Garrett

I've got a couple of sets of Grams Para basepads / springs / followers from a decade or so ago when he was still making them. The followers at the time appeared to have been modded from factory followers. I ended up doing the same mod on a bunch of my other Para followers with factory +2 basepads.

Sounds familiar. My Open gun had been around for a while when I bought it. Mine was reportedly a Dawson-built Para, with the old sideways-mounted Pro Point that had been off to the Dot Doctor as well. I finally had to upgrade when the dustcover cracked and started flexing under the weight of the dot. When I sent it to Tripp to be un-chromed and welded, he found a couple more cracks - in the grips along where the frame is milled out for the trigger bow. Probably not the answer you're looking for, but I updated by going to a new STI frame. My gun was old enough, it had been built from a kit and must have been machined for the ramped barrel. It had the same cut as STI uses, not the factory Para cut. I did have to buy all new mags. But I'm happy with what I ended up with.

Yep - my experience here too. Sometimes it runs. Sometimes you get what I could best describe as a double-feed. I've got a non-drop-free pre-ban Glock 22 mag somewhere. I think it's got a TF basepad on it as well. I'd swap you straight across for a new mag / basepad. Don't know if you want to mess with a non-drop-free though.

... -.- 1911 doesn't mean 45 You mean you've got a 255 gr. bullet for a .40? That sucker has to be longer than the case! I know the OP asked about a 1911 or 625, but here's what I use for my open pin gun. It has no problem taking heavy pins off the table, shooting a 240 gr. bullet (btw, that's not a bullet weight you can usually find in .40 either.) (I pulled the scope off and put on a Holosight for pins)

That may have been true ten years ago, but not so much any more. I stopped using Berry's so much when I could buy jacketed for less from Zero, MG, or Precision Delta.

I set it up as a suppressor host. But I've got a LW comp that I can screw on as well. It does okay as a budget option, but it's nothing like running a full blown STI/SV Open gun. Actually, I've run it suppressed at a couple of local matches. The silencer has a booster, which allows it to cycle with all that extra weight on the end of the barrel. It makes for a very strange feeling recoil impulse, though.

Here's what it looks like when it's doing its thing. I used this comp on a subgun with lots of lead-based jacketed bullets. It had lead/carbon buildup to the point that it was brushing the bullets as they went by, changing the POI. "The Dip" works okay, but mechanical cleaning seemed to do a better job and took less time. I may not have left it in the solution long enough when I tried it. It will bubble for quite some time, and the liquid eventually turns a greenish color with lots of solid particles showing up at the bottom of the jar. Be very careful with the stuff. The byproduct is pretty nasty - you don't want to breathe the fumes, and you have to be careful of how you dispose of the hazardous waste. Don't get it on your skin, or anywhere else for that matter.

My first open gun was a Para. I bought it very used, and put some more miles on it. (how's this for a retro open gun?) Here's what happens with the thin dust cover. Note the crack at the rearmost scope mount hole. I didn't notice it until I lost my zero (during an Area 3 match), and I couldn't adjust it any farther. I had another crack on the other side of the dust cover as well. The whole front end of the frame was apparently flexing downward under the weight of the beer-can scope. I sent it to Virgil Tripp to be un-chromed and welded up and he also found these cracks on either side. I finally gave up and had him build me an STI. I've still got the Para frame. I keep thinking I should get one of those Mech Tech uppers for it. But it's been sitting in the safe looking sad and cracked for the past 5 years or so.

Yeah - you're not kidding there. I burned up a couple of drill bits doing my slide. I suppose I could make cuts in the sides as well, but it works pretty well as-is.

I've got a Grams-tuned big stick that holds 29 rounds of Super... But it's not reloadable. It gives me 29+1 if loading from the start of a stage, which I've done a couple of times where the extra round came in handy. Usually I'll just load it to 28 and reload if needed.

