R51: The First 100 Rounds

My immediate goal with the R51 is to run 500 rounds without any failures directly attributable to the gun. I'm planning to run 100 or so rounds through the gun in five different range sessions. The shooting done will be a mixture of accuracy drills and drills that require magazine changes, speed, accuracy, freestyle shooting (using both hands,) Strong Hand Only (SHO,) and Weak Hand Only (WHO.) Distances will be from contact to 40 yards. For those that wonder why 40 yards, that's the deepest pistol bay available at my range. One of the complaints that I saw mentioned during my research was spotty reliability with steel case ammo. The rationalization was that if the gun wouldn't run with cheap steel case ammo then it would be difficult to practice with the gun. I'm guessing those wags never heard of dry fire? Regardless, I started off my testing using steel case ammo because that's what I had on hand. I'd of argued the point of using steel case ammo two years ago when quality brass case ammo was available at $.17 per round. Since current prices are almost triple that, we use what we can afford and have available to hand. Keep in mind that dry fire is always an inexpensive alternative to live fire. Claude Werner, aka The Tactical Professor has an awesome array of dryfire drills and tips here. I started off with a 50 round box of Barnaul 115 grain, FMJ, Polymer Coated, Steel Case ammo. I shot Claude's 12 Shot Test from 3 yards with a single sighter shot at a 1" paster to verify the Point of Aim/Point of Impact.This drill was shot cold. In lieu of using a holster I shot the drills calling for drawing from a holster from a compressed, high ready. this is not a timed drill.

I then moved on to some distance work working a steel sillouhette and plate rack from fifteen yards. Steel doesn't lie to us. I had some misses on the plate rack. This prompted me to run a walk back drill starting at three yards, fire two rounds, evaluate, then move back one yard and repeat. At six yards I noticed the point of impact dropping. At thirteen yards the point of impact was six inches low. This concluded the fifty rounds of Barnaul. I then swapped to Monarch 115 grain, steel case, laquer coated ammunition. I repeated the walk back drill and noted the same changes to the point of impact at six yards and stopped at thirteen yards again with the point of impact still six inches low. I wanted to swap things up a bit and ran the IDPA 5x5 Classifier. As I didn't have a holster I started from a high, compressed, ready position. I was timing and tracking for a baseline of performance, not to classify so felt as if the holster wasn't relevant at this point. Times and scoring were as follows: String 1: 3.64/-1 String 2: 5.56/-1 String 3: 11.97/-1 (While I didn't think a holster was relevant a mag pouch would have been handy here.) String 4: 4.20/-4 The raw time was 25.37 and the adjusted time was 32.37. Not stellar but certainly a good point to work from.

The remaing rounds were used on a steel sillouhette at fifteen yards. This concluded the first 100 rounds fired with functional issues.