Rock CS Compact Range Report

[DaFadda]

Ok.... got my "used" Rock down to the range today. Before I went, I cleaned it up purty.... oiled and greased, and I took a variety of mags. I like to shoot lots of little holes that touch each other, but today was not the day for that. What I was most concerned about was the reliability of my Officer mags in this firearm.



Here is scoop on this RIA 1911-A1-CS. I was shooting my own handloads today. They are 230 JHP from Montana Gold, over 5.7 (max powder is 6.0gr) of Universal Clays. Primers are Tula large pistol. The magazines were a combination of Checkmates, a Dan Wesson "came with my CCO" mag, and several Kimpro TacMags. The pistol came with One "ActMag". Blued, clean, falls free easily. And it failed to feed. One time.

The six other mags had absolutely NO issues with feeding JHP bullets. Now... we might think that I'm an incredibly adept person who only purchased the best magazines he could find, inspecting each one to ensure that it had exactly the right followers. We would be wrong. Three had "hybrid" followers, one was flat, and the others were GI followers. All kept the action open after the last round was fired.

So... how did it shoot? Very reliable, especially since the first thing I did to it was do the "reliability work" that Dave Waits thread suggested on the subject.

Here's the url: http://www.cotep.org/forum/showthread.php?t=695

I left the extractor alone, but polished the feed ramp, breech face and underside of the barrel.

At first, I was all over the place with this gun. It has a 3.5" barrel, and I'm used to my CCO's 4.25", but I can't write it off to barrel length. I was saying "I shoot better than this with my 3" Springer MicroCompact."

I also found that I was shooting about 3" to the left, and 3" down from center. The sights are fixed, so I'm going to drift the rear a little bit, then try it again. There were a couple of "fliers".... but I'm not sure they were the gun. Quite possibly was me. After a couple mags, I settled down and was shooting 2" - 3" groups at about 21 feet.

Did I enjoy the shoot? Of course. At 34 oz. I'm not thinking this is going to be my carry gun, since the DW CCO already has that place in my heart. If I want more weight on my side then I'll carry my SIG GSR! But for a range gun/bedside stand gun? It's going to be great. Would I put my life on it? Let me put another 500 rounds without a hiccup through it and I'll let you know.

In closing, I already have a call in to lip at RIA. I'm having trouble seeing the black front sight on a black target. We're looking for a white dot set that I can replace the black sights with.

A NOTE: RIA pistols do NOT have the same dovetail sight angles as a U.S. made pistol that uses "Novak style" sights. The angles are slightly different in the pistols made in the ippines. Novak style sights will have to be ground to fit RIA pistols (cuz I don't think you want to start grinding your slide!). I verified that with RIA yesterday.

So, we'll see what Arnel comes up with for a workaround for my tired eyes.
All in all.... a great day at the range, and I'm still highly impressed with the quality that RIA and Armscor is putting into their 1911's.

Da Michael