Is this Portugese 7.62 ammo I bought junk?

J

JRiggs

New member
Well, I took my M1A out of lawaway today! I also bought a 200 round battle pack, and about 10 loose boxes of Portugese 7.62 ammo. I was told the ammo is non-corrosive by my dealer, whom I trust. But I noticed that the loose boxes have a date of 1981, with FNM on the headstamp, along with the NATO symbol. Im confident in these. Now the battle pack, when I opened it, I noticed that the ammo is packed in the same 20 round boxes, only the date is 1978. The box has the NATO symbol, but it is nowhere to be found on the cartridge. It simply says, 7.62 and
"H1", "HD", or "HO" on the headstamp. There is also some green stuff on the primers, its either a sealent ot tarnish. Is this stuff going to be corrosive, or a squibb load? Id hate to destroy my $1400 rifle. Thanks for your help.
 
Port ammo is highly regarded by users on the FAL Files. Curiously enough, there was just a recent debate at that board about the stuff headstamped H1, HD and HO. If I recall correctly, those are Singapore headstamps, not Portuguese.

Was there a label on the battle pack? Maybe you got ammo from mixed origins.

The green stuff is just a sealer. Don't worry about it.
 
JRiggs, the battlepack you have is Portugese but I don't recognize the head stamp from the boxed ammo. You can shoot the Portugese ammo no problem. I love Portugese .308 and so do all of my M1As and my semi-auto Browning M1919. I can't get enough of it! It is the stuff to shoot in .308! It is accurate enough for me to hit the target out to 800 yards (my longest distance so far) with iron sights. I chronographed some 1978 Portugese. It measured 2720 to 2800 fps out of a standard model M1A. I have fired over 2000 rounds of it and not had one problem with it. :)
 
The FNM 7.62 NATO ammo I have seen is Portuguese (Fabrica Nacional de Municoes de Armas Ligeiras). On some other ammo, (e.g., 7x57), it could be Fabrica Nacional de Municiones, a Mexican arsenal. The NATO mark is pretty definitive, though, as Portugal is a NATO member, Mexico is not.

All ammunition made to NATO spec (with the circled cross) is non-corrosive.

Jim
 
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