Range report

Yesterday I went up to Water & Wings and met a bunch of the guys from The High Road, The Firing Line, Battlerifles.com, and AR15.com.

I brought my Bulgarian AK, M1891/30 Mosin-Nagant, Marlin Camp .45, Ruger P90, and Bulgarian Makarov (which I wound up not shooting). The AK and Mosin worked great, as expected. I was popping clay birds offhand at 50 yards with the Mosin, shooting 1961-vintage Soviet surplus 7.62x54R light ball. This stuff is corrosively primed and some of the filthiest-burning stuff I've ever fired. But, it was cheap and I don't mind a little cleaning. I made sure to run a couple of patches wet with Windex through the bore to flush out the corrosive primer salts, then followed with a couple of patches wet with Hoppe's No.9. I let it soak for a few hours and when I finished up cleaning last night, didn't have to do much.

The Mojo rear sight which I installed on the AK is a major improvement over the regular open notch rear sight, and as a bonus, I didn't even need to adjust it to sight it in. My AK will probably get another red dot sight, but the Mojo unit gives me a good rear sight that won't break or need batteries. Highly recommended.

I ran into a couple of problems with the Marlin. I tried a Chip McCormick 10 rounder and it gave me some failures to feed. This mag has caused problems with the gun in the past, so I'll reserve it for my Springfield M1911, which seems to like it. Then, after about 10 shots through the gun, the cheap POS BSA red dot sight went tango uniform. I was shooting at clay birds placed on the 50 yard berm when I noticed that my rounds were impacting about three feet higher than where I was aiming and where I called the shots. I'd had the gun out before with the red dot and ran about 100 rounds through it, so it looks like the life span of the $30 BSA special is about 110 rounds of .45 ACP. I don't really care, because I got the sight for free, but it was a hassle. So, last night after getting home I mounted the Bushnell red dot sight formerly on my AR-180B onto the Marlin. That should hold up better.

One of the highlights of yesterday was meeting and getting to chew the fat with TheGeekWithA.45. He let me run a magazine through his Camp .45, which he'd fitted with a 21# Wolff mainspring, as described here. My gun has a 16# spring, but I'm going to order the 21# unit. It reduces the already mild recoil to almost nil, as as Geek said, no more "gunschmutz" in my face.

The other highlight for me was getting to try my new Ruger P90 for the first time. I am extremely pleased with it. It's accurate and ran 116 rounds of Sellier & Bellot .45 ACP ball without a hitch. The Ruger seems to soak up recoil better than my Springfield, although it's probably a little lighter. My hand was less fatigued after shooting the Ruger than it is when shooting the 1911. Once I run a couple more boxes of ammo through it the P90 will probably become my house gun.

I can think of few better ways to spend a Saturday than in the company of a bunch of gunnies.