I spent an hour at the range last night and shot 130 rounds out of my XD and 60 rounds out of the Grand Power.
It felt so good to not divide my attention between more than 2 guns, although I did want to shoot one of the 1911s.
I started with the XD first and immediately put 9 of 10 rounds in a close grouping.
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The thing about the Mod 2 is that it shoots extremely well for a subcompact 9mm, as the sight radius of such guns is very small. This gun still has a small sight radius, but the recoil and snappiness is somewhat negated by the Grip Zone texturing of the grips. The front fiber optic helps, especially since I’ve problems focusing on the front sight (I wear corrective lenses).
As I shot five different targets, my groupings got progressively worse. I’m pretty sure it was due to incorrect finger placement on the trigger and not being smooth on the trigger, as I began to impact left of aim. Still, it was fun to challenge myself.
I also fired the XD better with the shorter magazine (vs. using the longer magazine that has the mag sleeve). Don’t ask me why that was the case.
The Grand Power was acting wonky. It didn’t jam or fail to extract, but it may’ve been failing to feed due to a dirty feed ram, as the gun was failing to fully go into battery after expending and ejecting a round. It was an intermittent issue, though, because it didn’t happen every magazine bu when it did, it was almost back-to-back failures to return to battery.
The weapon was clean when I brought it to the range. The ammo I was shooting must’ve been extremely dirty to cause issues between 1 and 60 rounds…in fact, the gun was extremely dirty after that range visit…more than I expected for 60 rounds. The gun was lubed, and I made sure the pivot point on the rotating barrel had lubrication.
I don’t think it was the mags that were the issue. When I racked the gun slowly, I didn’t notice any binding. The only thing I can think of is that the feed ramp got dirty quickly and was hampering the feeding of the next round, which would keep the slide from fully going forward.
Possible causes:
- Ammo that doesn’t have enough powder.
- Dirty ammo that gets the feed ramp really dirty.
- Limp wristing (I highly doubt that’s what happened, but I list it anyways, just in case I AM limp wristing).
- Feed ramp doesn’t like hollow point ammo.
- Feed ramp needs to be broken in (I doubt this, but read that someone had an issue with a ramp being too polished).
UPDATE: Well…look at this –> http://www.handgunforum.net/beretta/30881-failure-feed-px4-storm-compact-9mm.html. This looks similar to my bullet list above…looks like I am on the right track. How does this relate to my P11? Well, the small Beretta PX4 Storms have rotating barrels as well. It seems that these type guns might not like lighter ammo and might be prone to limp-wristing as well.
Of the two guns, I fired the XD better. That wasn’t the case the last time I took the P11 to the range. Blame the failures to go into battery.
I did not get any video footage, as my camera wasn’t charged before I left for the range.
I fired 100 rounds of Remington UMC 115-grain JHP, 20 rounds of Remington UMC 115-grain FMJ, and 10 rounds of Remington HTP 115-grain +P.
I’m looking forward to the next range visit so I can put more rounds through the XD and become more proficient with it. I’m not quite looking forward to re-experiencing issues with the P11, though.