As a follow-up to the prior thread on my surrender to the dark side, I thought I'd share a few observations as someone who is entirely new to the whole Open gun thing.
* Decided not to post an above-SAAMI load, though I'm happy to send it to people via a PM if anyone is interested.
- Everyone knows compensators tamp down muzzle rise, but I've been surprised at how effective the one on my gun is at slowing slide velocity. The first 100 or so rounds I ran through the gun were "merely" book-max 9mm loads, and if I took the spring heavier than 6 pounds, it wouldn't consistently cycle! As I've stepped up the loads, I've moved up a little in spring weight, but the slide velocity is still far less than my uncompensated limited-division gun with a 16 lb spring.
- It's amazing how pleasant it is to shoot. Far less tiring than my limited gun.
- Learning to shoot target-focused all the time is going to be a task. The tendency to want to "watch the dot," rather than strictly watching the target and being aware of the dot, is really strong.
- Dots definitely make it easier to hit things like mini-poppers at speed. It's much harder to mis-read the sights and think "that looked good, why wasn't that good?" which is a feeling I have often had with my iron-sighted guns. Either the dot is within the target or not - there's not a judgment call/discernment about whether the light bars were equal enough.
- My hopes for an un-poppled barrel making major PF easier to reach are being realized. The factory-offered Tanfoglio open gun (the Gold Team) is notorious for having a bunch of popple holes, resulting in an effective barrel length for velocity purposes of less than 4" - which in turn leads to having to run up grotesque pressures to get to major PF. Some common 9-major powders simply can't do it in that gun. Opting for a long aftermarket compensator and skipping the poppling means I'm hitting major PF at [redacted]* grains of HS-6, almost a full grain below what a lot of other open shooters list as their 124 HS-6 9 major load. Regular, non-magnum CCI primers are still looking nice and round at the corners, although I need to bump up another tenth or so to give myself some space.
- Preliminary load workups have been with some old Xtreme plated 124 HPs I had on hand. So far, they seem to stand up OK, but 1k RMR JHP's should be arriving tomorrow, and I'll work those up.
- Open guns get hot! Not quite AR rifle hot, but pretty dang warm.
* Decided not to post an above-SAAMI load, though I'm happy to send it to people via a PM if anyone is interested.
