Monarch 9mm ammo on the hot side?

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dakota.potts

New member
Picked up a couple boxes of this at Academy the other day. On sale for $10.99 a box of brass cased ammo and Monarch has always done well for me before. Shot it through my CZ P-01 which famously doesn't care what ammo is being used. Everything shot fine and ran normally but I noticed maybe a tiny more recoil and a good bit more muzzle flash than I'm used to. Definitely saw a good few fireballs coming out of the end of the barrel and the P-01 doesn't have a super short barrel to begin with.

I know it's produced in Serbia and I believe by PPU. Just left me wondering if they might load their ammo a little hotter than we do, as I know some European ammo (S&B) has a reputation for running a little hot. The ammo was 115 grain RN. I've shot both 115 and 124 grain in various brands out of both CZs and don't tend to really notice a difference.
 
Might be hotter, or not. Iv'e chronographed a lot of 9MM ammo, but that is one I've not tested. FWIW, some 9MM Winchester and IMI NATO and Winchester factory +P+ ammo I tested for muzzle flash at dusk produced very little flash. Other standard pressure ammo tested produced great fireballs and associated blast. Ammo reloaded with Power Pistol produced great flash and louder blast than any other handgun powder I've ever used. Without a chronograph I'd have thought this must mean hotter ammo producing higher velocities. Not always true. An inexpensive chronograph would provide the opportunity to remove all doubt about what ammo is actually loaded hotter, or not.
 
I can tell you that Monarch .38spl SJHP is some weak tea. Not enough pressure to seal the chambers, leading to soot down the case.
 
I have never seen any Monarch brass-case 9mm ammo with a Sellier & Bellot head stamp. It has all had the PPU (Prvi Partizan) head stamp.

And Sellier & Bellot is made in the Czech Republic, not Serbia. Prvi Partizan is made in Serbia.

As to the original question, I have not noticed PPU 9mm ammo to be particularly hot, whether it is boxed and badged Prvi Partizan or Monarch. In fact, I once bought 200 rds of PPU 115gr 9mm ammo that was so distinctly under-powered that it failed to reliably cycle my two 9mm Berettas which had digested everything I had put in them up to that point.
 
The steel-cased Monarch 9mm ammunition is not made by Prvi Partizan. It is Russian, made by Barnaul. And yes, it is known for hard primers.
 
Without any more concrete evidence, I'm thinking it was just something about the quality of the powder I was noticing.

Could have also been that it was a little darker than I usually shoot given daylight savings time and being this late in the year.

I've never had any problems withe the Monarch brass case in 9mm, .380 or .223 other than being slightly dirty (and the powder smells pretty bad). The steel stuff I only shoot in my VZ. 58 but it seems to be slightly cleaner than the Wolf/Tula.
 
It is my completely inexpert opinion that Russian and Eastern European ammunition tends to suffer from inconsistency in powder quality. The best of this category that I have encountered is Sellier & Bellot.
 
I ran into this hot Monarch 115 grain 9mm ammo this past weekend. I was attempting to research it a little when I came across this thread.

I was having occasional 12 inch fireballs with stout recoil. Impressively hot. Probably would have KB'ed any non-CZ pistol.:cool:

I just purchased 1200 rounds of this from Academy so I have about 5 different lot numbers. I've ran some of each lot over a chronograph with normal results.
 
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