Archer Manufacturing Patrol Rifle

[Bill Blowers]

Well no matter what I try the gun will not run Force on Force brand marking cartridges. It's really frustrating too since sometimes it will eat a whole magazine and then other times it will clog the barrel in the first few shots. This is dry, wet, clean or dirty. Really goddamn weird.

The guys at Archer are on it and are trying to get a FoF bolt and cartridges to do some testing. It might just be something with this gun, or maybe just FoF cartridges in their rifling. To be fair, we have 28 FoF bolts for the team and none of the guns have problems. The bolt I'm using works fine in my normal duty upper.

I was able to shoot those 60 UTM rounds without a stoppage while at DARC. But projectile construction of the two rounds is completely different and UTM seems to be faster. It really seems like it's just not enough juice to push the FoF rounds out of the tube. Weird shit.

 

[Bill Blowers]

Well it sure doesn't mind the real stuff. 360 more rounds today, got it hot with Vis laser half&half drills and 1-5's. Most of those rounds were suppressed. 2855 total rounds fired, Zero weapon related malfunctions.

Dirty, dirty girl.

 

[Chris Taylor]

We're looking into the FoF issues, but FoF is not wanting to help with the endeavor.

 

[Bill Blowers]

Well I was supposed to be shooting some groups at 100 yards today. My intent was to shoot several groups with different ammo out of the Archer, then shoot groups out of my current 16" DM gun as a gauge since I know that gun can shoot 1" groups at 100.

Got to the range, opened the DM gun bag and discovered a shotgun in there. Grabbed the wrong fucking bag. Alright, not insurmountable, but no check gun. I brought an old Leupold 3-9X to throw on the Archer, but stripped out the rear screw on the mount when I put it on. Goddammit.....

So fuck it, I'll just shoot it with the T2 and my Samson 3.5X magnifier. Except I forgot the ammo can with different types of 5.56. I'm going back Wednesday.

Anyway, fired another 50 rounds of Q3131 and a handful of my duty rounds that were in the door pocket. Those rounds were loaded and then set aside as training. Only had four. I'm such a dumbass, but the group was 1".

Total round count is now 2905 with no malfunctions. Except brain malfunctions which are not the guns fault.

 

[Bill Blowers]

In the words of Tupac, "the mothuhfuckin' saga continues". After the previous range debacle I went digging for a decent scope. I went rooting around and found an old Leupold 10X that was in the range. I recall one of our snipers using it awhile back, but alas, no rings. So I dug around and found some rings, unknown make/model. Mounted it up and felt like a sniper, which I am not.

Went to the range and started shooting. Spun dials and shit until I was on paper, I wasn't trying to zero it, just get it close and then do my best to shoot tight groups to measure. Problem is, I couldn't shoot tight groups. I'm like, what the fuck? Shooting decent quality ammo of different weights.

I was shooting the same size groups with T2/magnifier as I was with 10X. Which doesn't make sense to me so I think there may be a reason the scope was pulled from service OR I over torqued the scope rings OR the rings are just junk. Any of those things could be possible. I printed roughly 2" groups with both setups but really feel like the gun is capable of more with a better scope and maybe a better shooter.


I will be going again, with a known good quality 14X and bringing a guy that I know can get down on the precision shooting as a check measure. I am nut unhappy with a 2 MOA gun in a 14.5" patrol rifle! I do think I can compress that group consistently since I was able to shoot a 1" group above this post. Sun was in my eyes.....

Round count is now 3060, no malfunctions.

 

[Bill Blowers]

Team training day yesterday, worked some team standard drills under nods. This is time consuming since we collect a lot of data and throw it on a spreadsheet in the team training drive so guys can track their performance. I wanted the NVG data to,compare against full light and flashlight times. As a result, not a lot of rounds fired during the day.

This little guy popped up during the day.


Nothing to do with the gun test but my rifle reloads blow ass under NVG. Another 327 rounds fired during the course of the day, round count is now 3387 with zero gun related malfunctions.

 

[Bill Blowers]

My buddy loaned me a known quantity 14X scope that was already in a Larue QD mount. I verified level and torqued to specification. I am happy to say the Archer gun is a consistent MOA gun. I was shooting the 62 grain Federal Tactical Bonded pictured above. Best group of the day was under .75, squares are 1/2".

Ended up shooting another 200 rounds through it putting head shots on steel at 200 yards. Total round count is 3587 with zero gun related stoppages.

 

[Bill Blowers]

300 more rounds on it, 150 suppressed and 150 without the can. I had a fail to feed around 244-245 rounds, the gun was dry as hell so I added some sauce and did not have any other issues. Total round count is 3887 with no gun related malfunctions.

 

[Chris Taylor]

At this rate, you may pass the 5k mark.

Thanks Bill. Excellent as always.

 

[Bill Blowers]

Another 460 rounds yesterday, all suppressed. I got a fail to feed and found another torn case in there. The gun is boringly reliable. Total round count is now 4347.

 

[krax]

How's the ALG rail working out? Stiff enough for the DBAL so far?

 

[Bill Blowers]

Krax - I think so. I used it during the 3 day Fight Club course and did not notice anything. Since then I have tried intentionally flexing it to check deviation but notice more muscle fatigue shaking than anything else. Resting gun weight does not seem to have any affect whatsoever.

 

[krax]

Very good.

Follow up question: If you did it all over again, would you have gone with the EMR V3 in order to have the pic rail integrated? There was some discussion in a previous modcast about mounting a laser on add-on pic rail.

 

[Bill Blowers]

I am testing the gun as a possible patrol rifle for the agency, not for SWAT. If we decide to buy them as SWAT guns, I would probably upgrade to the Geissele MK8 rail.

 

[krax]

Good call.

 

[BC98]

We're looking into the FoF issues, but FoF is not wanting to help with the endeavor.

Chris or Bill,

I was curious whether the issues with FoF ammo had been resolved yet. Would you mind PM'ing me your contact at FoF?

 

[Bill Blowers]

It is not, I don't have a contact directly to the company, we buy through a vendor. I'll let Chris talk about trials and tribulations.....

 

[BC98]

Bill,

Message inbound to you. I'd like to try to help if I can.

 

[Bill Blowers]

Now with D60 action, you can add that to the list of magazines that feed and drop cleanly. (Thanks Steven Andrews). I ran three D60's worth through it doing half & half drills, no issues. I also shot our new SWAT qual course and did some other drills. I was grabbing PMags out of ammo bucket that were already loaded and got a fail to fire. Cleared it out and discovered a dummy round that someone had loaded into the mag.

4687 rounds fired with no gun related malfunctions.

 

[Bill Blowers]

Had some free time at the end of the day, ran through a few Seeklander Rock Star drills and some other stuff. Target at 10 yards, 6 to 8" circle with rifle, speed reload, 6 more to 8" circle, transition to Pistol 6 to the head. 9.68 and 9.99 seconds clean. Only 84 rounds fired, but the total is now 4771, I'm gonna push it over 5000 in 90 days tomorrow.