Range Day

Got out to the range today to test-fire a couple of projects.

First off was my .300 Blackout AR with the 9" barrel and AAC 762SDN suppressor. I finally finished it out with a Blue Force Gear Vickers sling and an Aimpoint T2 micro red dot on a LaRue mount and this was the first time I got to take it out as a complete package and shoot it.

After throwing five sighters away because I was firing on one target but looking through my spotting scope at the adjacent one ("Where am I hitting? Why am I not even on paper?!"), I got this one dialed in for a fifty-yard zero and is seriously shoots minute-of-feral-cat now, and completely hearing-safe without plugs or muffs due to that can on the front. Still, it chaps me that I had to drop $400 in permission slips (tax stamps) to build the rifle this way--one for the short barrel and one for the suppressor. But I'm definitely happy with the finished product and that Vickers sling is well worth the $35.00 I dropped on it at the NRA convention. I think that I'l be getting more of those for other rifles, since I'm a big fan of the two-point sling in general and this one in particular.

Next gun out was the Smith and Wesson M&P 40, recently rebuilt with the Apex Tactical Duty Carry Action Enhancement Kit (DCAEK) that I purchased at the NRA convention after talking to the Apex people at their booth. I also changed it over to shoot .357 Sig rounds via a drop-in barrel purchased from Midway.

First challenge was installing the DCAEK parts. It took a while, and I'm done now, but I'll say up front that I'm not as fond of either Smith and Wesson or Apex Tactical as I once was.

First, my gripe against S&W:
I have never found a pistol that I've worked on to have so many tiny parts, including tiny parts not secured in place. (I'm hardly a Glock fanboi but Glock never would have built a pistol like this.) Right off the bat, I lost the little plastic disk that tops the striker safety plunger spring when it launched itself like a little Polaris missile as I drifted the rear sight off of it. I found it eventually, but said a few unkind things about S&W as I rooted around for it on the floor. But this was nothing compared with my anger over the sudden departure of the sear plunger, a microscopic piece of metal sitting atop a coiled spring beneath the sear. That one I did not find, and neither Smith and Wesson nor Apex stocks a replacement. Apex pretty much just shrugged and wished me luck finding another one, and Smith would not sell me one but offered to fix the pistol if I sent the whole thing back to them and paid a diagnostic fee plus the hourly repair charge. Screw both of them--I went back to Midway and bought a whole sear assembly for $23.00, basically just to get the plunger. Oh--and Apex tells you that you're getting a new sear spring with their kit, but then you don't, and when you check their website, they mention that they no longer provide that spring and you should either buy a new sear assembly or use your old one. Gee, thanks.

Then came the fun of reassembly. As if trying to get the trigger spring back onto the trigger pin isn't fun enough already due to the slightly-too-short slave pin that Apex gives you, you also have to make sure that the take-down lever retaining wire that just rests in a slot of the locking block doesn't fall out of position as you try to insert the locking block in the frame. Time spent on this exercise: Nearly three hours of cursing and looking for little dropped stuff before it finally all came together and worked. And really, S&W, did you have to use crummy roll pins to hold everything in the frame? You couldn't just use steel drift pins like Glock would have done?

The pistol is finally together, and I do like the new pull and reset on this trigger, but damn, they made me work for this.

But the pistol does shoot noticeably better now--or at least I shoot better with it--and the .357 Sig rounds definitely exhibit some authority as they head off downrange, shooting a bit flatter--and lower--than the .40 rounds but grouping nicely all the same. I am happy with the re-worked pistol but I'm not planning on doing my other M&P 40 any time soon. Not after this nightmare job.

A Great Gun Day. (NFA Fun.)

So I got out to the range yesterday to work on two pet projects of mine, the suppressed .300 Blackout short-barreled AR and the Reising SMG.

I'm now handloading rounds for the shorty AR, using Nosler 220 grain open tip bullets and 9.9 grains of Winchester 296 (Hodgdon 110). I took the first test rounds out to the range with my newish chronograph to see how they were running and also to compare them to some factory Remington ammo with a similar bullet.

My rounds all stayed nicely subsonic so I could shoot the rifle with no hearing protection. They chrono'd between 998feet per second and 1050fps, with one round out of the twenty test rounds hitting 1076, so I excluded that one from the eval. (It was still quiet though.) excluding the flier, my rounds showed a roughly fifty fps variation across the test group, which I wasn't really happy with until I tested the Remington rounds (R300AAC8) and found a 30fps variation between the ten test rounds I shot. The Remington ammo was advertised as having a velocity of 1050fps, but I noticed that it was shooting 960-990fps. The discrepancy can be explained by the fact that Remington uses a 16" barrel in their tests and my rifle sports a 9" barrel. The Remington hit precisely point of aim with my Mag-pul sights (I'd previously zeroed this rifle using that ammo) and my rounds all stuck just a bit high at 50 yards, confirming that mine are traveling a bit faster. I'll probably step the next batch of test rounds dow a tenth of a grain or two, just to get them mirroring the Remington, which I have a fair stockpile of. All in all, I'm happy with the results thus far.

