ORIGINAL: mouthcaller

kesberman - I thought you were ready topunch a ticket on the Nitro train. What happened????

As was previously stated, the Flight Controlshells have a wad-cup designed to stay with the shot columnlonger, preventing shot stringing, reducing flyers and shooting tighter patterns. The wad is pretty neat - it is a solid column of plastic up front with little "air brakes" in the back that pop-out when the wad exits the barrelto eventually slow the wad and seperate it from the shot. I shot some two years ago before I switched to Nitros and they performed the best out of the conventional lead shells I tried. It is generally true that they will likely pattern best from non-ported chokes becase a ported choke is designed to (1) reduce recoil and muzzle jump, and (2) seperate the shot from the wad, allowing the shot to leave the muzzlecleanly with no rotation or interference from the wad.

Even though I was shooting them through a ported Star-Dot choke they still patterned well. I was sighting in a scope at the time and it was interesting to hear the wad hit the target at 20 yards.

As I recall, I got around 75-95 hits in a 10 inch circle at 40 yards with these Federal flight control 3.5", 6 shot. Contrast that with the Nitro 2.25 oz. 4X5X7 which produced 246 hits and you see why I'm on the Nitro train baby.

One more thing - for some reason Federal tends to have the longestopen hullsin the business and these3.5" 12 gauge loadscontinually hung up in my Mossberg 835. The spent hull was simply too long to be ejected, so make sure your gun can handle them before hunting with them or you will be shooting a single-shot gun.