Federal Champion .22 very unreliable: new M&P .22.

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The full-size gun was bought new retail in December, has seen about 1,500 rds. Kept pretty clean.

The uselessness, even for practice really surprised me, having stored the (blue) 500-rd. 'brick' in its original tights cellophane plastic, inside a sealed ammo can in the air cond. room since purchase about three years ago.

About 1/3 of today's 50 rds. wouldn't strip from the mag which came with the nice gun.
The other brands tried--Federal Automatch, Am. Eagle, Blazer do pretty well, function about 95% of the time.
These (as with my friend's Walther P22) might also be designed for the CCI Minimags, but the "Champion's" advertised muzzle fps. is very similar to this Federal in the blue boxes. As also with the 38 or 40-grain bullets.
 
The last of this that I bought has proved unreliable in everything I've attempted to shoot in. Three pistols and four rifles and the same results in each. It's just plinking ammo but this batch doesn't want to plink., just go "click" a lot of the time..
 
Did your semi-auto handguns also have frequent troubles stripping these Champion rounds from magazines?

It was interesting during a few hours on YouTube (and Google) reading about a few .22 semi-auto handguns while shopping for this first I've ever owned.
M&P .22s (or mostly the Compact?) are said to "eat anything"--and possibly that's true--but as mine almost always functions at 95% that's good enough for my practice.
 
designed for the CCI Minimags, but the "Champion's" advertised muzzle fps. is very similar to this Federal in the blue boxes.
There is a world of difference between the reliability of the mainstay Minimags and the bulk Champions...you usually get what you pay for

If a semi-auto pistol is recommended to be used with a certain .22lr round, to deviate from that is to invite what you are experiencing
 
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My Walther P22 had the same issue with Federal. Many rounds weren’t powerful enough to cycle the slide far enough back to pick up the next round. I switched to Remington Golden Bullets and the gun works perfectly now.
 
22plinkster shoots these up in many of his videos and he recommends them. I usually have 95%+ success with these. Nearly all .22 firearms are picky about what they like to be fed; your M&P seems to not like the Fed Champions. From your list, I would stick with the Blazers.
 
As others have said, for whatever reason, firearms that chamber .22lr seem to be finicky. It doesn't seem like the manufacturer of the ammo is consistently the problem. Once I find what works in my firearms, I keep many thousands of rounds in storage.
 
Much better news with the M&P .22. Almost perfect results today with 100 rds. Golden Bullet, 100 Win. X, and 100 CCI Minimags.
One glitch each with both Win. X and Minimags. The fact that it also occurred with Minimags made me wonder about support hand complacency.

Having the Very first glitch with the German-proofed Sig P228 days ago (after 1,100 rds: I keep almost every used box in a bag) leads to one embarrassing conclusion:
**despite pretty seldom suspected, Limp-wristing is suggested with these high-quality, pretty clean guns and good ammo brands, but by itself might explain very little with Fed. Champion .22 ammo.
 
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A recent very limited test from a box of 325 rounds Federal auto match in both my RUGER single six and a RUGER 10/22 gave following of 100 rounds fired
4% FTF
0% malfunction
2% low power/audibly heard
Accuracy was very acceptable
Jmtcw
 
My S&W victory pistol can't shoot the Winchester Super X. At all. Won't load, FTE, horrible accuracy.

As mentioned, some guns just don't like some ammo...
 
I was looking through my log books yesterday afternoon and found some very good results with Federal Champion shot fifteen years ago. Something has changed with the modern Federal and much for the worse in my experience. Part of it is probably me but I doubt it's all me as I haven't had problems with other 22 rimfire ammo to speak of except Winchester.
 
I will agree that .22 autos are by far the pickiest guns out there, with many guns requiring trying several brands/velocities to find the ones that function the best. In addition, what brand makes one gun function perfectly may not work as well in the very next gun that came off the line. In a way that’s one of the fun things about owning .22 autos, experimenting the find the combo that works the best.

Luckily .22 ammo isn’t expensive (save for the ultra premium match stuff) and it’s everywhere again, allowing for one to sample several flavors to find what works for your .22. :thumbup:

My Ruger Standard 4” isn’t picky at all, and seems to gobble anything it’s fed. My Mk II Govt target is finicky about standard velocity lead ammo, not liking Magtech or Winchester Xpert HP’s at all. The SIG Mosquito is true to the literature, liking Mini Mags and similar HV solid 40 gr ammo while choking regularly on everything else.

Stay safe!
 
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I have a couple of Bersas that are manual repeaters with Federal Champion. even my Ruger Standard Model isn't 100% with the batch I have.
 
I had a couple of bricks of the federal champions. They were awful with all my 22s. Lot's of failure to fire and under powered rounds. I gave them away with a warning about them. The best inexpensive ammo right now is cci blazer for me. It runs well like mini mags and it's pretty cheap right now. I ordered 2000 from Brownells the other day for $78 shipped, under 4 cents a round.
 
In my opinion it is asking a lot of the smallish 22LR to do what is necessary to function in a semi-auto, in particular a semi-auto handgun. When I put my S&W victory into service I used the same thing that worked in our Ruger MK3s. This ammo was a total failure in my Victory.

