Gear Review: Ultradyne Apollo Max Muzzle Brake

1. Thanks, Mr. Pike. Nicely informative review.

   One thing: “…with an overall diameter of .975 ounces.” Ounces?

   • Yes, overall diameter of .975 ounces. …. ’cause overall diameter of 1 ounce is too many kilograms for a square.

     😜

     • it was changed to inches by the way

       • give ’em an ounce and they’ll take an inch…………….

   • My bad…..

2. Yes, $129 dollars is a bit too much for this device.

   I’ve got a dozen Strike Industries JCOMP Gen 2’s that do just as well as this one does. I got them in a ‘lot’ of things from a tax auction sale, the whole lot cost me $50.00. So I’ll stick with those for my AR’s.

3. No thanks to muzzle brakes. Flash suppressors? Yes. Silencer/Suppressors. Okay. Muzzle brakes are loud. And nothing out there recoils enough to justify one anyway.

   • A hardcast 335 grain ahead of a healthy dose of Accurate 2015 runs a little over 2700 fpe out the barrel of my 444Marlin. That qualifies as something that would benefit from a brake, but when I consider ruining the looks and the noise, I havent been able to justify it for something I only shoot 40 to 50 rounds a year through.

     • Pb, that’s a stout load, but still, no to the muzzle brake. I have one. It’s a Mag-Na-Port on a kinda custom 700 7mm mag. The only reason I never screwed it off is that the rifle shoots and it was already there. Don’t mess with rifles that shoot. It is loud though.

       • hey GF, I just took inventory and I actually only shot 14 of that load this year. What I would really like is to supplement it with a Ruglin™
         44 mag Model 1894SS in the near future, even if it includes the unnecessary crossbolt safety.

4. Let’s see: this device takes a .223 gun with no recoil to begin with, then makes the gun longer, heavier, more expensive, and MUCH louder.
   Yep, sounds like a real winner! No wonder you gave it a 5-star review.
   /sarc

5. https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/ar-15-muzzle-brake-shootout-2/

   The TTAG muzzle brake and also flash suppressor comparison tests here was one of the best articles they have ever written. It helped guide me to the 2A Armament T3 Compensator. A perfect blend between reducing recoil and flash without making the gun significantly louder like most brakes. All for $60

6. It is very nice and all for those with deeper pockets than mine. For me and my herd it’s USGI flash hiders on sale. To time the hider Travis I surface the kind of crush washers that don’t crush. Easy to time the hider using two small machinist quality bubble levels and a good barrel clamp, one level on the receiver tang and one across the 12 o’clock hider slot.

7. I love muzzle brakes for keeping on target till impact but my hunting buddy hates it lol 😂

8. I don’t remember anymore from whom I bought my muzzle brakes, but I do recall that they were half this much. After moving, my stuff is kind of scattered hither and yon. But it makes the recoil on my AR10 negligible. Can’t have an A2 birdcage, since flash suppressors are illegal in this state. Not precisely sure why, but supposedly it so that the police can see where you are shooting from when you are shooting at them. Or some thing.

9. I have the .30 cal LR version of this on my .308 Christensen Ridgeline chassis rifle. Rated up to 300 WinMag. It cracks like thunder, but I don’t get shaken out of eye relief in the scope. 🙂

10. The average MSR with 16 inch barrel firing 5.56x45mm NATO 55 grain has free recoil energy of 5.48 Ft-lbs, and recoil velocity of 6.65 FPS.

    For the reality of what muzzle brakes actually do and don’t do for the perception of less felt recoil energy vs actual recoil energy one needs to consider the physics aspects for the energy involved:

    The important part is the free recoil energy and remembering this is not the same as recoil pressure (which is around 4 FT-lbs – depends on rifle weigh though, but on average around 4 FT-lbs). The various ‘tests’ you see on you tube videos showing a rifle being fired on a ‘sled’ and then measuring how far back the movement was is not a reliable indicator of actual recoil pressure reduction for a muzzle brake. The movement backward is a result of recoil velocity and that’s not what is reducing the recoil energy, its possible to have lesser movement back but still not reduce actual recoil pressure energy so the movement back of the sled is not a reliable indicator of actual recoil pressure reduction. The actual recoil force has to be measured to see an actual reduction in recoil.

    There are two reasons for this ‘felt recoil reduction’ that seem to be working together but are working together at the same time; (1) ported muzzle brakes don’t actually reduce felt recoil pressure, instead they redirect the energy in the hot gases to dissipate (at least 60% for most of the better ones) the energy in a direction not in line with the rifle axis. (2) Before the bullet reaches the muzzle brake the forces that cause actual recoil pressure have already happened, meaning you have experienced the full actual recoil pressure but you just don’t perceive it.

