After a fruitful trip to the Washington Arms Collector’s show and a surprise early birthday present at Ben’s Loans Linda and I stopped in at Champion Arms for a bit of recreational shooting. Since it was dinner time we were able to walk in and get a lane with no wait- there’s a Pro Tip there. Linda had her ‘new’ Kahr E9 and Vz70, and I trotted out the Taurus m905 9mm revolver and the brand-new-to-me Para Ordinance LDA .45 Carry.  I cover this gun at some length here-LDA .45 Carry.

We shot the LDA .45 first, and I instantly learned not to ride the safety with my thumb the way I usually do with a 1911. Ouch. Like other short 1911s recoil isn’t bad, and while there is significant muzzle flip the gun comes back on target very quickly. Linda and I both enjoyed shooting it a great deal and had pretty good results. We were shooting Freedom Munitions 230gr. CPHP and found these hit a couple of inches low at 7 yards. This was easily compensated for. The novel trigger required almost no adaptation-time, and I was able to produce these as my first and last rapid-fire targets at that range-

The gun performed flawlessly- I think this gun has a bright future as an EDC, and you can expect to see it frequently in future range reports.

We had picked up two boxes of PMC Bronze 115gr. FMC 9x19mm at the gun show, and shooting these through the Taurus showed they were quite a bit milder than the supposedly mid-range hand-loads I took on our last expedition. I will be making a significant adjustment to that load…

The Taurus m905 is pretty snappy, even with 9mm range-loads. It’s an all-steel gun but recoil is comparable to an alloy-frame .38 Special with +P loads. I have reinstalled the boot-grip since the target grip failed, and I ran a few cylinders, strong, weak and two-hand and called it good. Here’s the results of two cylinders full rapid-fired at seven yards-

I need more practice with this gun, and may make a change to the front sight. Despite the rep of Taurus revolvers the trigger is light and smooth. I plan on working up some revolver-specific light loads so that Linda can shoot this gun as well. I’m experimenting with shortening .38 Special cases and loading them with 9mm 115gr. FMC bullets. I use the .38 shell-holder and the 9mm dies. This allows me to dispense with the ‘star-clips’ needed to eject 9x19mm cases, and I cannot accidentally load them into a semi-auto that they would be too light to function in. Since any new cartridge needs a name I call this .355-19R (.355 diameter bullet, 19mm case length, Revolver.) because calling it 9mm Rimmed would be too easy.

The Kahr was next up, and while I love the ergonomics, trigger and soft-recoiling mechanism I am finding that I really don’t like the dot-over-bar sights. They are reasonably quick to acquire but rather imprecise. Other than that it’s a very pleasant gun to shoot and completely reliable. 7 yards, rapid-fire-

Finally the Vz70- though the Kahr is her first love Linda found this gun the most pleasant to shoot. Not surprising; it’s the same size and weight as the Kahr but is chambered for .32 ACP. I do need to apply some color to the front-sight to make it easier to pick up, but the double-action trigger is quite smooth (though a bit heavy) and the single-action trigger is light and crisp with very little over travel.

The only issue experienced with this gun was that it failed to lock the slide back after the last round in the magazine, though it would lock back every time when the slide was operated manually with an empty magazine. We were firing this gun with Fiochi 73gr. FMC which has a rep for being a bit wimpy, so perhaps that is the culprit. We’ll try a different brand next time and see what happens. 7 Yards, RF-

Not an impressive group; perhaps practice and a more visible front sight will help this.

We had a terrific day together, and the range trip was a nice way to finish things up.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 3 June 17

Notice anything odd about this compact .45?  Yeah, you’re right. It is kinda’ weird.

Having escaped the Washington Arms Collector’s show in Puyallup without buying any new guns- only just, mind you- we were feeling rather smug and stopped by Ben’s Loans in Renton. One of our top-two favorite gun stores, and since I have a birthday inbound in a couple of weeks we were just going to have a peek at what was new. We looked at a bit of this and that, then Linda said, “Hey, have a look at this Para-Ordinance.”

