A COLD day at the range......(3" GP100, LCR with XS sight, LCP Range Reports)

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rantingredneck

New member
I snuck out of work about an hour early today. Well, sneaking isn't exactly so. I'm the boss I'll leave when I darn well please :). But anyway I took the opportunity to hit the range for a short trip. It was COLD and windy or I'd have tried to stay a little longer. As it was I ran out of motivation before I ran out of ammo. :D.

I had a couple of goals in mind today.

1) Shoot my new stainless 3" GP100. I hadn't had it to the range at all yet, and I wanted to confirm that it shot to POA with a variety of ammo I routinely keep on hand.

2) Shoot my LCR with the new XS night sights I've just installed. Again I hadn't had this gun to the range since I'd changed the sights and I wanted to confirm POA=POI with my carry ammo and confirm and practice the correct sight picture with some range fodder.

3) Shoot my LCP. Haven't shot it much lately due to the lack of .380 ammo. The supply has loosened up somewhat around here so I felt comfortable eating into my stash a bit and putting some rounds downrange to make sure I still knew how to shoot this little bugger.

I was too lazy (did I mention it was COLD?) to move targets today so I set up one target board at 10 yds and shot all guns from that distance. All rounds were shot two hand standing unsupported, the GP100 was shot double action, the other two guns I didn't have a choice. My gun club has a 1 round per second rule when it comes to rapid fire and habitually I tend to shoot at about that pace. Even when trying to shoot slowly.

So on to the results.

The GP100:
DSC02816.jpg


Upper left target was 130 gr. WWB .38 FMJ. The upper right target was shot with 125 gr. Winchester WinClean brass jacketed softpoint .357 Mag and 125 gr. Remington UMC JSP .357 Mag. The Winclean in particular was very accurate in that I cloverleafed the first three rounds out of the barrel. The lower target was shot with my preferred .357 mag snub nose carry load, the .357 Mag Speer Gold Dot Short Barrel 135 gr. JHP.

The LCR:
DSC02814.jpg


The left target was shot with Remington UMC 158 Gr. LRN .38 SPL. The right target was shot with a mixture of Federal 158 gr. LSWCHP+P and Winchester 130 gr. PDX1 JHP+P. I carry the Federal "FBI Load". I've repeatedly tested this round and it remains the most accurate +P load I've shot in this gun and it passes the "crimp jump" test (Shoot 4 and check the 5th one) and has passed this test repeatedly. Sight picture was a six o'clock hold on the bottom of the black target dot. For some reason I still tend to push this gun slightly left. Still haven't figured that out. :confused:.

LCP:

DSC02815.jpg


This was a mix of WWB 90 gr. FMJ and Hornady Critical Defense (my carry load). I shot some with my CT Laser and some using the sights.

Overall I was happy with my carry guns and with myself and I hightailed it back to the truck and it's heater.
 
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LockedBreech

New member
This gets me excited to get this splint off my shooting hand and get my first LCP range time! And yeah, that GP100 is sweet-looking. Are those stock grips?
 
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rantingredneck

New member
They are the old style stock grip made by Lett for Ruger. Lett is no longer in business and GP100's ship from the factory with Hogue Monogrips now. I prefer the old style personally as they fit my hand well and conceal much better than the Hogue.
 
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katana8869

New member
Good shooting there RR. I am missing my LCR big time. It has been loaned to my mother because her hands have gotten too weak to pull the trigger on her SP101 (which is actually my original SP101 that I purchased as my 1st CCW back in 1993). The LCR was the only gun in my collection that she could operate in DA mode (and the last one that I let her try! lol) She is not able to work the slide on a semi-auto so that ruled all of them out.

Much as I miss having the LCR handy, it's good to be reunited with the revolver that I started the CCW journey with I guess. :)
 
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rantingredneck

New member
katana,

It's a daily toss up whether to take my SP101 (2.25" .357) or my LCR out of the safe for the day's activities. Often my SP101 wins out, but now that the LCR has night sights it may win out more often. I hear ya on the trigger pull though. The stock LCR trigger is better than my worked on and much shot SP101.
 
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Tremblz

New member
LCR w/ XS Sights

RRN - I have recently purchased an LCR, and am 99% pleased with it with the exception of it not having night sights. So I ended up picking up a set of Tritium XS Sights for it. As I read the package, it indicated that it needs to be glued into place. How bad was the installation procedure? Is it permanent, or can it be replaced when the tritium burns out?
 
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Tremblz

New member
*Heavy sigh*

Well, I can take some consolation in the fact that there's someone else out there who's similarly-minded to me. When I saw that it was a glue on sight, I was also a little disappointed, and like you, would have thought twice about ordering it if it was advertised as such. Also, I thought that glueing a front sight on such a lightweight revolver would likely mean that with my luck (mostly bad), it would fly from my revolver at the most inopportune time. So, it looks like I'll be drilling a hole in the XS Sight so I can pin it as well. If it was already drilled, I wouldn't have such a heavy heart right now and the sight would already be installed. Sounds like a good rainy day project to me.

-Thanks for your posts. If you have any more tips or wisdom gained from installing this sight on your LCR, I'd be very interested in hearing them.
 
R

rantingredneck

New member
My only advice is go slow. Measure twice, drill once :).

Getting the drill bit started was the most difficult part as it wanted to walk a little. I drilled by hand though and not with my press. Would have been easier probably if I'd used my press, but for some reason I did it by hand with a cordless.

When I got the hole drilled and put it on my gun I had to relieve just a little bit of the aluminum frame stud as I was just a scosch off in my measurement or my drill bit walked more than I accounted for. It's pinned solidly though and will not move. The key there is to push the sight all the way to the rear when it's sitting on the stud and then do your measuring from there. The hole in the bottom of the sight is considerably larger than the frame stud.

I pinned it in place at first and considered leaving it as is, but there was a small air gap between sight and gun that I wanted to fill with something. I went with loctite as I figured it'd be the easiest to remove down the road if I need to change it.
 
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Tremblz

New member
Thanks!

That sounds like good advice RRN. It looks like my rainy day will come sooner than I thought. We just got about 12 inches of snow between yesterday and this morning. I doubt there will be much going on today. The only delay I can think of is that I might hit my brother up to use his drill press per your recommendation since my free hand drilling skills are servicable, but not exceptional. :) Thanks again - I'll post here when the job is done and let you know how things went.
 
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Zak77

New member
Fantastic shooting RR. I can barely get that accurate of shots out of my 6" GP100.

The LCR is on my shortlist of new pistols that I'd like to add to my small collection.
 
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rantingredneck

New member
Zak,

All I can recommend is lots of range time with dryfiring in between. You really get to know the feel of the trigger that way and your groups will improve.
 
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