Was speaking to a Cpl today about how you keep your mags in your ammo pouches.He was saying pointing down for ease of access, but that seems a good way to get dirt into the top rounds to me.Also stored curving inwards or outwards?
Pointing down and with the top round facing out so the curve's against your body. You can fit six in (bit of a squeeze) and, no, they won't get dirty until your pouch is full of shoite. If the pouch fill with water, facing down helps them to drain. Most importantly, they are in the right position to go straight onto the weapon quickly.
I recall one of my training team giving us the spiel big style about mags bottoms on the bottom of the pouch, open end uppermost. That way when the belt order gets dropped / thrown to the floor the lips don't get bent or damaged.
IIRC one of Vietnam blokes was saying bullets pointing away form the body for obvious reasons, they also had mags open ends downwards so they could drain handy if you are in the Mekong delta.
Pointing down and with the top round facing out so the curve's against your body. You can fit six in (bit of a squeeze) and, no, they won't get dirty until your pouch is full of shoite. If the pouch fill with water, facing down helps them to drain. Most importantly, they are in the right position to go straight onto the weapon quickly.
But if you store them pointing down less chance of you losin a round rather than if stored rounds up. If you are storin up way wise put a mark in Perm pen on the uppermost round..so you can check by a glance....between checks of course.
Then again in some theaters this weather you will go through that much ammo it might not be an problem
On the SAA instructors course you are told that you that you should always have rounds uppermost. In reality though I always carry my mags rounds down. When I was in NI it caused a major sh#t storm if you lost a round so its just a case of old habits die hard in my case.
Mags down, number of rounds rolling round bottom of pouch always tallied with number supposed to be in mag. Mind you bit of harry black for other mags meant that a round always got stuck on tape when it was ripped off.
I was told magazine always up, because you can damage the lips on the mag if they are upside down, causing ill fitting mags and thus increasing the likelyhood of stoppages.
DS answer is store the mags facing upwards, to keep dirt out of them. But really it's down to personal preference - even in Phase 1, I've never seen anyone pulled up for having them upside down.
Bent lips were coomon with the A1 mags, although that was mostly due to bad drills from the jocks. throwing down webbing and such. The A2 mag is much stronger but old habbits die hard. For me It's rounds up.
Down for me but the old nylon 72 pattern LMG pouches had big bullet sized drain holes which could be embarrasing. I was once pulled for it on a site guard ARF inspection but the L/cpl who did so had spent the previous NI tour in the int cell so wasnt exactly up to speed with individual drills. The funny thing was I was the gunner but he still asked me!
As stated above it may now be taught bottoms down but in the SLR days we were taught bottoms up to grasp the mag ready to insert. It also meant that the £100 fine per round didnt happen as the loose ones (not hat I ever had one) would be in the pouch.
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