Well, I spent quite a bit of coin on a couple of scary guns. The LWRC M6A2 in 6.8 SPC.
And a Sig 556 pistol
I had a chance to take them to the range to shoot them. Lots of trouble with both. The LWRC was doublefeeding and more often failing to feed at all. I would have to hand cycle almost every round. I blame the 90 grain ammo I was using. The bolt wasn't getting enough gas to cycle fully. Other than that the rifle kicked nice and shot well. People stopped shooting and peeked around the divider to see what all the booms were from my new toy. Well, actually, BOOM!, f***! click click, BOOM! The Sig was also doublefeeding. I was using the 55 grain ball 5.56 ammo so I was a bit surprised. Much like the LWRC I wasn't really pissed as they were both brand new and I expected trouble as they wore in. The Sig has a feature, though, that the LWRC doesn't, an adjustable gas valve. I cranked it to the "adverse setting" which ports more gas to the piston and it started shooting a bit better. The cases were showing something weird though. The extractor on the Sig is no bulls***! It was ripping up the case rims and throwing them really hard. The D-shape of the case mouths suggests it was flipping them backwards really hard and bending the mouths of the cases against the receiver. The brass scarring on the receiver seems to back up this idea. When I got home and cleaned the gun I found the piston was corroded. I didn't want to do it but I figured if I didn't clean up the piston I would need one anyway so I had nothing to lose. I took a scotchbrite pad to it and got it in a much better state. The second trip to the range seems to suggest I did the right thing. I had only a few doublefeeds and I didn't have to open the valve up again.
VIDEO
http://s119.photobucket.com/al...1.flv
The Sig mag is as its looks suggest, s***. The Magpul P-MAGS performed well. The Lancer mags functioned for the most part except when I slammed them home on an open chamber, the top round would pop out. I don't recommend these mags to the AR guys. They look cool as hell and if you can work around the glitch described, they feed fine, but a mag IMO should work flawlessly so the tip of the hat to the P-MAGS.
My wife's birthday is coming up and I am the romantic type so I got her a gift. Handguns are a girls best friend, right?
She has never shot a real gun so I was looking for something chambered in .22 to avoid scaring the hell out of her with recoil. If she isn't freaked out by the gun's kick she can concentrate on fundamentals of handling and shooting it. Most .22 pistols are inexplicably goofy-looking though. I'm not sure why this is but I don't like it. My wife had said she liked the look of the Walther P99 so I checked their lineup and found a gun that chambered .22 and looked great. Additionally if she really enjoyed shooting and wanted to step up to a 9mm or something the P99 has similar ergos so she would be confident with the gun's controls. I went to a gun show and found this sweet little Walther P22. I almost bought the pink one but my wife would hate that silly s*** so I got the black one instead.
I sighted it in and I burned through 100 rounds quick. The lil fella kicks with the magnums and I have heard it really wants magnums to cycle reliably. It did so for me and I had a lot of fun shooting it. Not one malfunction and my fellow shooters could likely hear my laughter as I shot the gun; seriously fun as hell. This made me happy. Just in case my wife didn't like shooting, I would be proud to call this little pistol mine!
Unfortunately, she loved the gun, so if I want one I will have to buy my own, in pink of course. I gave her a brief on the controls, proper handling and safety of a weapon, how to obtain sight picture and trigger control with some snap caps before loading it with live rounds. The grip fits her little hand perfectly and the recoil sping is easy to overcome to rack the slide. The recoil, even being a blowback gun is more fun than formidable. The safety is goofy, though, and she had trouble thumbing it up and off just like I had and I had to bark "finger off the trigger dear," a few times but other than that I was very impressed. With a target set up at 3 yards, having never shot anything but my softair 1911, she put 99 of 100 in the black and the flier was only because she tried that shot with her other eye to check her eye dominance. She grips it righty but sights with her left eye. She was rewarded for her efforts with a ragged hole in the center of the target so I see no reason to change what apparently works very well for her. I better not piss her off.
She really enjoyed shooting the little gun so I finally told her it was really hers and not "borrowed from a friend" like I had told her.
I had to come back to Japan though so after a final cleaning I packed all the guns in rust preventative bags and put them away. I will miss be able to shoot them in the coming years as I work to move my job and us back to the states.