Wheeler's Blog: R51 The Next 93 Rounds

The second range outing for the Remington R51 involved 43 rounds of reloaded ammo. The load was a 125 grain FMJ over 5.5 grains of Auto Pistol running at around 1000 FPS. I also had the opportunity to bamboozle a couple of range cronies into running a magazine each through the R51. One commented it performed similar to a Sig P365 while the other felt the recoil was snappy and the trigger was very light. The next drill was the 5x5 cubed. Five shots from five yards in a five inch circle in under five seconds. The times were as follows: 3.90 seconds. Two misses. Sighting run. 4.17 seconds. Clean 4.14 seconds. One miss 4.12 seconds. Clean 4.65 seconds. Clean 4.65 seconds. Clean I found this ammo and load very pleasant to shoot. No function issues were observed.

At this time I swapped to fifty rounds of Monarch 115 grain, steel case, laquer coated ammo. The next drill included picking up the empty pistol, inserting a loaded magazine, racking the slide, and firing one shot at a steel silhouette at eighteen yards. This drill mimics many IDPA stages of starting with an unloaded gun and having to load and fire under stress. Times were as follows: 3.64 4.38 3.96 3.98 3.16 3.63 3.08 3.35 The magwell is narrow (it is a single stack 9mm after all,) with no flaring. Magazine insertion requires good alignment. the remaing rounds we spent in an alternating Strong Hand Only/Weak Hand Only drill on a steel silhouette at fifteen yards. No function issues were observed. Ninety three rounds is close enough to 100 to justify the next field strip and cleaning. There was a fair bit of powder residue noted. I'm not familiar with how clean or dirty Auto Pistol powder is but there seemed to be more residue than from the first session.