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Norinco CQ311-1 (AR-15) Range Report
Figured I would try my hand at a range report and what better arm to trial than a Norinco CQ311 given the current interest in black rifles, not to mention the scarce and sketchy information that is available on them. My choice of the CQ is actually on purpose and not because I am cheap. The CQ speaks to my interest in military firearms of vintage heritage (I am still an Enfield addict) and I felt the CQ was the closest option to a Vietnam era M-16A1. Having the thin profile barrel, 1in 12 rifling twist rate, simple iron sights and the original style birdcage flash hider.
Preliminary
One can only guess how many hands and how many rounds this particular rifle has been in and through, I purchased it used off of a fellow CGN’r, a good transaction all way round. It came with A2 furniture painted in olive green Armacoat, the metal painted in matte black Armacoat. The original magazine catch, forward assist and rear sight assembly had been replaced with genuine Colt parts and it arrived whistle clean.
The first order of business after un-packing and visually inspecting the piece was a detailed stripping and a thorough mechanical inspection, everything looked good. I would have also cleaned it but as I said it came whistle clean and lightly oiled. Last order of business was a test after assembly, it all worked as it should, (it actually had a pretty good single stage trigger pull to boot), a quick dry patch through the barrel and off to the range I did go.
Function Test and Sight Adjustment
Weather at the range was a beautiful sunny 19°C day with a light breeze blowing out of the south east and moderate humidity, perfect for making noise.
For the function test and initial sight adjustments I went with Winchester’s Super-X 55grain Soft Point (X223R) ammo, a common readily available cartridge. The 55 grain selection was in keeping with the original design specs of the piece. Not knowing where the sights may be set, I started at the 50 yard range complete with chronograph and loaded a single round, the bolt picked up the cartridge out of the magazine and chambered it, no problem. The chambered round fired and struck the target high and left and the bolt catch held the bolt back, so far so good. Time to load up the legal limit of 5 rounds and do some sight fiddling, 4 rounds later and I felt I had the thing dialed in for 50 yards, all the while the CQ worked as it should. I loaded up 5 more round as a final confirmation, things looked really good but invariably I had to drop one and open the group, nuts.
100 yard Shooting and Handloads
Once I was satisfied that the piece worked and was zeroed at 50 yards, I moved on to the 100 yard range and quickly tested it’s accuracy with the other 10 rounds of Winchester factory ammo I had. The CQ chewed through these with out a concern neatly depositing the leftover brass at the 5 O’clock position about 7 feet away. Accuracy was good.
At this point in the game I moved onto handloads. While waiting for the Ontario CFO to approve the restricted transfer, I had time to fashion up some handloads. Not to bore anyone with the load work-ups and such, I found a good load using H322 and Hornady’s 55gr FMJ/BT. Best accuracy developed at about the 3000 fps mark in this rifle, fortunately I had a couple hundred rounds made up at this level, “luck favors the prepared”. The only changes made with this loading was decreasing the charge weight for the military Lake City brass by 2/10th of a grain this kept them relatively the same velocity. As can be seen in the scans below the Lake City brass produced better consistency and better accuracy, though I can always be counted on to throw one of the rounds, I did not attribute this to the rifle at all. Finding the right load is a MasterCard priceless moment.
It was time to put the beast to work. I had the original Norinco 5/20 mag, one Bushmaster 5/20 mag and three 5/30 Okay mags, through the course of the day I used them all and found that the CQ accepted them all equally. From the bench at 100 yards I was able to keep all shots neatly in side the 9, 10 and X ring of a standard SR-1 (200 yd reduced for 100 yd) round bullseye target, with the exception of my occasional pulled shot. All the while the rifle pitched the empty cases neatly at the 5 o’clock position 6 feet from the firing point. Before leaving the bench I thought to test the rifles ability to hold zero when hot and loaded all the mags I had and proceeded to empty them as fast as I could. After the first mag, my wife graciously reloaded it with 5 more rounds, so that I could complete the string with 30 rounds down the tube. I noticed no change in zero, though my group opened up a tad, and no stoppages. Next I tried some shooting from the standing position, mags fell out without needing any encouragement and the bolt catch worked as advertised, still not a stoppage. Out came the mat and I tried some prone shooting. Boring, other than my now famous pulled shots, they all impacted in the black and you guessed it, not a single stoppage.
