Spotter ammo

C

Coinneach

Staff Alumnus
Hi-Tech Ammunition has spotter and spotter/tracer rounds in several calibers. I'm considering getting some in 7.62x39, but as I know nothing about this stuff, I fingered it'd be a good idea to ask the experts.

First, I'm assuming the stuff is legal, or it wouldn't be out there for sale. Any special requirements, LE-only, that kind of thing?

How visible is a spotter flash in daylight?

Any other details/trivia/etc would be appreciated.

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"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it."
-- John Hay, 1872
 
Coinneach

I believe anyone can buy tracers. I can buy them at my local sporting goods stores. Many ads appear in Shotgun News that include tracers, and you can find them in Cabela's main catalog.

I've only fired tracers at night, so I can't comment on how well they show up during daylight. I would think shooting too many of them would be hard on a barrel.
 
Coinneach,

Tracers are cool and legal, but, man be careful. Nothing is as cool at night as being around a couple of M60s lighting up the sky. I know guys who have set hay bails and stuff on fire with 'em. Don't shoot into wood, paper, and similar stuff, which of course you probably already know. Tracers are made with phosphorous, which ain't fun stuff. BTW, the best fun you can have with tracers is shooting at bats..it's a real gas...if you hit one, you can see a slight light puff as the phosphorous round comes into contact with the bat's body...

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"Stop forest fires--ban matches."
 
Thanks for the info, guys (*this* is why I spend so much time at TFL: info you can't get anywhere else).

FWIW, I'm not into tracers. Remember Murphy's Laws of Combat? And yeah, I've heard some real horror stories about setting ranges on fire. I'm thinking about spotter rounds more for psychological effect if TSHTF than for actual target marking. Kinda like Dragon's Breath on a smaller scale. :)

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"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it."
-- John Hay, 1872
 
Tracers do not have phosphorus in them it is Barium nitrate( gives it the it the red color),magnisum(makes it burn real bright),and Steric acid(lubrecant and binder). The spotter has titanium flakes in the nose of the full metal jacket. It will only work when shooting steel or solid rock.
I helped develope,test,and mfg 100,000's of rounds of this ammo. If the dealer had any pics of the ammo in action I took some of them myself and we were shooting several 1/8"x18"x36" steel plates.
 
The problem ith most tracer ammo isn't the tracer round.. its the corrosive primers used in military ammunition.

Most commercially loaded stuff is non corrosive and won't harm the barrel of your rifle.

Remember though.. tracers work both ways.

You can mark a target but a target can also mark YOU.

Dr.Rob
 
I used my FN-FAL in an IDPA 3-gun match last year. The ammo was Argi surplus. I had shot about 400 of the 1,000 that I had purchased with no problem.

I did the rifle stage first, ran to the shotgun stage, than ran to the pistol stage in record time. When I went back over to the rifle stage (which was separated from the pistol/shotgun stage by a high dirt berm) I found the score-keepers putting out a burning tumbleweed. Ooops. It was just one twenty-round box that had the tracers. Never did shoot 'em at night. Barely showed in the noon day sun.

I scrubbed my rifle down good (hot water down the barrel) after that round of shooting.

Rick
 
A useful trick if you are using a semiautomatic or selective fire rifle for serious purposes is to load a tracer asthe first round in all of your magazines.
It will be the last round fired and this will tell you that you have emptied your magazine and must reload.
 
Hardball, that's the plan. I've ordered some spotter from Hi-Tech Ammunition. Hasn't arrived yet, but with the Xmas rush, I'm not surprised.

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"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it."
-- John Hay, 1872
 
I've found tracers to be quite visible in daylight as long as you remember to follow-through with your shots.

A couple things about tracer burn: (1) the tracers will burn out at some point - for the 7.62 NATO rounds, this occurs at about 1100 meters (which isn't much concern for a rifleman, but does matter if you're shooting a M240G machinegun at 1800 meters) - so they won't help you adjust fire at tremendously long range; and (2) you will not get the identical ballistic performance & point of impact from tracers as from your regular rounds, because the bullet weight decreases as the compound burns. At very short ranges and with full-auto weapons, this doesn't matter so much (it's "close enough for government work"), but if you're trying to shoot a pimple off a gnat's behind, it's another thing entirely...
 
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