The first thing that I noticed was that it was a sub-compact. The next things were the trigger, spurless hammer and complete lack of a tail on the grip safety. It’s double-action only… except it isn’t. I tried the trigger-pull and it was remarkably light and broke like snapping a glass rod. If that wasn’t weird enough the hammer only seemed to move back about an eighth of an inch before dropping. I thought it was broken- there was no way that wussy little strike would hit the firing-pin hard enough! Further examination showed that I wasn’t seeing everything that was happening because it was too fast for the naked eye. When the trigger breaks the hammer actually moves back another three-eighths of an inch or so before snapping forward, and while the hammer is very light it moves really fast.

OK, the notion of a double-action 1911 is weird and a double-action-only 1911 is even weirder, but this seemed like witchcraft. I don’t have a trigger-gauge but at an educated guess the force required is 3-1/2 to 5 lbs. It doesn’t feel like any double-action pull I’ve ever felt. In fact in their marketing Para Ordinance says it’s ‘Exactly like nothing you’ve ever felt’ and that sums it up pretty well.

Some research revealed what is actually happening. In a Glock the striker is brought to half-cock when the slide operates, leaving you with a light semi-double-action trigger pull. In this system the slide’s movement brings the gun to full-cock, then the hammer disengages and drops to a safe position. When you pull the trigger all you are doing is returning the hammer against very light spring pressure to a point where it re-engages then releases the sear. So it’s kinda’ not double-action, but it kinda’ is. What it is like is, well, nothing you’ve ever experienced.

These guns have been around since the early 2000s, but have remained largely obscure. partly because they were not cheap and partly because, uh, reasons. Certainly a DAO 1911 is anathema to the diehard 1911 cultists; I found the idea bizarre myself right up t when I tried it. In a lot of ways it’s an answer to a question nobody was asking. Trigger travel and reset are long but it works, especially on something designed as a carry gun. At 24 ounces it’s no lightweight, but with a proper holster it will be a doddle to carry.

Field-stripping is very much standard 1911- or at least sub-compact 1911.  Pull the slide back to the take-down notch, pop out the slide stop and it goes pretty familiarly from there. Yeh, it’s a bull-barrel, has a captured dual-stage recoil spring and the recoil plug comes out the back instead of the front but it’s nothing an old 1911 hand can’t suss out.

The Para LDA Carry field stripped

I was warned not to take it past field-stripping; much past that and it starts vomiting parts whose place and function is not intuitive. I watched a video about dismantling the fire-control group, and I will not be doing so any time soon!

The grip safety is functional, and it has a license-built Series 80 firing pin safety as well as a conventional thumb-safety, which is not ambidextrous. Without a beavertail in the way it is very fast and easy to access the safety when holding the gun in the left hand. The flat plastic grips and ridged front-strap provide a very secure grip. The lack of a beavertail isn’t really an issue, as the hammer doesn’t travel far enough to bite. Like most 1911s in this size range the stock magazine holds 6+1, but of course for reloads you can use full-length magazines.

So, how does it shoot? In a word- fantastic. Stubby .45s benefit from the short slides low reciprocating weight and the duration of the recoil is shorter; there is more muzzle-whip but the gun comes back down faster and there really isn’t much difference in felt recoil between this and a full-sized gun. Even my notoriously recoil-sensitive wife had a ball shooting it. The 3-inch match-grade bull-barrel delivers quite adequate accuracy at SD distances. While you might think a die-hard 1911 guy like myself would find the trigger hard to adapt to in practice I stopped noticing it very quickly, and double-taps come easily after a very little shooting.

7-yards, rapid fire with Freedom Munitions 230gr. CPHPs

The gun was perfectly reliable for the couple boxes of ammunition we fed it. The only thing that I noted was that it does not like to feed the first round from the magazine by using the slide-stop to drop the slide. But if you grab the slide, pull to the rear and release it feeds every time.

If you fancy a wee 1911 but are nervous about carrying ‘cocked-and-locked’ this might be just what you have been looking for. Be prepared to pay for the privilege though- these guns seem to often go for $700-$900* on the used market and the upcoming new version will start at $1025.

It’s early days yet, but I love the hell out of this gun! It may be the answer to a question no one was asking, but it’s a good answer. I foresee a bright future as an EDC, and it’s safe to say you’ll be seeing a lot of it in future Range Reports.

