That looks promising, I just bought two .380s around Christmas. I was considering Gold Dots but I’ve always liked HST.

 

I loaded my wife’s .380 EZ with these rounds.

That’s impressive performance from a 2.75” barrel. The .380 EZ has a 3.675” barrel, which I’m more comfortable with when considering .380.

 

Those are fantastic results!

 

Very nice.

 

Test Gun: Ruger LCP
Barrel length: 2.75 inches.
Ammunition: Federal .380 ACP 99gr HST.
Test media: 10% Clear Ballistics Gel.
Distance: 10 feet.
Chronograph: Caldwell Ballistic Precision Chronograph G2.
Five shot velocity average: 967fps
Gel Temperature 70 degrees.

https://generalcartridge.wordpress.com/2020/01/31/federal-380-acp-99gr-hst-in-clear-ballistics-gel/

Simply put the Gold Dot is the best performing round for law enforcement use and the HST is the superior civilian SD round. This is what I carry in my LCP.

 

I see them both as very comparable. How do you come up with GD being better for LE and HST better for everyone else?

 

Federal must have tweaked the bullet. I remember when the 99gr HST came out; it didn't seem work as well as that, especially from a 2.75 inch barrel.

 

Agreed. When it first hit the market, it was a dud (as far as HSTs are concerned).

Looking at this test and the other new tests, I'm convinced that Federal tweaked the recipe a bit.

 

I’d like to see what velocity the longer barrel of my Beretta 84F would get.

 

Test Gun: Ruger LCP
Barrel length: 2.75 inches.
Ammunition: Federal .380 ACP 99gr HST.
Test media: 10% Clear Ballistics Gel.
Distance: 10 feet.
Chronograph: Caldwell Ballistic Precision Chronograph G2.
Five shot velocity average: 967fps
Gel Temperature 70 degrees.

https://generalcartridge.wordpress.com/2020/01/31/federal-380-acp-99gr-hst-in-clear-ballistics-gel/

I hope you test the new Federal .380 Deep round. Thanks for posting your tests.

 

As soon as I can get my hands on some I will.

Federal must have tweaked the bullet. I remember when the 99gr HST came out; it didn't seem work as well as that, especially from a 2.75 inch barrel.

Someone pointed out on another forum that the bullets that Luckey gunner tested looked different then the ones I tested. So it would seem that Federal has changed something.

 

FWIW, a while back I shot some 2018 vintage 99 grain HST through a Glock 42 and a S&W Shield EZ. All velocities were recorded with a Labrador

With the EZ, I got an 8 shot MV average of 1041, ES 41. With the Glock 42 using the same lot of ammo, I shot 8 rounds one time and 4 the next (because of the ES the first time) , and got a 12 shot MV average of 930, with an extreme spread of 86. The high extreme spread was caused by one shot in the first string registering 877. The next lowest of both groups was 901.

BTW, recoil with the EZ was the harshest of any load tested in it. If the gun is for someone who doesn't like recoil, it may not be the round for that person.

 

Fantastic results. Definitely the best I’ve seen out of that size firearm. Thank you, for doing the work.

 

As soon as I can get my hands on some I will.

Thanks!!

 

I also notice that the product number on your box has as 'S' at the end. The other boxes I've seen in the past didn't (if I remember correctly).

Perhaps that's a good way to differentiate the new from the old?


ETA... Nope, looks like that's the different product numbers between the 50rnd boxes and 20. Never mind.

 

What did you use to simulate heavy clothing?

And FWIW, and, yes, I know it's much easier to use, but the Clear Ballistics products are not equivalent to proper animal based ballistics gelatin. The results from Clear Ballistics are not comparable to results from the latter. Specifically, Clear Ballistics tends to allow deeper penetration. So that 13" number your getting from the heavy clothing shots may look good, but a shot into the real stuff would likely have less penetration.

 

^this.
I’m sticking with the XTP round for now, but I do appreciate all of your time and effort.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I think it would be fantastic if some manufacturer develops a legit .380 load that passes all the FBI tests. I’d love to hear all the people that dismiss bigger than 9mm cartridges as unnecessary trip over themselves to explain how no matter what the .380 is still underpowered.

 

Have you seen this?

