Pistols (and pistol mounted optics) I saw this week

[Erick Gelhaus]

If he got the class paid for by the agency or another = Legend!!

Naw, like me when I was going as a student, he paid the tuition. At least they covered the ammo.

[JAD]

While I can’t say it won’t change, my plan of having the students shoot grouping, then offsets, then a permission/good enough exercise followed by working the presentation in reverse before starting into occluded optics seems to flow well. And, most importantly, produces good results.

Can confirm.

[LockedBreech]

Just finished a Gunsite #499 advanced pistol class this week. Temps were in the 60s to 80s with rain. The round count was about 1150 ball with another 200+/- of frangible.

The Vortex Venom failed on day #2 with a broken windage adjustment – after being zeroed. The student shifted to two other iron sight guns for the rest of the week;

That's pretty disappointing. I've only had one Vortex optic but it was pretty decent, if lower-mid end. I'd expect them to be tough enough to outlast a couple range days.

[HCM]

Had two more front BUUS come loose yesterday at work. One was loose in the dovetail and one disappeared and was not recovered. Shooter with the first gun noticed the BUIS/RD co-witness was off during a string of fire.

We’ve had about 300 P320’s with Romeo1PRO RDS and SIG suppressor height BUIS in use for about 6 months now.

So far we’ve seen far more failures of the BUIS than the RDS. So far we’ve seen over 20 BUIS come loose, vs 5 issues with the RDS. Those RDS issues bring 3 which lost zero in the same manner (low left) and two which started worked eating batteries due to failure of the shake awake mode. Most of the BUIS failures have been front sights.

The three zero shifts were all from the same batch of sights. The two shake awake failures are from a different batch of sights issued to our SRT team members about year ago.

[YVK]

I think tall backup front sights on optic guns will be vulnerable to this, snag-prone and such.

[Erick Gelhaus]

I missed getting this up with classes earlier in the year. However, here we go for last week:

Gunsite 350-PMO class, eight students, 1100 +/- rounds of ball, nearly 100 rounds of frangible, day & night work, three indoor simulators plus force-on-force with Sims FX, multiple outdoor simulators too. Some rain, some heat.

Springfield Echelon w/ Trijicon RCR;
Glock 9mm w/Holosun 509T;
Glock 9mm w/ Holosun 507C;
Glock 9mm w/Trij RMR;
Glock 9mm w/something (forgot to write it down);
Glock 9mm w/Holosun 509T;
Shadow Systems MR920 w/Holosun 407C;
M&P 2.0 9mm w/Holosun EPS;

With the exception of the new Trijicon, there were zero issues for any optic.

Let’s talk about the new Trij … my concern, from afar, has been the mounting system. Specifically, how does one torque that to spec? (Yes, I’ve seen the marked card). I had hoped everyone would have gotten the word on mounting procedures.

It was mounted without thread locker, but the marked card was used.

And, it was loose by the end of the morning on Day #1. The thread locker used after that point did not have time to cure. It needed work again Tuesday morning because of this. Red Locktite was used – I had no part of that decision. Not sure if it needed another tightening session or not.

I think the jury will be out on that mounting system for a while. Otherwise, neither the optic nor the Echelon are at all bad. There are some things about that pistol I kind of like.

One student could not work with occluded optics.

The student with the Shadow System’s pistol brought an unknown brand (as in had not heard of) of 9mm frangible with them. They had issues with functioning & cycling.

One of the 9mm Glock shooters had a ported barrel. Only once did I see him be able to fire more than one round of frang at a time. Of course, it happened when he shot the No Shoot during a low-light run in one of the houses.

[Lon]

I missed getting this up with classes earlier in the year. However, here we go for last week:

Gunsite 350-PMO class, eight students, 1100 +/- rounds of ball, nearly 100 rounds of frangible, day & night work, three indoor simulators plus force-on-force with Sims FX, multiple outdoor simulators too. Some rain, some heat.

Springfield Echelon w/ Trijicon RCR;
Glock 9mm w/Holosun 509T;
Glock 9mm w/ Holosun 507C;
Glock 9mm w/Trij RMR;
Glock 9mm w/something (forgot to write it down);
Glock 9mm w/Holosun 509T;
Shadow Systems MR920 w/Holosun 407C;
M&P 2.0 9mm w/Holosun EPS;

With the exception of the new Trijicon, there were zero issues for any optic.

Let’s talk about the new Trij … my concern, from afar, has been the mounting system. Specifically, how does one torque that to spec? (Yes, I’ve seen the marked card). I had hoped everyone would have gotten the word on mounting procedures.

It was mounted without thread locker, but the marked card was used.

And, it was loose by the end of the morning on Day #1. The thread locker used after that point did not have time to cure. It needed work again Tuesday morning because of this. Red Locktite was used – I had no part of that decision. Not sure if it needed another tightening session or not.

I think the jury will be out on that mounting system for a while. Otherwise, neither the optic nor the Echelon are at all bad. There are some things about that pistol I kind of like.

One student could not work with occluded optics.

The student with the Shadow System’s pistol brought an unknown brand (as in had not heard of) of 9mm frangible with them. They had issues with functioning & cycling.

One of the 9mm Glock shooters had a ported barrel. Only once did I see him be able to fire more than one round of frang at a time. Of course, it happened when he shot the No Shoot during a low-light run in one of the houses.

Do you remember what porting it was? If you’re gonna run a ported barrel. I think having a non ported barrel for this kind of stuff is mandatory.

[Erick Gelhaus]

Do you remember what porting it was? If you’re gonna run a ported barrel. I think having a non ported barrel for this kind of stuff is mandatory.

It was not a comped bbl. It was subtle, minimal enough that it did not catch my eye.

[DaBigBR]

I forgot about this thread. Ran an agency optics transition class 8/16-17

Participants:

Department Glock 17 MOS – Holosun EPS
Department Glock 17 MOS – Holosun EPS
Department Glock 17 MOS – Holosun EPS
Department Glock 17 MOS – Holosun EPS
Personal Glock 45 (milled) – Holosun EPS
Department Glock 17 MOS – Holosun 407C
Personal Glock 34 MOS – Holosun EPS
Department Glock 17 MOS – Holosun EPS
Personal Glock 34 MOS – Holosun 509T
Personal Smith and Wesson M&P 9 Compact CORE – Holosun 407C (Day 1 Only)
Personal Sig P365 X Macro Comp – Holosun 407K
Personal Glock 19 MOS – Holosun 509 ACSS

Due to mostly staffing issues and the way that my schedule lined up with the students' schedules, I had to mount five optics the morning of the first day. We had guys that came straight from work and guys that were going straight to work when they were done, etc. I was very surprised to only have one loose optic (and it wasn't one of the five I did the day of).

We had no other optic related issues. The EPS has come on pretty strong for us and already our second most popular optic behind the 509T.

[maximus83]

[...]
So far we’ve seen far more failures of the BUIS than the RDS. So far we’ve seen over 20 BUIS come loose, vs 5 issues with the RDS.

From a sample of ~300 pistols, that seems like a lot of BUIS coming loose.

Is it generally the case that BUIS have more failures than quality/vetted RDS models? Or is this mainly a P320 thing?