Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Recoil-Operated

When I was arranging delivery of the Wilson 9mm, my contact at Wilson Combat pointed out that when the gun was new I should stick to 124- or 147-grain ammunition, in order to make sure that it had ample recoil energy to cycle the gun. Given my recent experiences with subsonic velocities from cheap 115gr plinking ammo in the Canik and Steyr, I ordered two 500-rd boxes of Winchester Q4318 124gr NATO ball ammo from Lucky Gunner to feed the Tactical Carry Professional.

Curious to see how it would function in the Steyr, I hijacked a hundred rounds of it and took the C9-A1 to Indy Arms Co yesterday morning.

While the pattern of ejected shells was as erratic as ever, the gun functioned fine, going through the complete cycle of operations every time. I did manage to keep the slide from locking back twice by inadvertently contacting the slide stop with my strong-side thumb while firing.

This makes 830 rounds fired through the Steyr C9-A1 without cleaning or lubing, with seven failures-to-fire (#8, #472, #535, #555, #558, #672, #695), seven failures to extract (#234, #266, #276, #531, #535, #543, #558), and one failure to go completely into battery (#116). 1,170 rounds left to go.
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