    These two things happen so quickly they seem to be happening together when in reality they aren’t, so people look at a muzzle brake and go “this one reduces recoil” when that’s not true at all even though its use may contribute as a side effect of redirecting energy in a direction not in line with the rifle axis.

    The reason you don’t feel (perceive) the full recoil pressure but perceive a lesser recoil even though all the recoil pressure is still there, is because when the muzzle brake redirects those hot gases away from the rifle axis the recoil force impulse timing for the rifle is changed causing the felt recoil pressure (what you perceive) to spread out over time. Thus even though you are still getting the same amount of actual recoil pressure overall its occurring over a longer period of time – sort of like, in a way, the perceived difference between a sudden punch at 4 FT-lbs and a push pressure rising to 4 FT-lbs. Thus you ‘feel’ (perceive) less recoil pressure.

    And this is why you ‘feel’ less recoil with muzzle brakes (ones made correctly that is). The actual recoil force needs to be measured to see if its actually reduced. Yes, the laws of physics are fooling you into thinking there is actually a reduction in actual recoil force because it ‘feels’ less.

    There are two main methods used in muzzle brakes to provide this less felt recoil. One is porting in such a manner as to direct a portion of the mass gas energy in a way that sort of ‘propels’ the rifle away from the body some (just a very slight amount) – pulls it away from the body, like, for example, the Ultradyne Apollo Max Muzzle Brake in this article does. The other is porting in such a way as to direct the majority mass of gas energy in two different axis 90 degrees from each other (vertical and horizontal) straight away from the rifle axis, for example, the Strike Industries J-Comp Gen 2. Each method does the same thing for felt recoil, changes the rifle recoil force impulse timing.

    The action of the ports in doing this is also what determines the perceived ‘loudness’ of the muzzle brake. For the ‘loudness’ its the same amount of sound energy you would hear without the muzzle break, but with the muzzle brake its seems either louder or less loud because of the amount of that energy being more or less concentrated more closely to you instead of being directed mostly forward without a muzzle brake. In reality its the same amount of sound energy, and actually its false that a muzzle brake can reduce the sound like some claim. You can’t reduce sound unless you reduce the sound energy and muzzle brakes don’t do that, suppressors do by dissipating the energy in the form of heat in the baffles.

    The size and placement of the ports matter as does the orientation of the energy as it leaves the port. The orientation of the energy, as well as the amount released in a moment in time, is decided by the port design.

    There are variations, sometimes combinations, for each of these two main methods.

    Either of the two main methods may also reduce actual recoil force, but it needs to be actually measured. Actual recoil force and felt recoil force are not necessarily the same thing.

    • Clarification for “…pulls it away from the body…”

      For a short duration of a micro second but this force is overcome by the greater force of recoil velocity so quickly its not felt as a movement away from the body. In that micro second as its overcome by the greater force of recoil velocity some energy is dissipated by energy forces cancelling each other through phase cancellation.

      • further clarification for: “One is porting in such a manner as to direct a portion of the mass gas energy in a way that sort of ‘propels’ the rifle away from the body some (just a very slight amount) – pulls it away from the body”

        and clarification for : “its possible to have lesser movement back but still not reduce actual recoil pressure energy so the movement back of the sled is not a reliable indicator of actual recoil pressure reduction. The actual recoil force has to be measured to see an actual reduction in recoil.”

        meaning in terms of the energy, not actually propels the rifle physically away from the body in a manner that’s obvious – and is more counteracting mass movement. Its Newton’s first law: the law of inertia – basically, that if a body is at rest or moving at a constant speed in a straight line, it will remain at rest or keep moving in a straight line at constant speed unless it is acted upon by a force. When the bullet is fired the rifle mass moves along its axis as the bullet moves through the barrel, even if there were no such thing as recoil velocity by cancelling it out completely the rifle mass would still be moving along its axis (free recoil energy) at some rate by the bullet moving down and then leaving the barrel. The direction porting of the muzzle brake type porting being described, for example, the Ultradyne Apollo Max Muzzle Brake, is such that the energy is used to counteract a momentary rearward force of mass movement so quickly its not felt in terms of the force counteraction. In that micro second as its overcome by the greater force of recoil velocity some energy that would have gone into recoil is dissipated by some energy of free recoil energy and recoil velocity cancelling each other through phase cancellation. Its potential vs kinetic energy in that moment of cancellation.

