Shot my wife's new Equalizer first. The grouping issue is hers. Equalizer has a rough draggy heavy trigger compared to her Shield PC 9MM. She's got to get used to it or I've got to try to tear it down and smooth it up some.
SIG 2022 9MM. I was curious about the Win. 124 grain FMJ NATO ammo with this pistol. All I can say is it doesn't group as well as those 115 grain FMJ reloads I put together last year with Greed Dot powder. Oh, the SIG is amazingly "sedate' with this ammo. It's NATO, up around 1200 fps for a 124 grain FMJ bullet and you'd never know it when shooting it. Don't know if it's pistol weight or grip/barrel geometry, or something else. If the darn thing had thumb safeties and shot better groups I'd consider getting the slide milled for a dot optic.
The M&P Shield Plus frame with the 4" slide kit on it didn't shoot any better than the same frame with the original 3" slide. One of the guys on the M&P Forum, who beat me to the range with his, said the same thing. His optics 4" shot no better than his iron sight 3", which I understand. It's not the barrel length if you've got good eyes, a good target and good ammo.
The first group was big and left/high. The second group was smaller and still left/high. I've seen other pistols do stuff like that on the first group (except my P09 9MM Joe talked me into getting. Thanks, Joe). Hurt my feelings when I got close enough to see the 1st group. Felt better after the second one and as I sighted in the Holoson.
I rough sighted the Holoson in at the house by adjusting it to sit just above the front sight. Now it is left of the front sight and a little closer elevation wise. Makes me wonder if the iron sights are "sighted in". Yeah, I completely forgot to fire a couple groups with iron sights (then again, I forgot to take the sight adjustment tool with me so I could take care of it if it was off. Maybe next time.
When cleaning them I notided:
That SIG barrel looks awesome when clean. Super smooth and shiny looking with the naked (glassed) eyes. Easy to clean, too. Yeah, I know, only 5 shots of FMJ but it's comparable (naked eye) to the P07 in the smoothness and much brighter.
The 4" RemSport barrel in the Shield Plus was really dirty looking compared to the rest. Nasty. After mutiple brushings with Hoppe#9 and patches on a jag. It still had dark looking spots in the grooves about half way down the the barrel - low spots?? No idea, left it that way vs. getting the JB Bore Paste out again. Not cleaning it with that every range trip. The ports were venting gas, I could see the powder residue on the front of the slide on either side of the front sight. I couldn't "feel" the difference like I do with the M&P 1.0 9MM 5" PC ported pistol. With the big pistol you can see and feel the difference when you start shooting it. With this 4" ported barrel in the 4" slide (ports are in the portion of the barrel that extends out in front of the the slide) I couldn't tell there was any difference between it and the 3" barreled slide. Oh well.
Discovered (when I wore my driving glasses from the car) down to the range that the green dot is a really nice round looking dot through those glasses vs. the red dot on the 3" slide. Same brand (Holoson) that green dot is just a lot clearer with that pair of glasses vs. red. Might be different from sight to sightf. Need to look at some of the dots on other pistols through those glasses.
SIG 2022 target. Five shots of the Win, NATO ammo at 10 yds.
4" slide/barrel on the Shield Plus. Ten shots at 10 yds. with the PD 115 grain hollow points and Blue Dot powder. The one in the center was the first shot of this group and the rest were high and right. I eventually got it worked over to the center after this group (second group fired - first group was really wide open compared to this one.)
Last group was with the 3" slide/barrel on the Plus frame to see how it compared to the 4". Five shot group, 10 yds. Not pretty, but I was ready to leave after this one. Well, not as pretty as the P07 would have done.