View: https://youtu.be/GNtPHYwcDts


Or just don’t worry about expansion:

https://www.underwoodammo.com/colle...lections/all/products/380-acp-p-65-grain-xtreme-defender?variant=18785708146745


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Thanks for taking the time and $$$ to test all the ammo you test. I appreciate it. :cheers:

 

The GD is a bonded bullet which holds together better when shot through barriers such as car doors or windshields which LE is more likely to do.

Are you seeing reports of HST shedding its jacket?

 

Teecher and Borg, what I said went right over both of your respective heads.

 

What you said was:

"I think it would be fantastic if some manufacturer develops a legit .380 load that passes all the FBI tests. I’d love to hear all the people that dismiss bigger than 9mm cartridges as unnecessary trip over themselves to explain how no matter what the .380 is still underpowered."

I agreed with what I think you said, that the 380 is underpowered and I'm also not one that dismisses bigger than 9mm cartridges as unnecessary even though they may be impractical in smaller guns.

I went on to point out that Underwood produces a Plus +P load but that that comes close to overcoming the "underpowered" limitations but has never been properly tested in calibrated gel with a variety of barrel lengths.

 

What I'm saying is all the 9mm fanboys do everything they can to put every service cartridge on an even playing field. Once they're able to do that they dismiss everything as unnecessary because of whatever reasons they want to use to justify their opinions. The basis for all of this is that "newer" 9mm ammo consistently performs better in scientific testing than in years past and there is a perception that technology closed the gap between 9mm and the larger service cartridges. But you see the 9mm was never bad, it's been good since it was invented. The only thing that held it back was terrible firearms training and lack of proper tactics. The only reason 9mm gained back popularity was money. It is considerably cheaper to shoot. Based on the logic used by people to justify switching back to 9mm, if it passes the FBI testing then it's perfect and anything bigger is just wasted X,Y,Z. If a .380 passes all those criteria, wouldn't 9mm just be unnecessary for X,Y,Z? No, they make the same argument they dismissed from the .40, .357 and .45 crowd- the .380 just isn't powerful enough. It's all grade A horsecrap.

 

But you see the 9mm was never bad, it's been good since it was invented. The only thing that held it back was terrible firearms training and lack of proper tactics.

:number1:

 

.60" expansion with 13-15 inches of penetration? That's 9mm performance so color me skeptical. 967 fps is very fast from a short barrel. Ammoquest only got around 905. That's a big difference. Has Federal upped the power?

To achieve 12+ of penetration with .380 usually means the expansion will top out at around .45". .60" is a huge difference.

I wonder if the clear gel has degraded so much that it's affecting penetration.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhByLwyvGpA

5 shot average from a Glock 42, just over 900 fps. 10" of penetration.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayQE_UoVu0A

 

I wonder if the clear gel has degraded so much that it's affecting penetration.

None of the “public” tests like these are fully controlled tests: environment, denim, gel, firearm (even same model), and ammunition batch are not uniform.

That doesn’t make them worthless (IMO) but ‘noisy’ in a data sense. One can account somewhat by increasing the data set (or in English, don’t just trust one test). For instance, with this round STB got poor results, several sources got pretty good results, Lucky Gunner got no expansion at all, and nobody even tries the barrier tests with .380.

That said, I would never recommend a professional (duty) department choice hinge on less than lab-stringent tests, if for liability’s sake if nothing else.

The rest of us have to make do with what info we can gather, and I appreciate all who take time and effort to add to the available data.

 

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANHPEz4llnc

 

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANHPEz4llnc

great video!

 

Even at 2x speed that was a bit laborious ... I admit to getting bored by .357 and skipping to the barchart, although it was nice to see more than just charts.

I think these are all valid:
- The clear synthetic gelatin must be calibrated by the user before use

Some of the hobbyist videos do so on camera (and some off), and even get in-spec results, for whatever that's worth.

- The clear synthetic gelatin currently demonstrates a tendency to limit bullet expansion and increase bullet penetration, compared to FBI-standard, 10% calibrated organic gelatin ... The clear synthetic gelatin currently does not appear to be a suitable substitute for FBI-standard, 10% calibrated organic gelatin if the bullets will be measured and evaluated according to FBI performance standards.

