Quickie Range Trip...

Sig SP2022 in a Milt Sparks Summer Special and a P320 XFULL with a tungsten-infused TXG frame* in Dark Star Gear kydex.

Spent a whole fifteen minutes on the range at Marion County Fish & Game yesterday before wilting like steamed broccoli overdone in the microwave.

I had loaded all the magazines ahead of time, and so I was in and out for the amount of time it took me to carry my stuff to the line, snap a picture, ring steel 115 times from 20 yards, carry my gear back to the car, and leave.

I signed in at the clubhouse at 0929 and signed out at 0945, so the actual shootin’ time was… brief. Thermometer in the car read 88 degrees in the shade and the humidity down there on the banks of Eagle Creek is notoriously sticky. Humidity was 90% at the airport, so probably closer to 95% at the range. 

*Those tungsten infused P320 frames are the berries. That thing weighs like a heavy 1911. With that 115gr range ammo, you can just go ham on a steel target making it ring like a telephone, and the gun hardly moves.

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #262...

At the range yesterday wrapping things up with the Daniel Defense H9 Compact for an upcoming review. It was plenty warm, but the sunny skies I was promised failed to materialize. Instead, there was a misting drizzle that made me glad that Marion County Fish & Game installed those shed roofs over the rear of the pistol bays.

If I'd still been using the old Shooting Chrony Beta, I would have had to trudge out into the wet after each ten-shot chronograph string, but the Garmin Xero C1 meant I could just load up three magazines with ten rounds each and sit there in the dry while making notes on each string. (The data on the screen there is from the Federal 135gr HydraShok Deep, FWIW.)

Of course, if the weather had been really vile, I could have used the Garmin indoors at Indy Arms Company, unlike the old chronograph.

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #260...

So, it's been ten years since I first messed with a P320, when I bought that full-size 9mm back in 2015. I put that one through a 2,000 round test. I also won that P320 compact at a Friends of the NRA banquet up in Lafayette, and reviewed the P320 X-Carry for Shooting Illustrated in 2017.

I guess this X-FULL makes the fourth P320 I've put in serious trigger time with now. It's an April of 2020 production gun that was bone stock (this seems important) with low miles on it, and thanks to the current brouhaha it was sitting in a used gun counter of a suburban Indianapolis gun store for four bills. Further, thanks to the flat demand for anything P320 these days, I got fifteen percent whacked off the price of a TXG tungsten-infused grip module at my local gun store.

Considering that the gun sells new with the regular module for seven hundo, I'm six bills into almost a grand worth of pistol.

Wednesday at the range I put a hundred rounds of American Eagle 115gr ball through the pistol, and with these powder puff loads and the heavy frame, it shoots stupid flat. That's 370 rounds total through the gun so far with no failures of any type to report.

320 to 270

Everything I've put through it so far has been domestic brass-cased ball ammo, so yesterday I went to Indy Arms Co and put a fifty round box of steel-cased Magtech FMJ through it. It continued to function normally.

This makes 270 rounds then.

Still working...

Another hundred rounds through the P320 XFULL on Thursday morning, just doing big goofy mag dumps, trying to get back into the groove with the P320 trigger.

Of course the gun functioned fine, as one expects with warm-ish 124gr FMJ. With the two partial boxes fired through it earlier, that brings the round count on the gun up to 220.

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #259...

The entry-level X-series SIG Sauer P320, the XFULL combines the XCARRY frame and trigger with the 4.7" full-size slide.

Seems to work okay, at least from the initial couple quick seven-yard mag dumps at Indy Arms Co...

Popper

The only handgun cartridge that really lives down to its reputation is .25 ACP, also known as 6.35mm Browning.

Dating to the dawn of the last century and designed for little blowback vest pocket autos, even the warmest Euro loadings are decidedly tepid. While SAAMI maximum pressure for the cartridge is 25,000 PSI, which is similar to the .22LR's 24,000 PSI, it tends to use heavier bullets that travel at a lower velocity.

At Marion County Fish & Game, I chronographed some Fiocchi 50gr FMJ ammo out of my Titan .25, using the Garmin Xero C1 Pro. The ten shot string averaged 752 feet per second, which is a feeble 63 foot-pounds of muzzle energy, if that's a number that's important to you.

For comparison, .22LR Federal Punch flirts with supersonic velocities out of even a pocket pistol, averaging 1,108fps from the Ruger LCP II .22 the last time I chronoed a batch. (That's 79 foot pounds of energy, for what it's worth.)

.25ACP, even the Euro-spec ball, is known for minimal penetration, and if you're using a hollow point projectile that, by some miracle, expands despite the low velocity, you're going to lose what marginal penetration you do have. If, for some reason, all you have is a .25, load it with Fiocchi or S&B or similar FMJ and aim with care.

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Velocity

As always, the RMR made ringing plates at 25 yards super easy.

The KelTec PR57 is the smallest of the current crop of pistols chambered in 5.7x28mm, part of which comes from the fact that it has a four inch barrel, as opposed to the 5" and longer tubes on the others.