        Why its possible to have lesser movement back on the sled but still not reduce actual recoil pressure energy so the movement back of the sled is not a reliable indicator of actual recoil pressure mitigation. …

        Basically; In that moment of phase cancellation as that energy is lost there is an exponential decay of the energy forces so there is no constant energy being applied to maintain recoil forces at a constant rate and during that moment its the sled mass its self at a different rate of movement as it begins to move for its mass that was already set in motion before the rifle recoil forces completely decayed. So whats actually being measured for that sled movement is the sled mass movement and not the rifle mass movement from recoil because by the time the sled moves the rifle mass recoil forces have already decayed so the sled movement is not representative of the rifle recoil forces.

        All of these sled measurement tests assum the correlation of movement is equal to the causation of the forces of rifle recoil, in other words, the sled is moving because the rifle recoil is making it move continually but that’s not really true, we already know that correlation is not and can not equal causation in the laws of physics or basically for anything else even life. Once that sled started to move the actual recoil forces of the rifle mass had already dissipated and its the sled mass its self that’s expending its energy with its own rate of decay and moves at the rate the sled assumes for its mass which is completely different from the rate of the rifle mass recoil energy movement, so there is no actual correlation to the causation. The actual recoil force has to be measured at the rifle its self to see an actual mitigation or not of recoil.

    • Brief clarification for: “…suppressors do by dissipating the energy in the form of heat in the baffles.”

      Basically, in the physics; The suppressor baffles delay the hot gases for very brief moments of time, this delay allows the gases to cool some. This cooling happens because heat is lost from heated gasses the more they are delayed while still in motion, this is why a suppressor heats up – the gasses impacting the baffles, being delayed, causes the baffles to heat and this is transferred to the suppressor body in radiated and/or physical contact to the suppressor body. As the heated gases cool the amount they do in the suppressor energy lost in the form of heat contains the ‘explosive’ sound energy so the sound energy is also reduced thus the reduction in sound from use of a suppressor.

    • correction: “There are two reasons for this ‘felt recoil reduction’ that seem to be working together but are working together at the same time;”

      should have been …

      There are two reasons for this ‘felt recoil reduction’ that seem to be working together at the same time but in reality they are not actually working together at the same time;

    • In short, it’s more proper to refer to it as recoil mitigation, not reduction.

      • yeah it would be more proper in the technical science and common usage aspect to say recoil mitigation rather than reduction. “reduction” is what most people use though, mainly because manufacturers call it reduction and I used “reduction” in what I wrote for continuity of ‘familiarization’ for the masses. But you are correct, its recoil mitigation. Thanks for pointing that out.

    • .40 cal Booger,
      Thank you for posting that.
      Very interesting and educational.

11. “….its possible to have lesser movement back but still not reduce actual recoil pressure energy so the movement back of the sled is not a reliable indicator of actual recoil pressure reduction.”

    The laws of physics say what you are stating is impossible. This like the rest quoted section is a whole lot of BS with a tiniest sliver of truth. I’m sorry something happened in your life you feel you have to prove to others who didn’t ask how smaught you are.

    Going to be brief as I can, it is true you can not reduce the physical energy leaving the muzzle with a muzzle brake but you can change it’s direction. Rearward energy known as Recoil is not to be confused with Perceived Recoil as done many times in the .40 cal B. sub article. Force (Recoil) is calculated with Mass (weight of rifle) X Velocity (the speed the rifle travels rearwards). The mass of your rifle is constant however in videos you see rifles in sleds rearward movement reduced simply by adding a muzzle brake. According to physics if the rifle weight stays the same (Mass) but it’s traveling rewards less that means only one other factor would be changed, the speed our rifle travels rearward (Velocity). Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, gases and heavy speeding bullet going forwards means an equal force traveling rearwards. Faster and heavier the bullet the more energy going out the front means more recoil coming back. This is where a muzzle brake deflects the gases and energy leaving the muzzle horizontally. The more energy and gas you deflect side to side means the less force there is to travel frontwards and thus backwards into your shoulder. The overall energy output is the same but the rearward energy is reduced physically making less recoil into you and your shoulder.

    And no, suppressors are not heat sinks trying to turn sound energy into heat. They reduce the velocity of the gasses behind the bullet.

    And absolutely NO! Not a single muzzle brake on the market advertises reduced sound. They would be classified as a suppressor and get visited by the ATF for selling NFA items without the required paperwork and license.

    • I do physics for a living, I am a physicist that specializes in energy physics. Currently I’m applying that towards a government contract for their next gen weapons but also to developing specialized suppressors and muzzle brakes as well. Sometimes its difficult for me to wrote things in a science aspect for the masses, but I thought this was all pretty clear. And after having several people read it evidently it is clear, so apparently you didn’t comprehend much of what I wrote. I’m not a high school physics teacher, which basically this is high school level physics, so I’m not going to hold your hand through each and every thing but I will address some of what you wrote.