Not uncommon. You find those at the range from time to time. 9mm through .40 and .40 through .45 being the most common. I once saw someone shoot a .38 Super through a .45 ACP by accident. I'd have never believed the extractor would have held the round in place in a .45 chamber well enough to make it go bang if I hadn't been there when it happened.

And the Carver likely would have been less reliable for you without your smith tweaking the gun. I beleive LW has two comps, one for Major, and the other for Minor (and yes - both are hideous). I have the Minor comp, and it still needs a reduced power recoil spring to get it to run reliably. I already had my gun set up with a slide-mounted red dot and the threaded LW barrel for a silencer, and the LW comp made for a cheap plug 'n play Open Glock. I think I almost shoot better without the comp, though. A tuned STI/SV it's not.

Yep - seen it done, and tried it once. Win White Box ran just fine in my .38 Super. Or at least, it ran pretty well. Maybe a couple of malfunctions in the 20 or 30 rounds fired. Don't remember, it's been several years. I was getting primer flow like crazy. If I had found that brass at the range, I'd say someone was trying to blow up a gun. In reality, you have more of a gap between the case head and breach face, which allows the primer to flow and flatten out, even though chamber pressures are within spec. You're not going to hurt your gun trying out a few 9mms, but I wouldn't make a habit of it. CocoBolo makes some good points too. I'm still running a few thousand pieces of .38 Super brass that came with my gun, plus match pickups. The 9mm Major stuff I've loaded get tossed after being shot.

I've had issues for years with an 1100 that I don't play with much, and I'm pretty sure this is the issue. I just play with shotguns infrequently enough that I've never gotten around to doing anything about it. The gun runs perfectly with Wallyworld blasting ammo, or reduced power buck / slugs. But chokes up every time when I shoot "full powered" ammo, locking the bolt back with one on the carrier. It makes sense that this would be caused by a weak spring. Heavy recoil = not enough spring tension to throw the next shell into the carrier release tab. I don't see any 1100 magazine spring on Wolff's website. Help me out here, where should I be looking? And what length spring do I want for a 10-round mag tube?

I usually run 147s from Zero or Berrys, or 150 gr. ".38 Super" RN Berrys. I find the Zero JHPs work better than the FMJs in a 147. They are slightly rebated on the base, and some brass gets thicker farther up the case than others. I've played with a bunch of powders, but find N320 or 231 work best. Titegroup works well also, but I haven't played with it as much. I use these for suppressed shooting in subguns, carbines, and pistols, and they all work very well.

I've had a pair of these for at least that long. Sound quality and noise cancellation are better than my (more expensive) Peltors. The Dillons are old enough that I think I need to send them in to be refurbished, though. The internals are still working well, but one of the headband connections is broken, and the plastic that holds the foam over the external microphone just broke off one of them the other day. Still, not bad for over a decade of use.

(apparently you can only post two videos per post) Here is a video from a recent bowling pin shoot, using a .22 conversion. You can see how the scope gets in the way. Now imagine it with a traditional magnified scope.

No - in fact I have to pull the glasses forward slightly and look for the lights to make sure the unit is recording before the buzzer goes off. I've been using a set now since last spring, and they work pretty well. It would be nice if the camera was over the eye, and not in the middle of the frames. That way, the sights would line up on the camera. But that isn't such a big deal. The only real complaint I have is that they aim too low for when you are shooting. If I wear them normally, I get a good view of the top / rear of the gun, but can usually only see the bottoms of the targets. I end up putting the ear pieces across my ears in order to "aim" the camera in the right place. Also, you can't wear earmuffs with them. Due to the camera location, they really don't work well when shooting a long gun. I shot a rifle match a few months ago, and all I could see in the video was the side / rear of the scope. It pretty well filled up 80% of the screen. Some iron sighted long guns are better. The farther forward you can mount the optic, the better you are. Works very well with handguns, though. The picture tended to wash out some in this one. For most of it, I was in the shade, shooting at targets in the sunlight. You can also see how even with iron sights, the picture is somewhat covered by the gun.

