I have a real love/hate relationship with one of the standard tests I do as part of our 1911 tests, and that’s the 100 round challenge. Shooting 100 rounds rapid fire in ~60 seconds isn’t actually that pleasant, but I keep doing it because it keeps revealing interesting data about the guns we test.
Tag: guns
We don’t bash guns
I get accused from time to time of being biased against certain guns, or unfairly targeting certain brands for “bashing,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. That’s not really true, although I can sort of understand why people would get that idea. I certainly am biased against certain types of guns, but I’ve come by that bias honestly through experience. I didn’t just wake up one morning and decide “lolscrewTaurus” or something like that.
Rock Island Armory Ultra FS 9mm 1911 review
2,074 rounds. That’s how long the Rock Island Armory Ultra FS 9mm 1911 has gone without a malfunction of any type. I’ll get the boring bits out of the way right here and now. The gun passed the 10-8 Function Test, passed the 100 round speed test, passed every single thing I could think to throw at it, and became only the second gun to achieve a perfect 100/100 on the Gun Nuts 1911 Evaluation. The only other gun to achieve a perfect score? Tim’s Wilson Combat.
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Rock Island Armory Ultra FS 1911 update: 1800 rounds and ticking
Despite the blog being down, I’ve still be working on testing the now excellent Rock Island Armory Ultra FS 9mm. It’s currently at 1,824 rounds, and here’s the fun part. Zero failures of any type. No failures to feed, no failures to extract, nothing. No parts breakages, and no issues with the build quality of the gun. It just keeps running and running. While the bulk of the ammo I’ve shot through it has been FMJ, it’s also fed 200+ rounds of premium JHP, including Golden Sabers which have an ogive so wide you can serve a martini in there.
Continue reading “Rock Island Armory Ultra FS 1911 update: 1800 rounds and ticking”
Rock Island Armory Ultra FS 9mm update
1,074 rounds. That’s how many rounds the Rock Ultra FS 9mm has gone through, and oddly enough that’s the same number of rounds it’s fired without a single failure of any type. This gun is blowing my mind. It’s passed the 10-8 Performance Test, passed the 100 round challenge, I set a PR on Bill Drills with it, and it just keeps running. Sure, the fit and finish isn’t as nice as the Springfield, and it costs more than the Taurus, but it’s done several things that neither of those guns were able to do. It’s got it where it counts for me, and that’s performance. It runs. It’s accurate. It’s reliable. In fact, it’s the best 9mm 1911 I’ve tested so far.
I have now crossed over into the camp of rooting for this gun hardcore. I’m still going to continue to subject it to our object test protocol, but now I really want it to go the distance to 2,000 rounds without an issue. How cool would that be? A 1911 that’s ready out of the box for IDPA or USPSA for less than $700? It has a magwell, good grips, fiber optic sights, adjustable rear sights, it’s everything I want (except forward cocking serrations).
Dear Rock Island Armory: I don’t know what kind of devil magic you put in this gun, but please put it in all your guns from now until the end of time.
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3 shots in 1 second, strong hand only
I thought this was supposed to be difficult or something. Weird.
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The Rock Ultra FS 9mm is better than a Springfield Armory
Okay, so it might be a little early in the test to say that, but last night we kicked off the test of the Rock Island Ultra FS 9mm 1911 by running it through the 10-8 Performance Function Check. Which unlike the Taurus and the Springfield, it passed. With flying colors. Watch the Rock Ultra FS in action here. The Rock Ultra FS is just like the previous two pistols we’ve tested, a fullsize 1911 in 9mm. I has adjustable sights with a fiber optic front, G10 grips, full beavertail, full length guide rod, and unlike our two previous pistols comes from the factory with a magazine funnel (thank god).
For comparison, here’s the Springfield Armory 1911 running through the 10-8 Function Test, you can see it failed on the 2nd round of the “no magazine” portion of the event. Now, that doesn’t make the RO a bad gun, and it doesn’t actually mean that the Rock is objectively better, because the Rock hasn’t completed the test protocol yet. But I do want to point out that the Rock Ultra is the first 9mm 1911 that I’ve had actually pass the 10-8 test. Tim’s Wilson Combat did, but I would expect that from a Wilson.
This is a six shot group from the Rock Ultra at 15 yards, standing unsupported. It’s slightly longer than the OAL of the cartridge. There’s no question that the Rock Island and Hornady Critical Defense make an extremely accurate pairing. Standard FMJ also did pretty well, turning in some strong bullseye strings like this:
20 shots, timed fire (5 shots in 20 seconds) at 25 yards? I’ll definitely take that. Only two out of the black, and both of those were called shots.
Now before we get further, I need to talk about bias here. I said during the Taurus test that I wanted the Taurus to be good, because I wanted to live in a world where a 500 dollar 1911 could get a better grade than D. I feel the same way about this gun, but even moreso because I’ve had prior positive experience with Rock Island guns; and because the Rock Island/Armscor people I know are genuinely cool people. So I want this gun to be good. I’ll admit that I was wrong in the video about the price point, I can find them only for $650 but nothing like $500. That’s my bad. However, $650 makes it more affordable than the Range Officer by $100-$200 bucks, and that’s no joke.