Final Tests
After the 100 yard workout I elected to let the thing cool and chase my wife around the safe area a bit. Once the piece had cooled off, I ran a wet then dry patch through the bore. I wanted to try some 62 and 75 grain bullets and wanted a clean barrel for the experiment. If you follow conventional wisdom a 1 in 12 twist is too slow to stabilize the heavier bullets, conventional wisdom is spot on. Knowing this going into the experiment I moved over to the 50 yard range and with 10 rounds of a 62 grain loading, I let go. Result; a wicked large group and text book key holing. Next was the 75 grain loading. Result; not quite as large a group, but definitely not a good one and evidence that the rounds were just starting to tumble. Not a perfect key hole like the 62 grainers but the target strikes showed elongated holes. Science wins.
Conclusions
The Norinco CQ 311 is an affordable alternative in the AR market for anyone who is looking for a 100 to 300 yard shooter, it’s only restriction being that bullets used must be 55 grains or less. It is definitely capable of keeping up with the more expensive name brands out there and certainly is reliable. It is also more or less a carbon copy of the earlier M-16A1 metal wise, though swapping out the cheesy furniture is a must (and a coat of paint on the critter wouldn’t hurt), if the vintage look is what you want. On the down side, other than being a restricted firearm, it is a Norinco so threading is in metric. If your envisioned black rifle has all the rails, lasers and gongs pictured in the latest Guns and Ammo magazine, your going to be at a disadvantage from the start. In the end I would recommend it, as it is certainly everything and maybe even more than the vaunted M305/M14S (M14/M1A).
Norinco CQ311-1 (AR-15) Range Report
Figured I would try my hand at a range report and what better arm to trial than a Norinco CQ311 given the current interest in black rifles, not to mention the scarce and sketchy information that is available on them. My choice of the CQ is actually on purpose and not because I am cheap. The CQ speaks to my interest in military firearms of vintage heritage (I am still an Enfield addict) and I felt the CQ was the closest option to a Vietnam era M-16A1. Having the thin profile barrel, 1in 12 rifling twist rate, simple iron sights and the original style birdcage flash hider.
Preliminary
One can only guess how many hands and how many rounds this particular rifle has been in and through, I purchased it used off of a fellow CGN’r, a good transaction all way round. It came with A2 furniture painted in olive green Armacoat, the metal painted in matte black Armacoat. The original magazine catch, forward assist and rear sight assembly had been replaced with genuine Colt parts and it arrived whistle clean.
The first order of business after un-packing and visually inspecting the piece was a detailed stripping and a thorough mechanical inspection, everything looked good. I would have also cleaned it but as I said it came whistle clean and lightly oiled. Last order of business was a test after assembly, it all worked as it should, (it actually had a pretty good single stage trigger pull to boot), a quick dry patch through the barrel and off to the range I did go.
Function Test and Sight Adjustment
Weather at the range was a beautiful sunny 19°C day with a light breeze blowing out of the south east and moderate humidity, perfect for making noise.
For the function test and initial sight adjustments I went with Winchester’s Super-X 55grain Soft Point (X223R) ammo, a common readily available cartridge. The 55 grain selection was in keeping with the original design specs of the piece. Not knowing where the sights may be set, I started at the 50 yard range complete with chronograph and loaded a single round, the bolt picked up the cartridge out of the magazine and chambered it, no problem. The chambered round fired and struck the target high and left and the bolt catch held the bolt back, so far so good. Time to load up the legal limit of 5 rounds and do some sight fiddling, 4 rounds later and I felt I had the thing dialed in for 50 yards, all the while the CQ worked as it should. I loaded up 5 more round as a final confirmation, things looked really good but invariably I had to drop one and open the group, nuts.