(Rewritten 3x; hopefully this works) Any 'gel' is not 1:1 to a human; it's only a simulation, but as I understand the test the whole point is to get consistency (remove variables) from the test. In that regard the clear fails entirely as an FBI test material. It appears good for relative performance (e.g. round X through 4" barrel vs. 3" barrel) from what I see in the P1 articles and above videos.

(That said, a professional organization is going to make a department decision on *a* firearm and *a* round for many people against a backdrop of duty, threat, and liability, and has to go with the most stringent method.)

- There is no apparent “conversion” between data derived from 10% organic gelatin and the current version of the clear synthetic. ... Perhaps a skilled mathematician could derive a constant from a more complete sample, but we’re not seeing one lurking in the data.

This I really agree with (although it'd be a multivariate linear analysis, but whatever). My digging around and database I alluded to had me drawing that comparison, and the above convinced me I need to stop that and not draw any relation between clear gel tests and FBI anything.

I'd agree with all of your points save one; that ''Any 'gel' is not 1:1 to a human...''

Were I to 'pick nits'—and I kind of am here, so please humor me—the benefit of using the correct analog (namely, 10% ordnance gelatin) is that, according to this research paper—

http://ar15.com/ammo/project/fackler_articles/winchester_9mm.pdf

as a tissue simulant, 10% ordnance gelatin does provide a rough 1:1 representation of bullet penetration depth in human torso tissues (soft muscle tissue, viscera, etc.)

While I also agree that the clear polymer gelatin product should be BB validated prior to use, both the PoliceOne article by Mike Wood and John Ervin's video (see tabular data at 18:45 where the clear stuff failed to validate correctly), the fact is that despite the manufacturer's claims that their clear polymer gel can meet the BB validation standard, it simply cannot due to its much lower density and other material property issues (that are far too long to go into in detail here) that dictate the product's limitations.

In fact, Mike Wood almost laments that it would be nice to see the clear polymer manufacturer tweak their product's formula to make it comply with the validation protocols. The problem with such a pursuit is that they cannot achieve that with the present elastomer (they use VersaGel which is a ethylene/propylene/styrene tri-block copolymer) and plasticizer (they're using Paralux which is a paraffinnic processing oil) formula since neither of those components have the same mass-density approaching human soft tissues (1.040 ± 0.020 grams/cm³). Since density and velocity are the only material properties that dictate the pressure that produces expansion, without the correct density, there is no hope of meeting that goal.

While it is clear that there is not a simple linear conversion between 10% gelatin and the clear polymer gel, I am not sure that there is even a feasible non-linear conversion value to be found especially when Ervin's data is analyzed. In short, I suspect that other than for the purpose of ''just shooting stuff for fun'' using clear polymer gel (in any of its current formulations) is a waste of time if one is looking for data translatable to human bodies.

 

Natural ballistics gelatin is derived from pig collagen, closely matching the density and viscosity of pig muscle tissue, which closely matches human muscle tissue.

Clearballistics gel, which IIRC is a synthetic silicone, not so much

Very interesting.

My quick takeaways:

1. 10% gel and Clear Ballistics are not flesh & blood

 

Seems that these are just like the Hydra shoks. They don't expand when shot through denim.

 

I'm not sure what to think of the HST in 380. On Lucky Gunner, it didn't expand much at all through denim. However, I just found another test here, and it did. I've always just carried Gold Dots in my LCP, but have thought about switching to HST.

380 Auto (ACP) Jacketed Hollow-Point (JHP) Ammo for Sale by Federal - 20 Rounds

Federal 380 Auto (ACP) ammo for sale at AmmoToGo.com - Don't miss these 20 round packs of 99 Grain Jacketed Hollow-Point (JHP) ammunition in-stock now.

www.ammunitiontogo.com

 

I mulled over that one too. In general, in cleargel one can expect less expansion and more penetration than organic; and sometimes very different results. My survey-of-others'-tests data grab confirms what the experts say -- clear doesn't track against organic.

For reference here's the page that has the (relatively few) HST 99gr results. Crunching the 380 — A ballistics analysis (Part III) – Wereratgames.com. It's on the cloud on free tier so don't expect a high performance site