Initial results? Positive. I’m pretty optimistic about where this test is going to go. We’re 256 rounds in with 1744 to go, and I’m genuinely excited about seeing what happens next.
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FAST Drill with the Springfield Armory Range Officer
The RO is over 1500 rounds now, and after being generously lubed and politely talked to, it made it an entire range session without a malfunction. Although the pin I noticed walking on a previous test continues to wander around, which is quite annoying. Here’s me running the FAST Test with the RO.
With regards to training, I’ve been focusing lately on working from my actual concealment rig; which means AIWB with a closed front garment. I’m ashamed to say I haven’t practiced with this set up nearly as often as I should, and it shows in my training. My draws are nothing spectacular, pretty pedestrain 1.50s to a headshot, but oh my lord my reloads are ass. Just hot, wretched ass for days and days. The best reload I pulled today was a 2.26. Mind you, with an open front concealment garment, I could get sub-2.00 reloads all day long and when I was hot could even get in the 1.5s. But this closed front thing? It’s the worst. Yes, it doesn’t help that I’m trying to reload a single stack without a magazine funnel on it, trust me I know.
I’ve wanted a FAST Coin for a long time. The last time I had a whack at one, I turned in a decent time in the mid-sixes, good enough for the Wall, but not good enough for a coin. Then it slipped from my focus for a while, and then I took all of last year off from shooting. Now I’m back behind the gun and training hard again, and it feels good. I’ve pushed my raw shooting skills back to where they were around 2011-2012 when I was at the peak of my game. With some more work I should be able to get consistent with my reloads from concealment again. Since Ernie Langdon has taken over the FAST torch from Todd, I might even have a chance.
9mm is the best caliber for the 1911
The 1911 is probably the most iconic handgun design ever. No pistol in history has done more – from battlefield to CCW to every single flavor of competition, there are 1911s. It’s just a great gun. It’s also at its finest when it’s chambered in a cartridge it wasn’t originally designed for: 9mm. Now, before you come burn my house down, hear me out because there’s a method to my madness. Yes, I know that it’s harder to make a 9mm 1911 run right than a .45. Yes, I know that the 1911 was originally designed for the .45 ACP cartridge, and that saying it’s better when chambered in 9mm is tantamount to heresy. But it’s heresy like Galileo’s heresy, because I’m actually right.
Let’s look at defensive uses first: we know for a fact that there’s no difference in terminal performance between .45 ACP and 9mm (cue the ballistards), so there’s no point in giving up 2-3 rounds of ammunition capacity, right? If you can carry more, do it. A 1911 with 11 rounds of 9mm on tap has 122% of the firepower of a .45 ACP with 9 rounds in it, and if that kind of made up number doesn’t change your mind, try this: 8 rounds of 185 grain JHP weighs 1480 grains, but 11 rounds of 147 grain 9mm JHP weighs 1617 grains. THAT’S MORE GRAINS! ALL ABOARD THE GRAIN TRAIN!
To bring things back to reality, consider ease of shooting. Everyone regards 1911s as being wonderfully easy to shoot, thanks to what are still some of the finest ergonomics ever found on a handgun. So what happens when you dump that uneccessarily large cartridge that doesn’t offer any performance advantages in favor of a light weight, soft shooting 9mm that works just as well? You get a gun that’s so stupid easy to shoot well it’s almost criminal. Honestly, one of my favorite things about testing all these 9mm 1911s is how easy they are to shoot. They’re heavy, they soak up what little recoil there is; and it’s really just a good old time.
Lastly, consider the following: in every single other platform, 9mm is better. 9mm Glocks? Best Glocks. 9mm sub-guns? Best sub-guns. So why not 1911s? Besides, think about this. When John Moses Browning designed his next pistol, he designed the gun that he would have made if the Army hadn’t insisted on certain design parameters. What was the result? A double stack 9mm pistol. Sure, the Belgians gayed it up with that magazine disconnect, but otherwise it’s perfect. Just like the 1911 in 9mm.
Springfield Armory RO 9mm 1911 malfunction
The 100 round challenge is a function test I came up with a while ago to see how well a gun would operate if you got it, well pretty hot. Shooting 100 rounds through a pistol as fast as you can load is a good way to do that, and it can also be a fun test of your endurance. Here’s video of the me running the Springfield Armory Range Officer through the 100 round challenge…which it failed.
At 3 minutes into the video I experienced an unusual malfunction, where the gun returned partially to battery, but not all the way. When the trigger was pulled, the hammer fell to the half-cock notch, causing me to believe I’d had a light primer hit. It wasn’t attended I attempted to clear the gun and it was locked up tight that I realized I had something else entirely. The round in question had the correct dimensions, and successfully chambered and fired after clearing the gun. This was the second time that range session I’d had issues with the gun not returning to battery. After conferring with a well known 1911 expert, he let me know that this problem is commonly caused by a slide stop that isn’t quite correct, and the best fix is to replace it immediately. I’ve ordered a new slide stop from Brownells, and as a precaution some additional recoil springs as well.
However, because this is part that needs to be replaced at the armorer level; it is a -5 deduction for the gun. That brings the 1911 RO’s current score down to 78/100, which is still a respectable C+. With just a bit over 500 rounds left in the test, we’ll see where things go from here.