14 Comments

  1. Ian, great test!! I am very familiar with “moon dust” as every dirt road in Iraq is covered in it once a few thousand convoys roll over it. One thing that may help a gun run better with the sand or moon dust test — de grease them and run them dry (magazines too). We ran all of our weapons dry when in Iraq, as all the lube did was attract sand and cause malfunctions. Granted we were not worried about wear, but then again sand infused oil does nothing to prevent wear, so running dry was the better option. Of course we still kept up with cleaning them, just no oil.

  2. Moon dust strikes again very fine dust can get into “sealed” oil systems on aircraft and cause components to be replaced. Why would it not render the magazine incapable of working correctly, even if the gun still works properly?

  3. Interesting. Again, a pistol magazine turned out to be weakest link the system.

    That makes me wonder about those MAT 49 SMG “Sahara pattern” magazines? Were they really effective? Would copying such a design for a pistol magazine be worth the tradeoff of less ammunition for greater reliability?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkW9a1pQlhU

    • ShOuld work better as there are more clearances on the inside. The so-called Sahara magazine is basically a singel stack magazine inside a double stack with air in between that all the dust can fit into. So similarly a at a guess 8-round single stack magazine should gibe similar clearances inside the normally duoble columned alien magazine. For more reliability you would have to use a mechanismn that is on the outside like on a Parabellumpistole. Dust gets into that oo, but also easiyl falls out again, Whereas in a tilting-barrel design all of the important mating surfaces are on the inside.

Leave a Reply to Brad Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.


*