Best production div. gun for mag changes?

Six Star said:
IMHO, you're overthinking this issue.....While quick mag changes are certainly an integral part of one's "performance", it's not as critical an issue as that which Omen has said in his post above...If you can't shoot the gun properly because it doesn't fit you, then the fastest mag change in the world isn't going to help your scores. You are concentrating on the mag insertion...that's really your job, not the gun's... ;)
FWIW, the only gun I shot in IPSC that dropped full mags right after the first shot was fired after the mag was inserted was with my Glock G35....A Glock's mag has to inserted "just right"...not too hard and not too soft.
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I have to disagree with this one. A glock mag has to be seated hard, just like any other gun, but there is no "too hard". Too hard is the enemy of economy of motion, however.
 
i haven't tried this, because I don't own a glock, but if you turn it upside down, does the mag bounce up a little when the mag release is pressed?
 
as for the LDA, mag changes could be the quickest if you were using the STI mags they made for the para, the geometry seems better. but you would likely loose more time adapting to the trigger. I'd class the para, with para mags, as marginally better than the glock. but not much.

I was doing a shooting course last winter with my CZ85 and doing practice reloads as fast and smooth as the STI guys. The SP01 is as easy.
Without experience, but I'd say that the beretta line should be up there too. based on the geometry of the mags/magwell.

You may find at first that your index finger gets jammed, I found that after years of 140 and 170 mm mags I was holding the production mag too high.

If you are using one of the techniques that keeps the magwell up in your line of sight, I doubt that you will have much problem adapting your reload to a production gun.

echoing Omen, the fit of the gun is more important. for me the CZ family fits like a glove, and the SP01 balances much more neutrally for me.

but I have bought a glock and intend to play with it some this winter. given its ubiquity and simplicity, the likelihood , as a travelling shooter, of arriving without a gun and needing to borrow one, you would probably end up with a glock.
 
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As if anyone didn't need to back up the production champion's opinion, I will.

CZs. Period. I tried Taurus/Beretta and Glock. Then I tried CZ. What a difference.

The CZ's tapered magazine design and its size of maghole make it much easier to reload. (Like the same way an ST/SV_I is easier to load than a Para.)

Glock and Beretta mags taper off too fast; you must be more precise. (Think 1911 single stack with no magwell)

Plastic mags (Glock, HK?) need armor all to ensure they slide out well.
Metal mags need to only be kept clean. The extra weight doesn't hurt.

You'll spend a lot more time learning (practicing) smooth reloads on the others than you will on a CZ design and that will translate into better odds of you hitting the mag change when you're in a stage, stepping on uneven ground, concentrating on speed.
 
ipsc1 said:
I was doing a shooting course last winter with my CZ85 and doing practice reloads as fast and smooth as the STI guys. The SP01 is as easy.
Without experience, but I'd say that the beretta line should be up there too. based on the geometry of the mags/magwell.
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I can add a little something here: On the CZs, there is some relieveing done at teh front and rear of the mag well, making a bit of a funnel. The beretta 92 FS (i haven't looked at the Elite series) has no relief front and rear, so is marginally harder.
 
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Freedom Ventures said:
As if anyone didn't need to back up the production champion's opinion, I will.

CZs. Period.
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I agree, but CZ's QC has been atrocious lately. Some companies, you can get a Monday gun, or a Friday gun, and have some problems. CZ seems to have issues with guns not made in the late morning on Wednesdays. FTE city! Check out the CZ forum, if you don't believe me. I'd supply the link, if I hadn't deleted it when I sold my 85.

I tried Taurus/Beretta and Glock. Then I tried CZ. What a difference.
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Heaven knows, I didn't go Glock for the mag changes. What a pain!

The CZ's tapered magazine design and its size of maghole make it much easier to reload. (Like the same way an ST/SV_I is easier to load than a Para.)

Glock and Beretta mags taper off too fast; you must be more precise. (Think 1911 single stack with no magwell)

Plastic mags (Glock, HK?) need armor all to ensure they slide out well.
Metal mags need to only be kept clean. The extra weight doesn't hurt.

