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With no sonic boom/crack to worry about, the only noise one will hear is the “clatter” of the gun’s action, the reduced report of the gunshot out of the muzzle end of the suppressor, and the impact of the bullet downrange. With this in mind, the suppressor enthusiasts of the world seek out subsonic ammunition for their firearms. This phenomenon occurs outside of the suppressor itself (downrange) and of course the can cannot mitigate it. What a suppressor cannot do however, is eliminate the sonic crack/boom of a supersonic projectile. Subsonic or supersonic, it doesn’t matter - the suppressor will still reduce the volume and report of the shot. With a suppressor, you can generally run any ammo you wish out of the host weapon. Despite this, suppressors have been selling at a brisk pace, and moves to deregulate these useful items still continue on. If You Run A Suppressor, You Want Subsonic AmmoĪs we’ve gone over prior, legally acquiring or manufacturing a suppressor for your own use in our nation is a cumbersome task at best. So why this sudden interest in slowing things down? Simple - suppressors. Zipping along at supersonic speeds, the small and lighter loads rely on speed and projectile shape to accomplish their goal. As time went on of course, the trend was towards small and fast projectiles, such as 9x19mm Luger (and NATO) for handguns, and 5.56mm for rifles. You can only cram so much powder safely into the cartridge, and the bullet itself had to be of a certain weight to be effective, so big and “slow” was the norm. In the days of old, the trend was towards heavy projectiles, such as one of my favorites (of course), the. Just by default, subsonic ammunition isn’t anything new.
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What’s The Big Deal About Subsonic Ammo These Days? Much like a high-performance jet aircraft, a bullet going faster than the speed of sound will create a sonic boom. Other than speed, the defining characteristic of a subsonic round is that it will not create a sonic boom along it’s flight path. So, if your ammunition doesn’t exceed 1116.4 FPS in velocity at sea level, it is a subsonic round. I’m guessing since compared to the world as a whole, ammunition really doesn’t go that far, so it’s more scientifically convenient to rate it in FPS - at least here in the US. For reasons I have yet to discover, ammo makers love to rate their creations in feet per second. At sea level and a pressure of 1 atmosphere (14.6 psi), the sound barrier is at 761.2 MPH, which is 1116.4 feet per second. Subsonic ammunition, by definition, is any cartridge that propels its bullet at a speed that is below the sound barrier. Simply put, anything “subsonic” is something that travels below the speed of sound. There’s no clear answer, but knowing what subsonic ammo (in various calibers) can and cannot do is a good place to start… What Is Subsonic Ammunition? You may ask - “What is subsonic ammo and is it appropriate for my use case?” In your travels, you may run across loads in various calibers marked as “subsonic”. There’s nothing wrong with new concepts in ammo, of course, but buyer should beware. Desperation will make people run full-metal jacket rounds in a defensive role, or they’ll pick up some oddball load and cross their fingers. People are grabbing up whatever they can find, regardless of whether it’s truly appropriate or not. Oddly the rounds that were over the speed of sound felt like there was more recoil, but on reflection I don't actually think that there was a big difference in the actual recoil, more just in the blast and sound generated.As I alluded to last week, the ammo situation out there is pretty sparse, and unprecedented. BUT then I thought it through and realized that if indeed I was on the border of the sound barrier then it could easily jump back and forth over it. I then mentally berated myself for sloppy loading practices that would allow such large differences in felt recoil and blast. With my elevation and temperature of the range it put these numbers in the vicinity of the speed of sound.Īt first I was wondering if my loads had somehow gotten mixed up with another batch of similar rounds, but quickly discounted that.
![subsonic rounds vs supersonic subsonic rounds vs supersonic](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/auuVE368LwM/maxresdefault.jpg)
2 grains is typical) and I was using two different headstamps on the cases. I've chronograph-ed these before and they come in about 1060, but being Unique it measures rather poorly (+/. These were shot from my model 19 Smith and Wesson. The load that did this was with 158 grain Berry's in. The components used must have been right on the line of the sound barrier and occasionally one would jump over it. Went to the indoor shooting range the other day and as luck would have it the load that I was shooting would go from subsonic to supersonic from round to round.