*not that we paid anywhere near that!

Michael Tinker Pearce, 03June17

Taurus m905 9mm revolver w/custom grip

Yesterday’s range trip largely falls into the category of ‘teachable moments.’ The words ‘Learning Experience’ also come to mind.

A few years back Linda Sold her best friend her Kahr E9 and has regretted it ever since. She’s just never found anything with the trigger and soft-shooting nature of that gun, and believe me, she’s tried! So when we happened across one on Gunbroker act an excellent price we were all over it. In anticipation of a range trip when it arrived I loaded some 9mm ammunition  to duplicate typical range ammunition. A 115gr. FMC at 1050fps seemed about right. I loaded up a bunch of them… yes, I know people recommend loading just a few and trying them, but I wanted Linda to be able to shoot her new gun to her heart’s content, and I wanted to shoot the Taurus m905 with the new grips and the Helwan as well.

So we got to the range and Linda tried the new gun with an odd result- the slide kept locking back between shots. I tried it and that didn’t happen to me; the gun worked a treat. Linda adjusted her grip and things improved immediately, and she shot this target at 7 yards- not bad for someone badly out of practice shooting a new gun.

She found the gun to be every bit as nice to shoot as she remembered, and had a good time with it. At the end of the session she started having the issue again, and we concluded she pretty much had t be limp-wresting it, since I couldn’t reproduce the malfunction. We’ll work on that; maybe get her a ball to squeeze or something.

Meanwhile I fired the Taurus and discovered that the load I had selected was maybe not-so-much mid-range. The were seriously snappy, much more so than there Freedom Arms and Magtech ammo that I am used to. They were in fact snappy enough to break the lamination of the wood on the back of the grip. I reluctantly put the snubby away and relegated the rest of the ammo to the semi-autos.

So, Linda fired the Helwan for the first time and shot a rather nice group. Then I loaded up a mag and tried it… for the first time ever the gun jammed. Now, there has been a minor issue with racking the slide for some time, but the gun functioned so I had made the mistake of shrugging it off. Now the slide was jamming back and not returning to battery and it was very difficult to rack the slide and clear the weapon. OK, time to put that one away too. Bugger.

Time to resort to simpler tools. I brought out the Remington Bulldog and ran a quite satisfactory cylinder-full through it. I reloaded and fired a couple more shots and was having trouble re-acquiring my sight picture. That happens when your front sight flies off… oops. I couldn’t find the damned thing either. Well, I’d been figuring on a new front-sight anyway… aaaand gun number three goes back in the bag. Double-bugger. I was almost afraid to do any more shooting for fear I would break more guns…

Linda was done shooting, so I grimly brought out the Steampunk Snubbies and had a go. Fortunately they worked as well as I am accustomed to and after I chewed the centers out of a few targets I felt better. After that I fired the Shopkeeper’s Special with very satisfactory results, shooting two-hands, strong-hand and weak-hand. I felt redeemed as none of these guns experienced any difficulty and I shot them well.

So, the post-mortem…

First- the 9mm load I selected was much hotter than the reloading manual indicated. These were supposed to be moderate standard-pressure loads, but the recoil impulse was more in line with +P defensive ammuntion.  I will definitely be heeding the advice to do small test-batches in the future.

Second- The laminated grip construction that I used is not strong enough for high-pressure loads in a light revolver. So, time for a new set of grips with more robust construction… and some lighter loads!

Third- the Helwan. Upon getting home I disassembled the gun and discovered the lugs on the locking-block are peened enough to drag in the slide. This has been a problem with some of the Helwan guns, and is quite expensive to fix. Locking-blocks are getting hard to source and don’t go cheap- about $75 when they are available. Currently barrels with locking blocks are available- for $175. Ouch… that’s only $50 less than we paid for the whole gun! If  can develop reasonable material and heat-treat specs I may have to fabricate one, or repair this one. We’ll see.

Not altogether a stellar day- I had a migraine in the morning, gun and ammo issues in the early evening, and then our internet inexplicably went out. Neither computer could get online despite the fact that Hulu was perfectly happy to stream programs to our TV. Just one of those days, I guess…