, what a disappointment!
To give a quick description, the "banana mag" holds 25 rounds, is made of clear plastic and red plastic feed lips, is a single stack affair and uses a coiled spring inside the right side of the magazine to pull up the follower.
I broke out a brick of American Eagle 38gr copper washed high velocity hollow points and started loading
Immediately when loading I became a bit concerned, as ever couple of rounds it did not seem there was any spring pressure holding the top round in. I would give the mag a light slap and everything would tighten up.
Insertion into the magazine also concerned me. I have a Butler Creek extended mag release, and from what I have been told they should work very well with these mags, as you just "rock them in" like an AK magazine. Well, when I rocked it in I found there were TWO spots where the magazine would like to engage, or to put it more simply, it did not lock in rock solid. i could insert it and it would lock, but light pressure on the mag would rock it in even further and it would engage on something else.
Undeterred, I pulled the charging handle and...failure to feed. The round wedged on the feedramp and no amount of force short of smashing the round would get it in!
I ejected the round and played with the insertion, finally getting it to load a round. After about 5 rounds I had the exact same FTF.
[edited] (To answer the questions of "how did it FTF" the nose of the round would wedge just below the chamber. Possibly a feed geometry problem combined with ammo)
Before I got through half the mag I had another one and gave up, unloading the rounds and inserting them into standard 10 round rotary mags whcih fed just fine.
So what happened? My guess is that the banana mags do not like hollow points, or possibly this particular type of AE ammo. Of course this was the one time I didn't have any other .22 ammo to test, so I wil have to try some other ammo and update. I will say the fact the magazine can shift around is not encouraging, and I plan to reinstall the old mag catch to see if that helps retain the mag better.
In the meantime, I have a ramline 50 rounder on order, and will see how that works. I inspected one earlier today and it looks to have different geometry around the top, so hopefully it will work better.
To give a quick description, the "banana mag" holds 25 rounds, is made of clear plastic and red plastic feed lips, is a single stack affair and uses a coiled spring inside the right side of the magazine to pull up the follower.
I broke out a brick of American Eagle 38gr copper washed high velocity hollow points and started loading
Immediately when loading I became a bit concerned, as ever couple of rounds it did not seem there was any spring pressure holding the top round in. I would give the mag a light slap and everything would tighten up.
Insertion into the magazine also concerned me. I have a Butler Creek extended mag release, and from what I have been told they should work very well with these mags, as you just "rock them in" like an AK magazine. Well, when I rocked it in I found there were TWO spots where the magazine would like to engage, or to put it more simply, it did not lock in rock solid. i could insert it and it would lock, but light pressure on the mag would rock it in even further and it would engage on something else.
Undeterred, I pulled the charging handle and...failure to feed. The round wedged on the feedramp and no amount of force short of smashing the round would get it in!
I ejected the round and played with the insertion, finally getting it to load a round. After about 5 rounds I had the exact same FTF.
[edited] (To answer the questions of "how did it FTF" the nose of the round would wedge just below the chamber. Possibly a feed geometry problem combined with ammo)
Before I got through half the mag I had another one and gave up, unloading the rounds and inserting them into standard 10 round rotary mags whcih fed just fine.
So what happened? My guess is that the banana mags do not like hollow points, or possibly this particular type of AE ammo. Of course this was the one time I didn't have any other .22 ammo to test, so I wil have to try some other ammo and update. I will say the fact the magazine can shift around is not encouraging, and I plan to reinstall the old mag catch to see if that helps retain the mag better.
In the meantime, I have a ramline 50 rounder on order, and will see how that works. I inspected one earlier today and it looks to have different geometry around the top, so hopefully it will work better.