And if you'll notice in the picture above, the magazines for this rifle are all marked for the .300 round. Hopefully, designating specific magazines exclusively for the .300 BLK round will act as a check to keep one of those rounds from being accidentally introduced into a 5.56mm AR and prevent the catastrophe which would surely follow. I also keep this rifle segregated from the others in 5.56 and stored seperately, again to minimize the possibility of an ammo exchange between the two types. It's been shown a few times now that a .300 round WILL chamber in a 5.56mm rifle and fire...once.

Then it was time to try the Reising out once again, because I haven't quite burned up my entire stock of .45 ammo trying to get this gun to run right.

For today's test, I'd tweaked the aftermarket Christie magazine's feed lips with ye olde trusty needlenose pliers and I'd replaced the magazine well housing with a new one ordered from Numerich Arms. Admittedly, in light of this gun's lack of performance on subsequent outings, I wasn't expecting a lot, so I was happily shocked to have it burn through the entire magazine in three bursts without a single hiccup or stoppage. Fantastic! The next two magazines also fired well, although I had the second round of each misfeed. I have a couple of thoughts on tweaking the magazine a bit more, and if it works the way that I think it will, I expect to finally have a light, accurate and reliable .45ACP submachine gun.

It was a great day out, and as an added bonus, I came home with 20 rounds of spent Norma 6.5 Carcano brass that some other shooter didn't bother to pick up. Since I have two Carcanos, that was a nice gift to me from whoever left it behind as well.

Virgin no more. The SBR shoots. And scores

Off to the range today with the new short-barreled rifle (SBR).

I fired one box of factory Remington 220gr. loads to check function and dial in the back-up sights. It's now "minute of paper plate" at 50 yards, which I chose because the heavy bullet loaded to low velocity to stay suppressed really starts to drop when it gets out near 100. I also WILL need to go with a longer stock, both to get a proper cheek weld and because as a lefty, my face is too close to the ejection port with this short stock and I kept getting popped in the face by debris (and a casing or two).

But it functioned flawlessly, both with the suppressed loads and without the suppressor when I tested some higher-velocity 147gr. stuff that I loaded for my other .300 Blackout rifle. That stuff has a lot more kick to it and shoots noticeably higher at 50 yards but I kept them all on the same plate with the Mag-Pul sights and that too-short stock, so overall I'm quite pleased. No failures to feed or function with either round and it stacks my brass nicely behind me (subsonic loads) or whips them at the shooter directly to my right if shooting the higher-velocity stuff.

The range was really too busy for me to be able to just sit down and run the tests that I wanted to run, but I'm satisfied for now and it's nice to have the choice of options between suppressed strikes and AK-like power from the more traditional rounds. I do like the 5.56mm cartridge and the AR platform, but at 0-300 yards, give me a 150gr. FMJ moving at 2,000fps+/- most any day.

Baby's first brass marks on the case deflector.

Quite happy with this one. Now we wait on a more appropriate stock and a quality optic.

I also got some practice in with my SIGnificant other, the Sig P229 in .40S&W.

It's an older version but a truly sweet shooter that I picked up a couple of years ago, intending to convert it to shoot up all of the .357 Sig brass that I've collected. I need to get out with this pistol more but sadly, I keep forgetting that I own it. The other day I was actually surprised for a second to find it in a back corner of the gun safe. You know that feeling when you reach into the pocket of a jacket or fresh-washed pair of pants and find a twenty dollar bill? Yeah, it's like that. I really need to do more inventories of the gun room.

Shooting.

So the other day, I got out to the range to try my new .300AAC AR, shown here below the DPMS "Sportical" rifle that I helped convince a friend to buy.(One of you wanted to see it's picture last week, and I'm nothing if not responsive to you great folks.)

Here's my baby all be itself. This was also the first test of some new ammo that I made using cut-down 5.56mm cases and pull-down 7.62mm bullets.

So how'd it do?

Other than one near-miss on a clay (shot #2), it performed as expected at 50 yards off-hand, although as you can see, it took ten hits to make that empty jug actually go down. Fortunately empty jugs rarely attack. I suspect that it'll do better on bad guys who typically pack a bit more mass and density.