The Para mags have a square-shaped notch on the top/rear of the mags. Standard STI mags have a U-shaped notch there. Both of these are STI/Para mags.

You have a long(er) slide .40 and a standard sized 9mm. You reload, so you can tailor your loads to whichever game you are shooting in. The G35 has a slightly longer sight radius and a smaller magazine capacity. Since you are capacity restricted in IDPA, I would use the G35 here. Sight radius is irrelevant when using a dot sight. Add a comped barrel, some TF 170mm basepad extensions and work up a Major-9 loading and you're good to go in Open.

I just got a set of these. Mine weren't working at first either. The video was choppy, sound was out of sync, and it would skip bad. It turns out the SD-card was having issues. If I use the on board 4-GB memory, it records just fine. Here's a couple of videos from a recent subgun match. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YmXVN2cwaY Shooting a rifle, the scope takes up all of the field of view. The M11/9 with the forward mounted optic wasn't too bad. When shooting the Uzi with iron sights, the gun takes up a lot of the screen, but you can sort of see the targets. With a handgun it does pretty well.

You would have to check with Magnum Research to see if they do the factory compensator on the older guns. I know the barrels are skinnier, so the profile won't be right if they slap on a comp for a MK XIX. You could get a 10" barrel and have it chopped & threaded like mine is. You could then thread a comp on that way. I keep thinking I need to design a better comp for mine. The brake was made to go on the silencer mount, so that was an easy one. But I'm thinking a scaled up version of what we see on race guns would work really well here. There is plenty of gas volume & pressure to work with. That's the same silencer on a MAC10 in the avatar. Actually, the gun was the most expensive part. The can was around $350 + transfer tax (I think... I've had that can for over 10 years now). You don't need to get something as expensive as an EoTech for a sight. I robbed this one from an AR15, since it was handy. I found a tool & die maker who threaded the barrel for next to nothing. I let him experiment on my barrel so he could decide if he wanted to get a DE and do one for himself. I'm not sure what he would charge to do another.

According to the ATF, there is no fore grip on it. If there was, it wouldn't meet the definition of a pistol. For better or worse, ATF Regulations and USPSA Rules are two different books ... Neither of which totally depends on the other for definitions. But short of an NROI ruling, ATF is the only body that has made an official statement on the issue. FWIW. And if you're that hung up on it, the "thing" can be removed. The example in the picture is set up as a .22, but would work just as well in 9mm. Again, while USPSA rules don't necessarily follow ATF's logic, their (ATF's) opinion is that the buffer tube was designed as just that - an integral part of the gun's operating mechanism. It was not designed as a shoulder stock, and it is not a shoulder stock, even if it possible to rest it against your cheek / shoulder.

If some of you will stop and listen to yourselves, you will see why IDPA isn't much fun for those that think outside the preconceived box. If someone comes up with something that doesn't fit "our" vision of what the sport should be, it must obviously be bad. Even if the rules don't support "our" opinion. I've compared a 9mm Beta mag to an STI 170mm mag, and there is plenty of room to spare. A 25-round stick mag is shorter than 170mm too. I've even got a 9mm AR15 that would work great. And guess what - it's going to be big, clumsy, awkward, and slow. If someone showed up to a match wanting to shoot it, I'd have no problem with it. It would be fun to watch, and the shooter would likely have a fun time. Honestly, it's a non-issue. The reason you don't see it is because it's not going to be competitive. Even with a 100 round drum in the gun.

I put "other" in Production, only because it wouldn't let me vote only in Open/Lim. I don't shoot Production. I use the CR with my Open gun, and an old Safariland 011 when I shoot Limited. If I happen to shoot a Glock (Open or Lim) I use a Hogue PowerSpeed. I had tried both the Limcat and pinned Ghost. Neither worked well with a steel-framed gun. Both would tend to "grab" if you didn't draw the gun just right. Neither seemed to have this problem if using a gun with a plastic trigger guard like an STI/SV or a Glock.