IWI Masada Rounds 1-250

SO I finally got a chance to head to the range with the IWI Masada.

The first 17 shots at 25 feet:

Not too bad.

The trigger does subjectively feel better than the stock Glock trigger, and in shooting them both one after the other I'd again subjectively say the Masada's trigger is better and far smoother.

I find that this range trip I was consistently shooting a little bit low with the Masada.

200 rounds of Remington 115 grain were fired through it without a hitch, along with 50 rounds of Speer Gold Dot 124gr +P, again with no failures whatsoever. I shot Two handed, one handed, and weak hand only shooting with no problems. Both magazines that came with the gun were used.

Overall shooting impression is rather positive. Fit to the hand is very good, the reset is easy and the trigger again is very smooth and I enjoyed shooting it today. I also shot 100 rounds through the Glock 17 with no malfunctions either, and that's 300 through it with no issues.

Sunday Range Day: Speed Practice

I decided to work on my speed today, both with the P30SK and the Glock 17.

For extra punishment, for the Glock 17 I did all drills by drawing from a Safariland ALS holster that had two levels of retention - the thumb press and a switch over it. The ALS retention is quite good - if you don't know how to operate it the firearm is not leaving the holster. On the downside, if you have any upward pressure on the firearm before you're done pushing fully down on the thumb switch, the gun gets all sorts of stuck in there, requiring you to ease up on the gun and reapply pressure to the thumb switch before trying to draw it. Add gloves for the weather, and many a mess up was had.

The practice drill of the day for the Glock was two USPSA targets 5 yards away and to draw and put two hits on each target in the A zone within a par time of 2 seconds.

Leah got lots of practice with commands of "shooter ready", "standby", and then hitting the timer whenever she felt like it.

The timer started in the 4-3.5 second range and with practice started moving lower. Leah provided an enthusiastic cheering section as the time kept creeping toward the goal.

The best time I could get today was:

Yes, 1.94 seconds! So I managed to beat the par time of two seconds and then I got stuck at 1.94 as the fastest time, with a few runs equaling that time.

I'm pretty happy with that for a first attempt, and expect with a non-retention holster I'd be a lot faster as the draw was where the hang up seemed to be.

Prior to practicing if you told me I could do that drill in two seconds I would have been rather doubtful, now with practice and pushing to improve it is doable, and I might as well keep on practicing to keep improving and getting faster.

Leah tried it with her Compact .22 and had quite respectable scores from a low ready position, she also shot the M&P 9 for the first time and liked it, although it had a weird trigger reset failure twice in two separate strings - the gun loaded a round fully into battery but the trigger did not reset. She had to rack the slide, ejecting an unfired round to get the trigger to reset. Kinda strange and that gun has done it before to me at matches before which is rather irritating, especially as I had sent it back to S&W to be fixed. It may need to head back again.

That's 100 more rounds through the Glock 17, making it 200 rounds with zero malfunctions.

We had a very nice time at the range, even as we had to take a warm up break in the car prior to continuing shooting due to the cold. Lots of fun was had and its nice to leave the range with a pracice goal accomplished.

Sunday Range Day Part Two - The Other Guns

The Kahr PM9 was feeling rather unloved. Being a very concealable and convenient pocket pistol, it does tend to get the nod to be carried whenever I heading out the door. Very much a nice small gun for when you can't easily carry a compact or full size gun, it's been carried a lot and not shot all that much recently.

So I decided to give it a go after shooting the P30SK.

Right out of the pocket holster and just changing over to some FMJ for practice, it fired all 50 rounds of FMJ I fired through it without a hitch.

Recoil was definitely felt more in the smaller pistol.

After shooting the P30SK the trigger on the PM9 also felt rather different and inferior.

The PM9 has a very long almost rolling feel to the trigger - you squeeze it back, and squeeze it back, and keep squeezing it back and finally it goes off and hits the target. Basically it is a safety to stop you from prematurely firing and it is rather good at that. It is smooth with no hitches but really long.

It's so long it feels like a trigger you pull on Monday and it finally goes off on Sunday. By itself, it really is not bad. But, when compared immediately to a trigger like that on the P30SK or a Glock, it is a noticeably long, long, pull.

Accuracy was not bad at all. After the range trip I brought it home, cleaned, lubed, and reloaded it, and got all the pocket lint out of the spare magazine that rides along in my offhand front pocket. If you carry a mag in a pocket, expect that it will pickup pocket lint.

Next up was a nice new out of the box Glock 17 Gen4.

I managed to pick it up for a very good price and I'm rather happy with it. It's a Glock so nothing much to say about it really, but the grip texture does seem better than the prior versions. I did not add any back-straps as it fits my hand fine as is.

I did install some Trijicon HD XR Orange Front Outline night sights to it, replacing the stock factory plastic sights with a much more durable and usable set. Installation was easy using a sight pusher and it was no big deal. The orange outline on the front sight is very easy to pickup and accuracy was very nice.

I fired 100 rounds of the 9MM Nato FMJ through the Glock 17 with no issues, which is to be expected.

Accuracy was excellent, I had installed the sights on just right and they were right on. The stock trigger was the best of the three pistols I had with me at the range. Considering it was the largest pistol there, it was indeed the easiest to shoot fast and accurately. For whatever reason, it felt

It was a darn good range trip and very badly needed practice session. I need to get out to the range more often and will make it a resolution for 2019.

I figure I will get out more often to complete the P30SK 2,000 round test, and then do a 2,000 round test on the Glock 17 Gen 4. This should get me out to the range more often to work on shooting better.