Works Fine For Me

Something that comes up again and again when talking about whether a given product works or not is whether the reader's experience is different from the author's.

I own several things that are working correctly that got massive negative reviews, for example.

I also have a Magpul 17-round magazine for a Glock that doesn't work well in my G17.2; despite rave reviews and people constantly assuring me that they work in their gun.  Yet they never offer to buy mine...

But the biggest case of "works fine for me" is when the military tests their fav and it comes up wanting.

I will clue you into why there's such a disparity.

That thing you bought:  You paid for it.  You expended time and effort to get it.  It is yours.  You assign value to it.  You will not deliberately try to destroy it.

That thing PV1 Snuffy was issued:  He did not pay for it.  He expended no real time and zero effort to be issued it.  He didn't sign for it.  He's not really responsible for it.  If it breaks he will get a new one without repercussion.  He will deliberately try to destroy it during testing; he's been ordered to.

An item that performs at a match or on the range but dies when Snuffy gets it...  Not a good choice for Army or Marine issue.

Failure to survive Snuffy doesn't make something bad, it just means it's more fragile than an anvil.

Which brings us to that report I (poorly) sampled earlier.

What seems to be wrong with most of the magazines in the test with lots of failures is weak springs.

Bolt over base attributed to the mag is the shot column not moving up quickly enough to get the next round into the path of the bolt.

The pecking of the bullet tips into the aluminum portion of the feed-ramps is the same sort of thing.  The round is high enough for the bolt to grab it, but not high enough to miss the "M4 ramp" in the upper receiver.

Failing to lock to the rear is either weak spring, poor follower design or both.

The test recorded how many rounds had been fired, how many rounds were in the magazine when the failure occurred, how many times the magazine had been used...  It's pretty exhaustive.

If only they'd told us which vendor was which letter...

At this time I am thinking the rumor that 'Golf' was a Gen 1 Lancer might be suspect.  What I need to refute it is whether you can get a Gen 1 Lancer to fit and feed in an H&K M27 aka HK416.