You'll spend a lot more time learning (practicing) smooth reloads on the others than you will on a CZ design and that will translate into better odds of you hitting the mag change when you're in a stage, stepping on uneven ground, concentrating on speed.
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This last point is the kicker. The odds of hitting a good mag change are higher with the CZ than most, if not all, other production guns.

That said, I have NEVER, in 6000+ rounds with the Glock, had a failure of any kind.... That's not quite true. I got some "once fired" brass that turned out to have been through a 9mm major open gun... a couple of times. The primers kept falling out prior to firing. You can hardly blame the Glock for that, though.

My CZ had failures galore. Some people get CZs that are wonderous workhorses, reliable as the tides. Others do not. That kind of hit-or-miss reliability completely crosses CZ off my list... before you ask, I dropped $300 of gunsmithing into the thing, trying to fix the problem, to no avail.
 
Bartledan said:
My CZ had failures galore. Some people get CZs that are wonderous workhorses, reliable as the tides. Others do not. That kind of hit-or-miss reliability completely crosses CZ off my list... before you ask, I dropped $300 of gunsmithing into the thing, trying to fix the problem, to no avail.
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Well, we were just discussing the best reloads, right? :)

Sounds to me like someone ought to try to get a better quality line of CZ designs into Canada pronto! :D
 
Bartledan said:
I have to disagree with this one. A glock mag has to be seated hard, just like any other gun, but there is no "too hard". Too hard is the enemy of economy of motion, however.
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You're disagreeing and agreeing in the same sentence..:D ;)
 
Freedom Ventures said:
Plastic mags (Glock, HK?) need armor all to ensure they slide out well.
Metal mags need to only be kept clean. The extra weight doesn't hurt.

QUOTE]

I actually have never tried that, but makes sense. I actually got some 1200grit sandpaper and did a light once over on my mags.

the thing that helps me improve in this aree the most is practice.
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I used ArmorAll on my G35's mags, but it turned them into slippery little devils...I solved that by applying a square of skateboard tape on the bottom of the basepads. I guess that wouldn't be allowed in Production on a Prod. legal Glock, though...maybe apply some 'gripper' spray (can't remember the name of the stuff) to the basepads? Production-legal invisible enhancements.:D
 
Hey guys, thanks for all the input. Nothing like hearing the voices of experience when you're looking for answers!

In my case, I know that the pistols that feel like a 1911 will be the most comfortable to me as my IPSC pistol of choice for the last number of years has been an STI 2011.

With my hands being in the medium/large size range, I really doubt that any of the better production division pistols would be less than comfortable, at the very least.

So it starts to boil down to little things like the relative ease of mag changes. It won't be the only factor that I base my decision on but it will be one of them.

If I am going to buy a gun for Production division, I would like to eliminate from consideration, the ones that are going to put me at a disadvantage right out of the start position.
 
Well, if you went long dustcover and liked it then maybe the SP01 is for you. One funny thing about my sp01, what I had originally thought to be a minus may in fact be a plus. The gun came with a lanyard loop, and I had thought it might be a problem with reloads, you know, something sticking out to smash my palm against. But in may in fact be aiding my reload. If anyone remembers the original SA magwells for the para, they were not much more than an extended mainspring housing. The lanyard loop may be acting in the same way, helping to guide the mag in if you hit a little further back than you had planned.
 
I think that the closest to a 1911 would be the Para LDA... ipsc1 shot that for a while, I think... I'm not an 1911 person, so can't offer any more advice than that.

if you want to start eliminating possibilities, to cut down on the options, try a Walther P99 or an HK USP to see if that type of mag release works for you. If it doesn't, that's two brands of pistols you can cross off the list right off...
 
The Para LDA is indeed the choice in Production where one prefers a more traditional 1911 platform...
I use a 9MM, stainless LDA LTD and it works well...Apart from the trigger, it is a standard 1911 'controlwise', and the heft and 9mm make recoil a non-issue.
The only issue is getting used to the trigger (I love it), as the 'reset' is long...
However, if you believe such 'shootists' as Todd Jarett, and Rob Leatham, they advocate the 'touch the front of the triggerguard with your finger between each shot' before touching off the next shot. They say it gives the gun just a liitle more time to settle, and any defecit in taking more time is more than made up with an increase in accurracy "on longer shots". They aggree that on 'point blank' targets, everyone 'slaps' the trigger anyway!
 
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