      “Going to be brief as I can, it is true you can not reduce the physical energy leaving the muzzle with a muzzle brake but you can change it’s direction.”

      I never said other wise. Read again.

      “….its possible to have lesser movement back but still not reduce actual recoil pressure energy so the movement back of the sled is not a reliable indicator of actual recoil pressure reduction.””

      100% true. Its potential vs kinetic energy, its a basic physics principal discovered in high school physics. Did you not go to high school?

      “The laws of physics say what you are stating is impossible.”

      I assure you its not impossible, you demonstrated it your self without realizing it in another form when you typed out your missive as it was the same exact laws of physics at play. In one part of your missive you say its true but in another part you say its impossible – I’m pretty sure you don’t understand even what you wrote.

      “And no, suppressors are not heat sinks trying to turn sound energy into heat. They reduce the velocity of the gasses behind the bullet.”

      I never said that. More simply put another way for hand holding for you…What I said was delaying the gasses (the baffles delay them) causes the gasses to cool and as the gases cool they lose energy in the form of heat, and to include your missive now, this does cause the velocity of the gases to decrease because its lost energy. That lost energy in the form of heat contains the sound energy. As that energy is expended in heat that sound energy goes with it, thus a reduction in sound energy.

      It is the principle of conservation of energy, meaning that: Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but rather transformed into various forms. You can’t reduce sound energy contained in hot gases by reducing the velocity of the gases, you have two options, one is to stop the gases and the other is cool them by delay as they move. Well, obviously we can’t just stop the hot gases in a suppressor because if we did the bullet would never leave the suppressor so we are left with the option of delaying them and this is where the baffles enter in terms of the sound energy. We know from the laws of thermodynamics that as a hot gas cools it looses energy, just like anything else, for example, as a hot stove burner cools it looses energy in the form of heat.

      The gases created when a bullet is fired contains all the energy it is ever going to have, it does not increase to speed up a bullet through a suppressor as some claim, you can not increase the energy in the hot gases. As the gases are delayed they cool and as they cool that energy is given up in the form of heat because….wait for it… the principle of conservation of energy, meaning that: Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but rather transformed into various forms – that other form here is heat. The gasses impacting the baffles, being delayed by the baffles, causes the baffles to heat as that energy is expended and this heat is transferred to the suppressor body in radiated and/or physical contact to the suppressor body.

      I never said the suppressor was a heat sink. The suppressor heats because it has no other choice because the laws of physics demands the energy take another form and that form is heat and that heat has to go some place and that place is a continuing radiation away from the source through the suppressor body. Now why is this? Its because no energy is being added and can’t be added thus is can only lose energy and that loss is in the form of heat. The suppressor is not acting as a heat sink, I never said it was, its proximity and contact in relation to the heat radiating out from the baffles, its in the path of the radiated heat and has no other choice but to heat and it too will lose energy (the heat) as it cools.

      Its simple high school physics, you can’t reduce sound unless you reduce the sound energy, the velocity of the gases has nothing to do with it.

      “And absolutely NO! Not a single muzzle brake on the market advertises reduced sound. ”

      I never said that. What I was talking about, if you go back and actually bother to comprehend, was the perceived loudness and why its still the same sound energy thus its false that a muzzle break reduces sound because you can’t reduce sound unless you reduce the sound energy and muzzle brakes don’t do that but suppressors do.

      “Going to be brief as I can, it is true you can not reduce the physical energy leaving the muzzle with a muzzle brake but you can change it’s direction. Rearward energy known as Recoil is not to be confused with Perceived Recoil as done many times in the .40 cal B. sub article. Force (Recoil) is calculated with Mass (weight of rifle) X Velocity (the speed the rifle travels rearwards). The mass of your rifle is constant however in videos you see rifles in sleds rearward movement reduced simply by adding a muzzle brake. According to physics if the rifle weight stays the same (Mass) but it’s traveling rewards less that means only one other factor would be changed, the speed our rifle travels rearward (Velocity). Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, gases and heavy speeding bullet going forwards means an equal force traveling rearwards. Faster and heavier the bullet the more energy going out the front means more recoil coming back. This is where a muzzle brake deflects the gases and energy leaving the muzzle horizontally. The more energy and gas you deflect side to side means the less force there is to travel frontwards and thus backwards into your shoulder. The overall energy output is the same but the rearward energy is reduced physically making less recoil into you and your shoulder.”

      Once again, we are dealing with redirecting energy away from the firearm axis. You obviously do not see the difference here.