With velocity being the cartridge's stock in trade, what effect does lopping an inch off the barrel have on the speed of the most common defensive loading, the 40gr SS197 loaded with the Hornady V-Max projectile?

At Marion County Fish & Game yesterday, with temps in the low eighties there on the banks of Eagle Creek, I busted out the Garmin Xero C1 Pro and compared the velocities from the PR57 to those from the Five-SeveN Mk.3.

From the larger pistol, the average velocity over ten shots was 1,715 feet per second, while from the compact KelTec, that number dropped to 1,611 fps. More noticeably, the extreme spread really opened up, with the fastest and slowest rounds from the 5" barrel being only 26.4 fps apart, while the 4" barrel opened the extreme spread to ninety-five feet per second. That extra inch for the powder to burn helped velocity and consistency.

Incidentally, that Garmin is handier than a pocket on a shirt. Just reading the numbers off the little box right there on the bench beats trudging downrange to my old Shooting Chrony Beta, notebook in hand, at the end of each string. Plus I can do my chronograph work indoors at Indy Arms Company in bad weather! Recommend.

Spicy little blaster…

Only a few range trips left before I wrap up my initial review of the KelTec PR-57. I’ve got a lot of thoughts, and a lot of mixed feels. This is gonna be a complex writeup.

Big Bada Boom...

Handguns chambered in 5.7x28mm tend to be noisy, and up to now every one I've fired... FN Five-SeveN, M&P 5.7, Ruger-5.7...has had a barrel five inches long or thereabouts.

The PR-57 from Kel-Tec has a four inch tube and the increase in muzzle blast and flash is noticeable.

There's a code in my indoor range pictures. If you see the orange TQ on the PHLster Flatpack tourniquet carrier, there are other patrons using the indoor range. If not, I've got the bay to myself.

Yesterday the range was crowded and I was using lane 11 in the rifle bay. It was hard to distinguish between the muzzle blast of the PR-57 and the dude shooting a 5.56 AR in lane 12.

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Shooting on easy mode...

Those little steel plates at twenty yards are a breeze with a red dot sight* on the Staccato C. It went another 150 malfunction-free rounds in the pistol bays at MCF&G yesterday, and if it hadn't been in the low forties with a 15-20mph breeze making it feel a lot colder, I would have stayed for another hundred rounds.

The Ruger RXM is continuing to run like a top as well. The knife is for popping the ammo box flaps open without tearing them so I can use the empty boxes for a photo shoot later. It's been literally decades since I've had to pull a pistol, but I use that little Spyderco Dragonfly at least a half dozen times a day.

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Boomsticks: The new Ruger/Magpul RXM...

Testing continues on the Savage Stance XR.

Meanwhile, I can finally talk about the new Ruger. In a world where there are already several Gen3 Glock 19 clones of varying quality, it's easy to go "Ho-hum, another one..."

But Ruger and Magpul are both manufacturers that know what they're doing; this isn't some back-alley operation in Istanbul.

Plus, it's not a Gen3 Glock clone, but rather a vastly product-improved pistol that happens to have used the G19 as a jumping off point. It has a direct-mounting optical system that is similar to that on the Echelon that will accommodate the three most popular optic footprints (RMR, DP Pro, RMSc) and comes with co-witness sights including a tritium insert up front with a high-viz surround. The fire control unit is in a true chassis, for grip-swapping customizability. Best of all, the price point is...aggressive.

Everything good about a Glock MOS and then some, without having to put up with Glock's adapter plate setup, which is frankly starting to look like hot garbage compared to everyone else's, at a screamingly low price? That's likely to make a dent in the market.

Testing is underway for an upcoming feature-length review in Shooting Illustrated.

Ballistic Testing...

At the range yesterday doing ballistic gel shooting with a few loads in two different chamberings, one of which was .327 Federal Magnum. The test gun was this Taurus 327 TORO with a Gideon Judge optic.

As a control round, I used a .32 H&R Magnum Hornady 80gr FTX Critical Defense. The Critical Defense did not expand through 4LD, and I didn't expect that ti would. It came to rest backwards in the gel block, 13" in.

The .327 Federal Hydra-Shok 85gr projectile, normally an iffy expander in 4LD, proved that even an iffy projectile can expand if you put enough ass behind it. It mushroomed nicely and came to rest, also base-first, at the 14" mark, just beyond the Hornady bullet.

The 100gr .327 Fed Gold Dot worked exactly as predicted: It expanded like a catalog photo and was found tangled in the denim on the far side of the 16" gel block. This is pretty much identical to what you get from 9mm 124gr +P GDHP and HST, which are pretty much the current gold standards, and it's what the load was designed to emulate.

That's the load I'm going to sight the dot in with.

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Lever-age

At the range last week I helped Michael Grasso dial in his .44 levergun with some .44 Special loads, just because having a gun in the house with an unsighted optic is anathema to all right-thinking people.

That mount for the Aimpoint Acro was pretty groovy. I hadn't gotten a good look at one before. I also dug the Magpul ELG furniture, although I'd expected to. I remember being skeptical of their shotgun stock before it came out and winding up having to eat crow, so...

