Saturday, November 21, 2020

Today's Range Trip - A Great Range Outing With Friends

A bunch of friends decided to meet up at the range today.  Four of them were rolling buddies from jiu-jitsu - it seems there's a large cross-over between the jiu-jitsu community and the firearms community. 

Tosh had also brought Scott along, one of his co-workers that had recently escaped from California and is now enjoying standard capacity magazines and the many other benefits being relocated from CA can provide.

It was sunny out, but the temperature had plummeted 30 degrees from yesterday. Standing in the sun, it wasn't bad - but get under some shade and 30 degrees feels cold pretty quickly.

We started out with rifles/arm-braced pistols and I shot my new build for the first time:

 


It's a 10.5 inch AR on a stripped Spike's lower.  Lower and Upper all pit together from parts. I had a stripped upper lying around for awhile now, and I decided to get it built up, and now seemed to be the time to do it.  I decided to put some decent parts into it, including a flat Geissele trigger which is awesome, a Midwest industries rail and some other decent parts.

It ran flawlessly on this it's first time out, which was nice. Got the scope dialed in as well. It's a Vortex Strike Eagle 1-8 and it is very decent glass.  Very fast at the low magnifications and sharp at the high end.

I also installed the AAC 7.62SDN suppressor onto it and it ran like a champ, but a quieter champ.

Then on to the Tavor, complete with silencer attached as I had installed an AAC flashider on it as well.

It ran like a top with the suppressor attached, and with the suppressor it was still shorter overall than the 10.5 was bare, complete with the Tavor's 13" barrel.  I do think its my favorite rifle at this point.

Interestingly, it appears that 5.56 makes the suppressor a lot hotter, longer,  than the 300 Blackout for some reason. 

Scott had a blast and enjoyed shooting the suppressed rifles, and everyone else's rifle there too.  We're friendly like that.

Then on to pistols.

I had a great set at shooting at a steel A zone at 25 yards.  

On timer, from draw to hit my best time today was 1.4 seconds, with other runs at the 1.67-1.70 second range.  Quite happy-making.

The 3x2 drill was in the 3 econd range so it still needs some work.

Scott and others liked the Masada quite a bit.  A solid 150 rounds through it with zero issues.

Scott also enjoyed shooting my suppressed M&P Compact 22 - so quiet you don't need ear pro, and the sound of the bullet hitting the steel is louder than the shot.  Much fun.

He now wants to buy a suppressor, because he can now.  And another angel gets its wings.

We also helped Jason out quite a bit with appendix carry.  Jason has a lot of reserve muscle mass you might say, so he's shied away from appendix carry as a result.  

He recently got a Shadow Systems MR918 and its a great pistol and he's running an RMR on it with good results.  

With a borrowed PHLster Floodlight holster  and a Surefire attached to his pistol we got him trying appendix carry out. First with just a bluegun, then the real gun and active shooting.

Having him try appendix as compared to his usual IWB hip position, his draws were measurably faster on the timer - At least a second or more faster - and that's trying appendix for the first time after carrying hip side for years.   Pretty impressive improvement just from changing the carry location.

Lots of fun shooting and a great bunch of guys.

1 comment:

Scott said...

I'm interested in your AR Pistol, as I recently acquired one myself. Mine is a Troy. I'm curious about ammo choice and performance during your excursion. What is your twist rate? Did you shoot different bullet weights? If so, did you see an accuracy difference between them?

Mine has a 1:7 twist (same as Lauren's National Match rifle, interestingly) but I'm wondering if it makes a difference in a barrel so short. I've got some 55gr and 62gr I need to load up and test to see if there is a difference.

Anyway - just seeing if you had any impressions from its first time out.