100 yard Shooting and Handloads
Once I was satisfied that the piece worked and was zeroed at 50 yards, I moved on to the 100 yard range and quickly tested it’s accuracy with the other 10 rounds of Winchester factory ammo I had. The CQ chewed through these with out a concern neatly depositing the leftover brass at the 5 O’clock position about 7 feet away. Accuracy was good.
At this point in the game I moved onto handloads. While waiting for the Ontario CFO to approve the restricted transfer, I had time to fashion up some handloads. Not to bore anyone with the load work-ups and such, I found a good load using H322 and Hornady’s 55gr FMJ/BT. Best accuracy developed at about the 3000 fps mark in this rifle, fortunately I had a couple hundred rounds made up at this level, “luck favors the prepared”. The only changes made with this loading was decreasing the charge weight for the military Lake City brass by 2/10th of a grain this kept them relatively the same velocity. As can be seen in the scans below the Lake City brass produced better consistency and better accuracy, though I can always be counted on to throw one of the rounds, I did not attribute this to the rifle at all. Finding the right load is a MasterCard priceless moment.
It was time to put the beast to work. I had the original Norinco 5/20 mag, one Bushmaster 5/20 mag and three 5/30 Okay mags, through the course of the day I used them all and found that the CQ accepted them all equally. From the bench at 100 yards I was able to keep all shots neatly in side the 9, 10 and X ring of a standard SR-1 (200 yd reduced for 100 yd) round bullseye target, with the exception of my occasional pulled shot. All the while the rifle pitched the empty cases neatly at the 5 o’clock position 6 feet from the firing point. Before leaving the bench I thought to test the rifles ability to hold zero when hot and loaded all the mags I had and proceeded to empty them as fast as I could. After the first mag, my wife graciously reloaded it with 5 more rounds, so that I could complete the string with 30 rounds down the tube. I noticed no change in zero, though my group opened up a tad, and no stoppages. Next I tried some shooting from the standing position, mags fell out without needing any encouragement and the bolt catch worked as advertised, still not a stoppage. Out came the mat and I tried some prone shooting. Boring, other than my now famous pulled shots, they all impacted in the black and you guessed it, not a single stoppage.
Final Tests
After the 100 yard workout I elected to let the thing cool and chase my wife around the safe area a bit. Once the piece had cooled off, I ran a wet then dry patch through the bore. I wanted to try some 62 and 75 grain bullets and wanted a clean barrel for the experiment. If you follow conventional wisdom a 1 in 12 twist is too slow to stabilize the heavier bullets, conventional wisdom is spot on. Knowing this going into the experiment I moved over to the 50 yard range and with 10 rounds of a 62 grain loading, I let go. Result; a wicked large group and text book key holing. Next was the 75 grain loading. Result; not quite as large a group, but definitely not a good one and evidence that the rounds were just starting to tumble. Not a perfect key hole like the 62 grainers but the target strikes showed elongated holes. Science wins.
Conclusions
The Norinco CQ 311 is an affordable alternative in the AR market for anyone who is looking for a 100 to 300 yard shooter, it’s only restriction being that bullets used must be 55 grains or less. It is definitely capable of keeping up with the more expensive name brands out there and certainly is reliable. It is also more or less a carbon copy of the earlier M-16A1 metal wise, though swapping out the cheesy furniture is a must (and a coat of paint on the critter wouldn’t hurt), if the vintage look is what you want. On the down side, other than being a restricted firearm, it is a Norinco so threading is in metric. If your envisioned black rifle has all the rails, lasers and gongs pictured in the latest Guns and Ammo magazine, your going to be at a disadvantage from the start. In the end I would recommend it, as it is certainly everything and maybe even more than the vaunted M305/M14S (M14/M1A).
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