      “According to physics if the rifle weight stays the same (Mass) but it’s traveling rewards less that means only one other factor would be changed,”

      false. The laws of physics does not say that.

      And this little nugget from you..

      “This is where a muzzle brake deflects the gases and energy leaving the muzzle horizontally. The more energy and gas you deflect side to side means the less force there is to travel frontwards and thus backwards into your shoulder. The overall energy output is the same but the rearward energy is reduced physically making less recoil into you and your shoulder.”

      is 100% wrong.

      I’m not going to go through everything and hold your hand … but seriously, you can’t possibly be this lacking in reading skills.

      • and…. you don’t seem to know the difference between ‘felt’ recoil force and actual recoil force… nor do you seem to understand what impulse means.

      • clarification for : “…you can not increase the energy in the hot gases.”

        Unless you add more energy.

        The gases created when a bullet is fired contains all the energy it is ever going to have, you can’t add energy to those gases. All they can do from then on out is cool down at some rate, even if in amounts so tiny its impractical to measure but they are going to cool. As they cool they lose energy in the form of heat at some rate. By the very act of the hot gases being hot to begin with they are expending energy in the form of heat the moment in time the bullet is fired and that energy moves from a potential to a kinetic state. And instance of kinetic energy at its moment of creation is going to have all the kinetic energy it will ever have, an instance of potential energy is going to have all the potential energy it will ever have – unless energy is added to it and that simply can not be done after a bullet is fired. For example, it is impossible for a bullet to speed up through a suppressor because the gases are being delayed by the baffles and as that gas is delayed the gases cool and lose energy so their capability to propel a bullet has lessened to some degree, so unless someone has found a way to violate the laws of physics that no one else in the world knows of and not even physics its self allows it is impossible for a bullet to speed up in a suppressor.

        • The reason a bullet seems to increase velocity out of a suppressor has nothing to do with the claim that the speed of the bullet is increased in or by the suppressor as its impossible for that to happen.

          Basically, to not go though hundreds of pages of the science, and in plain terms;

          A bullet mass has potential and kinetic energy. A bullet before it is fired has all the energy it is ever going to have in the form of potential energy, once its fired that potential energy is converted to kinetic energy and that’s all the kinetic energy it is ever going to have. Once a bullet is fired you can not add more potential or kinetic energy to it.

          As a bullet travels through the suppressor baffle holes, in the moment of passing, it is subjected to a slight rearward vacuum created by the gases cooling because they are delayed. This retards the kinetic energy of the bullet mass slightly for a moment in time, in other words that amount of energy retarded becomes potential energy again because its still there but not being used as kinetic energy. This means the bullet still has energy it has not used. As the bullet clears the baffle hole that vacuum effect has less effect so the mass of the bullet again starts trying to consume that potential energy as kinetic energy but overall can’t because it again hits another baffle hole and the process starts all over again to basically cause the bullet mass to store potential energy, and the propelling gases are cooling down and loosing energy.

          As the bullet clears the suppressor exit hole, all that potential energy is still there in the bullet mass and laws of physics demands that the energy be expended.

          This demand causes a slight increase in bullet velocity (sometimes) after leaving the suppressor because all that potential energy stored up is suddenly released as kinetic energy because its no longer retarded and stored as potential energy – thus it seems a bullet velocity increases beyond its original muzzle velocity (in some cases) when in reality in terms of the energy it really hasn’t, its just stored potential energy being suddenly released as kinetic energy.

          But no, a bullet does not speed up in a suppressor or by use of a suppressor as is claimed sometimes. Its just physics suddenly using energy that was already there, no energy was added by the suppressor (like its claimed) to cause the bullet velocity to increase.

12. Oh if you want the equation for Perceived Recoil or Recoil Impulse it’s represented as Work or Force X Distance. In firearms if the recoiling energy is distributed over a longer period of time it feels more as a gentle push as apposed to a short snappy punch. The recoil energy is unaltered but how it is imparted into the shooter can make something feel more or less comfortable to shoot. This is why semi autos feel the have less recoil than bolt guns, the energy is drawn out over a longer period of time as the action cycles.

    • I’m not even going to bother explaining to you how wrong you are with this one for the energy aspect. I explained enough in reply to your other post.

13. Posers gotta pose and the longer they write the more they out themselves.

14. The Ultradyne Apollo Max Muzzle Brake is a great option for any AR-15 in your collection. This muzzle brake is lightweight and easy to install. Here you get drainlayers auckland that learn more new things for plumbers. It will reduce felt recoil, making the rifle easier to control during those long hours of training or hunting. If you are looking for the best tactical accessories for your firearm, look no further than our review of this amazing muzzle brake.

Comments are closed.