A Good Time At The Range Today

Went to the Range with Tosh and his cousin who was in town from new York.

We let his cousin shoot stuff he can;t have in that benighted state.

Heck, he could even have normal capacity magazines for his H&K VP9 here, unlike New York where he's stuck to 10-rounders, so he enjoyed not having to reload quite as much.

I shot my AR15 which I hadn't taken to the range in awhile and the Carmel.

The Carmel continues to function perfectly, and the controls make it very easy to quickly manipulate.  Fully ambidextrous and laid out very similar to an AR15 but slightly more ergonomic, it makes some drills easier.

Speaking of drills, we did quite a few.

Mainly we did the MDFI Qualifiers for Shotgun, Carbine and Handgun.

7 yards for hadngun, 10 for shotgun, and 15 yards for the carbine.

Very straightforward, relatively basic drills that don't take a lot of rounds but get you working on your reloads - something I don't often do with the carbine on the clock.

I shot the IWI Masada for the handgun qual, and The Tavor for the shotgun quals, and shot both the AR and Carmel for the carbine quals. The Carmel seems to be ore solid for the multiple shot parts of the qual and the AR being lighter is a bit faster to move around for the reloads - but the larger magazine well of the Carmel makes the reloads a bit smoother as does the shape of the bolt release on the Carmel, making the overall time for the reloads a little bit faster.

So it was some good practice, and a very fun time at the range.

Range Trip - IWI Carmel

I went to the range with Spencer today, and I brought along a new rifle I had just purchased to try out.

It's the IWI Carmel.

The Carmel is a short piston operated semi-auto rifle in 5.56.  Fully ambidextrous, it also has a folding and highly adjustable stock where you can adjust the comb height as well as the length of the stock.

The Carmel can also be easily fired with the stock folded. Due to it being able to do so, and with its overall length with the stock folded, it has the interesting dual identity of being a rifle under federal law but a pistol under Michigan law. 

This means that with a CPL, you could have it loaded in your vehicle or elsewhere where you normally must keep a rifle in unloaded condition in Michigan.  Rather convenient, that

 

I put a Vortex 1-8 LVPO on it, and likely will add a red dot mounted in an offset mount  soon.

Shooting 62 grain 5.56 I bought from Widener's at a good sale price, I soon had the scope zeroed in at 25 yards.

It's very fun to shoot, easy to handle, and recoil impulse is even less than a comparably sized AR-15. Accuracy was excellent, and the trigger is darn nice for a box-stock trigger.

Spencer also liked it quite a lot as well.

Right out of the box, with just a little lubrication applied to the bolt and carrier, 200 rounds through with zero malfunctions or any issues, as would be expected.   Shooting it with the stock folded was no problem, either.

Spencer also had a new to him SIG MCX in 5.56 that he had purchased used.

 The rattle-can paint job came with it.

  It worked fine for the most part. but had a weird habit of the bolt locking halfway back which caused lots of issues.  

Hitting the bolt catch, you could lock the bolt so it was half of the way clear of the ejection port and then you'd seat a mag, send the bolt home, and it obviously would not pick up a round, as the bolt was on top of the rounds in the magazine and not behind it. You then had to work the bolt all the way back to do so.  I haven't seen that before and it may be due to it being used and someone may have messed with it, or it is a quirk of the MCX.  Still, it is quite a nice firearm, even with the recoil impulse being noticeably different, than the Carmel, but still not bad, just a bit more thumpy, as much as a 5.56 gets thumpy, which isn't much.

In any case, we zeroed both rifles, shot them, and enjoyed the experience. 

I'm rather liking the IWI Carmel and its quite a fun, reliable (200 rounds isn't much, but it's a positive start), and accurate rifle so far.