Some people are skeptical, but I think a levergun has its uses, although it's possible to get carried away with one. 

I remember back at TacCon '19, Lee Weems made a pretty good case for why he used a .30-30 as a patrol rifle...

See the dot, hit a lot...

Back at the range with the Staccato C on Tuesday morning.

The reticle on the Trijicon RMR HD is selectable between a regular dot and an EOTech-esque "donut of death" that has a central dot, a large circle, and crosshairs-style tick marks at the top, bottom, and sides of the circle. That might be okay atop a carbine or something, and I guess it could be helpful for people who have difficulty finding the dot, but in that little slide-mounted MRDS window both Michael and I found it a little cramped and busy and we opted for the plain dot.

Anyway, the Staccato C made it through another two hundred rounds without any sort of malfunction, bringing the total round count thus far to six hundred rounds. Fourteen hundred left to go.

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Reliability Check...

My friend Michael Grasso was able to obtain a loaner RMR HD from Trijicon to use on the Staccato C test pistol. There's some question as to whether the fact that the element slightly overhanging the rear edge of the ejection port would affect the reliable ejection of spent cases or not.

I was optimistic, since I've put thousands of rounds through several FN509's wearing a Trijicon SRO, which similarly overhangs the rear of the ejection port, without any problems.

We mounted the optic, got it dialed in, and proceeded to crank out two hundred rounds at a pace that left the slide hot enough to be painful to the touch. Not only were there no malfunctions of any type, the brass does not seem to contact the sight housing at all.

This morning I'll get back to the range and we'll try some different brands of ammunition with varying power factors.

A new 2k round test begins...

So here's the new Staccato C with its redesigned magazine profile and 4" barrel. Staccato also sent along their new in-house match ammo, loaded with the 125gr Hornady Action Pistol projectile.

Yesterday morning saw me at the range with my friend Michael Grasso and 200 rounds of ammunition. I glorped some FP-10 lubricant onto the slide rails and around the flared lockup area on the barrel out by the muzzle and then it was off to the races. We only had two magazines, but we also had two Uplulas, so one of us would blaze away while the other hastily stuffed fifteen rounds into a magazine.

By the end of the 200 rounds, the pistol was noticeably toasty to the touch, however we were off to a promising start. The Staccato C went through the full cycle of operation every time with no malfunctions of any type to report. 200 rounds down, 1800 to go.

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New revolver from Heritage Mfg...

Fifty rounds of 130gr FMJ, seven yards, double action

Just announced at NRAAM: The Heritage Roscoe. It's a classic 5-shot .38 Special snubby, in carbon steel with checkered wood grips. (Basically, it's the return of the Taurus 85 in a retro format.) Suggested retail is well under four hundo, so street prices should be quite reasonable.

Look for a review in the next issue of Concealment magazine. 

The stocks are pretty, but you'll want to swap them out for carry use.

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Heavy Metal Range Trip

At the range yesterday morning with the Daniel H9 Compact reboot of the Hudson, as well as a Walther PDP Compact Steel Frame, both of which will be in reviews in upcoming issues of Shooting Illustrated.

There was a time, not all that long ago, where metal-framed guns were largely a dead letter, because the difference in manufacturing costs were so great that there just was no point in even trying to compete on price.

With the advances in CNC manufacturing over the last decades, costs have come down enough that some metal-framed pistols, like the alloy-framed Smith & Wesson M&P variants, are barely more expensive than their polymer-framed kin.

There's also this idea that a metal gun, being heavier, will shoot much flatter and faster, although the difference is usually minimal for the vast majority of shooters (and raw split times are among the most meaningless measurements in shooting.) Still, though, think of how many jillions of dollars people have spend on esoterica like tungsten guide rods in the hope of adding another ounce or two out toward the muzzle.

I, personally, just dig the fact that there are more choices out there.

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So anyway, I started blasting...

So I slapped a Swampfox Justice on the Rost Martin RM1C and took it to Indy Arms the other morning as part of a trip to help longtime friend-of-the-blog Global Village Idiot’s daughter pick out a pistol.

I brought along a box of Winchester 124gr NATO ball and figured I could get the lane next to theirs and put some work in with the new review gun while ducking into their lane every now and again to offer pointers and get feedback. The pistols she was considering were a Glock 43X, a Shield Plus, and a Taurus GX4.

I ran the pistol-training.com Q-PT target out to seven yards and popped off three shots at the center of the 8” circle, just to see how close to zeroed the dot was. They made one ragged hole about two inches high and right.

Rather than fiddle with adjustments that morning, I just started putting five and ten rounds in the magazine at a time and hosing. And I mean hosing.

Other than that one shot out of the circle at 12 o’clock, which came from getting a little bit too aggressive while prepping during recoil (b-BANG!), I’m really very pleasantly surprised, especially since the PD10 is the only striker gat I’ve put in much trigger time with over the last several months, since I'd been mostly shooting revolvers and the Walther PD380.