So off to the races, I tried just about every rimfire ammo I could get my hands on. The Federal in the blue box wasn't reliable for me, CCI MM was at the time tough to find. After trying numerous brands I found that Agulia HV and Federal Auto match worked the best. So I found a deal on a case of those (Federal Auto-Match) plus I bought another 6 boxes giving me a total of 5200 rounds. This was almost a year ago in March 2018. To date I have shot about 3500 rounds in my Victory with only 2 or 3 problems.

I put a S&W AR-15-22 rimfire rifle into the mix and had a bunch of problems with it also. I didn't want to have 2 separate rimfire ammos so I spent a lot of time on the rifle and magazines and got it to work, zero problems with the auto match in about 800 rounds.

I have found that there are gun maintenance and adjustment details and magazine upkeep that give me good results with this ammo. I'm not trying to get anyone to buy anything but the point I'm making is yes 22LR is picky as others say. And it takes time to figure the whole (ammo/mechanical) package out. That is simply the reality of the thing.

I have friends that are classified Grand Master in multiple Steel Challenge rimfire divisions that hate the ammo I have no problems with. The only thing I can say is I put in a lot of time to get a budget ammo to function 99.99% for me in my guns. It wasn't success at first try either. One thing I will say is even with everything I have done to get my ammo situation under control, when it is cold outside I put a chemical hand warmer in the magazine well of my rimfires and I put some also in the ammo box to keep the juices flowing like it's summertime.
 
I find that the Aguila HV and the Federal bulk packs work fine in my Victory as well, but the Aguila are much more accurate.

Blazer works well also, and the Mini-Mags work well and are the most accurate save for the Eley's that are just too rich for my blood!
 
Enjoying all of you guys' comments.
When you stating FTF, you mean failure to feed, as in short-stroking the magazine feed, or no primer ignition?

As with Catpop, the good Federal brand known as Automatch has been about 96% reliable in this M&P .22 handgun.

Just bought a second batch of Rem. Golden Bullet (525 rd, "brick")-and had only one single glitch in about 200 rds. Not bad at all, and maybe there was a moderate limp wrist just that one time (?). The wrists are always tight, but elbows are kept bent.
 
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Just bought a second batch of Rem. Golden Bullet (525 rd, "brick")-and had only one single glitch in about 200 rds. Not bad at all, and maybe there was a moderate limp wrist just that one time (?). The wrists are always tight, but elbows are kept bent.

I hope that you have found long term success with this ammo.
 
thomas15: Thanks. The only real mystery has been that bizarre, extremely unreliable Fed. Champion.
Everything else seems to be 95%-99%: the Golden B., Win. X., Fed. Auto Match (Blazer seemed good) and of course CC Minimags.
 
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I have a couple of Bersas that are manual repeaters with Federal Champion. even my Ruger Standard Model isn't 100% with the batch I have.
I have a Bersa Thunder .22, and my advice on ammo is ...

1) Mini-Mags
2) Mini-Mags
3) Mini-Mags

... in that order.
 
I know there was a bad batch of Federal Champion a while back (blue and black box). I had a friend that bought some and it did not have enough oomph to cycle the action of his gun. More recently (in the past year) I bought a brick of Aquila "Super Extra" (or some other combination of superlatives - they have so many) that was listed with very high velocity but basically rendered my SR22 to a single shot gun. I am in the process now of shooting it up in my Heritage revolver, I will be glad when it is all gone. That stuff smells like super glue when you shoot it, and the fingers on my left hand get black from all the GSR that ends up on the outside of the cylinder and transfers to my fingers when I extract the spent cases and reload.

Recently I picked up a few thousand Mini-Mags from PSA when they had them on sale for 4 cents a round with free shipping. I'll grab some more when they come up on sale again. I've also had good luck with the Federal Automatch, and even the Remington Thunderbolt ammo.

My wife has really taken to the SR22, and it has improved her trigger skills. Time for me to stock up on more Mini-Mags.
 
The full-size gun was bought new retail in December, has seen about 1,500 rds. Kept pretty clean.

The uselessness, even for practice really surprised me, having stored the (blue) 500-rd. 'brick' in its original tights cellophane plastic, inside a sealed ammo can in the air cond. room since purchase about three years ago.

About 1/3 of today's 50 rds. wouldn't strip from the mag which came with the nice gun.
The other brands tried--Federal Automatch, Am. Eagle, Blazer do pretty well, function about 95% of the time.
These (as with my friend's Walther P22) might also be designed for the CCI Minimags, but the "Champion's" advertised muzzle fps. is very similar to this Federal in the blue boxes. As also with the 38 or 40-grain bullets.

The full-size gun was bought new retail in December, has seen about 1,500 rds. Kept pretty clean.

The uselessness, even for practice really surprised me, having stored the (blue) 500-rd. 'brick' in its original tights cellophane plastic, inside a sealed ammo can in the air cond. room since purchase about three years ago.

About 1/3 of today's 50 rds. wouldn't strip from the mag which came with the nice gun.
The other brands tried--Federal Automatch, Am. Eagle, Blazer do pretty well, function about 95% of the time.
These (as with my friend's Walther P22) might also be designed for the CCI Minimags, but the "Champion's" advertised muzzle fps. is very similar to this Federal in the blue boxes. As also with the 38 or 40-grain bullets.
 
i like the federal 550 bulk in the red box from walmart. i don't recall getting a dud but i get an occasional dud from the more expensive winchester.
 
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