Ballistics

After an amateur attempt at trying to calculate the BC of the Norinco 7.62x39mm ammunition, I thought I would do the same thing with Norinco’s 7.62x51mm ammo. As one would expect, this stuff is fairly inexpensive as well, running around $0.50/round. I don’t think this is “precision ammo”, but it works well enough in my rifle.

First off, I pulled one bullet apart, and weight it. The projecticle itself weight 146.1 grains, so I guess this is supposed to be 147gr ammo. I measured ~ 42.0 grains of “mystery gun powder”.

On of the great things about 7.62x39mm rifles (like the SKS) is that (at the time of writing) ammo is fairly inexpensive. A fellow who keeps his eye open for a deal can find 7.62x39mm in the range of $0.16CAD (for corrosive) to $0.30CAD (for non-corrosive) ammo. Of course being surplus ammo, finding ballistics data on this ammunition can be a bit of a trick. Granted, the 7.62x39 cartridge isn’t exactly a “precision” round, but intellectual curiousity had me wondering what the ballistic coefficient (BC) of this Norinco ammo was.