Range Report

Left a company all hands 'meeting' (really, more like a pep rally or State Of The Union Address) to go to the range (remind me that while it tastes good, Bar Food really sucks). Man the range was packed! The local Scout troop was having a meeting there, perhaps to introduce the kids to marksmanship--I dunno, I wasn't there long enough, but I did see them gathering in the classroom and the leader gesturing toward a diagram of a rifle. Aside from the Scout meeting, there was a considerable wait-time, so I put my name on the list.

30 minutes later, my name is called, and as I get up to the counter, I run into a guy from OpenCarry.org, and we take a lane together, taking turns putting lead downrange. It's thanks to this guy that I got The Ultimate Cliploader, a Ruger 10/22, and the Black Range Card. He wasn't really there to shoot, it seemed, but just to see what was up at the range tonight. We did chat up our neighbors, who were shooting all sorts of European-designed guns (an FN Five seveN and a bunch of HKs, including a P7M8)--apparently one of them was being deployed to Germany and the other one, as a parting gift, was letting his friend shoot everything he had. Nice.

As for my own equipment: The Mk. II only had two jams out of 190 rounds, possibly caused by limp-wristing. Interestingly, it also had one FTCycle from a round that only seemed to have enough power to kick the bullet out of the barrel, but not enough to cause blowback to cycle the action--and it was on the first round, too! The first FTEject occurred about 30 rounds in, jamming up differently this time, with the spent casing almost clear of the ejection port, but with the bolt nosing it into the port-wall while simultaneously feeding a new round. Not as serious a jam as the earlier stove-piping, but somewhat annoying nonetheless. I cleared it, and it had 120 rounds of flawless function (with allowances for crappy bulk ammo) until the last magazine, by which point I was rapid-firing as fast as I could pull the trigger. I wasn't paying that much attention to wrist stiffness, so I may have caused this second jam. On the whole, I'm pretty confident that the thing just needs to be cleaned every 200 rounds or so, but at the same time I think a new extractor will help things out immensely (and the parts are already on their way).

I'm happy to report that the sight-adjustment was good for my '617, allowing me to keep the sights down the middle of the target and to focus more on keeping the correct elevation, and not so much on Kentucky Windage, although the way I adjust the aim by holding higher or lower and not really adjusting the sights is already a compensation (Kentucky Elevation perhaps?). Evidently, when I futzed with the rebound spring, I forgot to tension the mainspring all the way, so while it had an awesome double-action trigger pull, the hammer didn't have enough energy to strike the firing pin with enough force to crush the rim of a cartridge and set it off. Single-action was nice, though. Whipped out my screwdriver and fixed it, although I had another truly dud round, again (no matter how many times I tried, it wouldn't light). So my '617 is good to go. Maybe. I think I want to send it back to S&W to have the trigger, sear, and hammer replaced--there's too much take-up before the double-action starts working, the double-action trigger pull isn't very smooth (there are, like, four or five distinct levels of "stacking"), and the single action is almost a hair trigger (and the hammer will fall if I push on the hammer hard enough). I wonder what it would take to send it in to have those pieces replaced (and maybe the cylinder?) and a trigger-job performed by one of their gunsmiths. Maybe I'll call them.

Finally, my friend's Glock 21, which had the striker spring and recoil spring replaced. Here, my OCDO friend and I took turns shooting it, and each of us experienced one FTFeed--the round had nosed up too far to enter the chamber smoothly when the slide was pushing it forward. Possibly due to weak magazine springs? I dunno...I haven't been able to take the magazines apart, so even if that were the case, I am not yet able to fix it. Other than that, there weren't any FTRTB (Fail To Return To Battery) or any light primer strikes as I've experienced previously. There's probably a "sweet spot" in the spring lives of a firearm where everything just jives the right way...probably from the 200-round to the 5000-round mark. Anything before this is termed the "break-in period" and anything after this is a "high round count". In my friend's case, this Glock 21 is 15 years old, and has probably had about 6000 rounds through it in those 15 years (lessee, he said he'd do about 200 rounds per trip through this thing, twice a week, probably for 3 or 4 years straight? that comes out to about 60K rounds...maybe I'm a little off on my estimation, then =). In any case, the new springs have seemed to eliminate the old problems (FTRTB and FTFire), but have introduced a new problem (FTFeed). Ah well. Ain't my gun =)

I've thoroughly cleaned out my equipment, and I'm going shooting again tomorrow, this time with my coworker(s). This guy is in the Army Reserve and is about to be deployed to The Sandbox, but he's never handled the M9 sidearm. He's shot (maybe even carried) an M60 machine gun, he'll be carrying an M16 rifle, knows all about the SAW...but has never used the M9. Weird. And wouldn't you know it, but I've got a 92FS, the civvy version of the M9 (with slightly different serrations on the front and back-strap, but otherwise the same pistol). So we're going to shoot that tomorrow. And if my other friend/coworker comes (the guy who owns the '21), I'll bring his Old Friends so they can get reacquainted =). And then my other coworker is interested in buying the '21, but he probably won't be able to make it (since we'll be shooting after work). And then finally, yet another coworker's interested in shooting a gun. Not owning one, but he's interested in at least experiencing it once. What will most likely happen is that two of them will go (the M9 guy and my is-interested coworker).

Which will probably be as many people as I can watch at once anyways.