I picked up this pistol in March (it's 12.6 prohibited) and I finally had a chance to take it to the range yesterday. Before I get into the details of how it shot I’ll quickly review this pistol and how it compares with the more common P9S Combat. I’ve owned a couple of 9mm Combat models and wrote a fairly detailed post about my first one here. The basic functionality of my new one is the same—it’s a neat, innovative design but one probably doomed due to the manufacturing cost. My new one—the “Target” model differs in a few significant and less significant ways:
The Calibre
It’s in .45ACP instead of the more common 9mm. In my experience, P9Ss are not especially common, and I’ve only seen one other .45 P9S on the EE over the years.
The Sights
Instead of the low-profile fixed red/white sights of the Combat model the Target has a very high profile front sight and an all-black adjustable rear.
Here are the Combat model’s sights:
The Trigger
The trigger itself isn’t different, but what takes this pistol to a different level is the overtravel stop. You can see it in the picture above behind the trigger at the bottom rear of the trigger guard. The screw in the outside of the triggerguard to the stop’s right allows the user to raise or lower the stop, as its use prevents DA shooting. That’s no great loss as the DA pull is atrocious.
Have a look below at the quick demo:
The Finish
This is probably more due to the production date—my Target is from 1986, while my old Combat model dated from ten years earlier.
The older model had the slide’s sides semi-polished and the top matte—I liked it. The new one has a rougher matte black finish. It does have a certain businesslike appeal, too. Oh, and the Target has import markings
At the Range
I finally had a chance to take the pistol to the range yesterday evening. It was cool–about 10°C—and a little breezy but nice to finally have no snow!
I tried six rounds at 10m just to get a feel for the pistol. After years of shooting pistols with “service style” triggers the super-short one on the P9S did take some getting used to! Here are the initial results.
I tried six more, focussing more on the trigger–although you can see in the video below in the second group of six that starts around the 25 second mark I still hadn’t quite gotten the reset yet. Results were better, though.
After that I tried two rounds of six shots at a faster pace–results were not bad. This was the first time that vertical stringing was evident.
Next I went back to 15m to try some slower shooting–here are the first five rounds
I was finding the white front sight a little tough to align with the top of the black rear sight–with my post-cataract artificial lenses I have awesome distance vision but at the cost of losing some near vision, and I think the group shows the impact of not having a really good handle on elevation—the front sight was not that easy to pick up. I tried five more, focussing as much as I could on the front sight and was much more pleased with this five-round group (still a bit of vertical stringing, though). These aren’t in the video–they take too long.
I even tried five rounds one-handed. I was impressed at the low recoil. (these are the top ones below)
And I finished off with ten quick shots.
Conclusion
So–what are my thoughts? The first thing I noticed was how mild the recoil was–I was startled at how little recoil there was (all the shooting was either Federal or American Eagle 230 gr FMJ. The video below shows the lack of muzzle flip. It is the most pleasant-shooting .45 I’ve ever owned. The trigger pull is, of course, wonderful, although it does take some getting used to. The one thing that didn’t work for me were the sights. With good near vision they’d be great but they were a handicap. I think that at a round black bullseye target they'd be perfect—the white part would be easy to see against the black and the black rear sight against the white part of the target. I didn't have any with me yesterday but maybe next time I'll try it.
Overall, though, it’s a very impressive pistol!
I picked up this pistol in March (it's 12.6 prohibited) and I finally had a chance to take it to the range yesterday. Before I get into the details of how it shot I’ll quickly review this pistol and how it compares with the more common P9S Combat. I’ve owned a couple of 9mm Combat models and wrote a fairly detailed post about my first one here. The basic functionality of my new one is the same—it’s a neat, innovative design but one probably doomed due to the manufacturing cost. My new one—the “Target” model differs in a few significant and less significant ways:
The Calibre
It’s in .45ACP instead of the more common 9mm. In my experience, P9Ss are not especially common, and I’ve only seen one other .45 P9S on the EE over the years.
The Sights
Instead of the low-profile fixed red/white sights of the Combat model the Target has a very high profile front sight and an all-black adjustable rear.
Here are the Combat model’s sights:
The Trigger
The trigger itself isn’t different, but what takes this pistol to a different level is the overtravel stop. You can see it in the picture above behind the trigger at the bottom rear of the trigger guard. The screw in the outside of the triggerguard to the stop’s right allows the user to raise or lower the stop, as its use prevents DA shooting. That’s no great loss as the DA pull is atrocious.
Have a look below at the quick demo:
The Finish
This is probably more due to the production date—my Target is from 1986, while my old Combat model dated from ten years earlier.
The older model had the slide’s sides semi-polished and the top matte—I liked it. The new one has a rougher matte black finish. It does have a certain businesslike appeal, too. Oh, and the Target has import markings
At the Range
I finally had a chance to take the pistol to the range yesterday evening. It was cool–about 10°C—and a little breezy but nice to finally have no snow!
I tried six rounds at 10m just to get a feel for the pistol. After years of shooting pistols with “service style” triggers the super-short one on the P9S did take some getting used to! Here are the initial results.
I tried six more, focussing more on the trigger–although you can see in the video below in the second group of six that starts around the 25 second mark I still hadn’t quite gotten the reset yet. Results were better, though.
After that I tried two rounds of six shots at a faster pace–results were not bad. This was the first time that vertical stringing was evident.
Next I went back to 15m to try some slower shooting–here are the first five rounds
I was finding the white front sight a little tough to align with the top of the black rear sight–with my post-cataract artificial lenses I have awesome distance vision but at the cost of losing some near vision, and I think the group shows the impact of not having a really good handle on elevation—the front sight was not that easy to pick up. I tried five more, focussing as much as I could on the front sight and was much more pleased with this five-round group (still a bit of vertical stringing, though). These aren’t in the video–they take too long.
I even tried five rounds one-handed. I was impressed at the low recoil. (these are the top ones below)
And I finished off with ten quick shots.
Conclusion
So–what are my thoughts? The first thing I noticed was how mild the recoil was–I was startled at how little recoil there was (all the shooting was either Federal or American Eagle 230 gr FMJ. The video below shows the lack of muzzle flip. It is the most pleasant-shooting .45 I’ve ever owned. The trigger pull is, of course, wonderful, although it does take some getting used to. The one thing that didn’t work for me were the sights. With good near vision they’d be great but they were a handicap. I think that at a round black bullseye target they'd be perfect—the white part would be easy to see against the black and the black rear sight against the white part of the target. I didn't have any with me yesterday but maybe next time I'll try it.
Overall, though, it’s a very impressive pistol!
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