Hi-Point Throwdown Update

Fate conspired against me this week, and between getting stuck at the office late, and walking out the door without my wallet, I didn’t get a chance to shoot the match.

This weekend I’ll be shooting the Weld County State Steel Challenge match, and hope to have a writeup.  I know it’s a disappointment, but I won’t be running the Hi-Point at the state match.  Yeah, I know, BOO.

Next week, Chris and I will be attending Rocky Mountain 3 Gun Nationals.  Hopefully we’ll make good on the promise to do that whole live blogging thing this year…

The Hi-Point Throwdown

So, as promised (and only a few days late!) here are the results from last week’s local Steel Challenge match. You can see the stage names listed, along with where I placed overall with both the Hi-Point and the CZ-85.  Remember, I’m running the CZ from the holster, and the Hi-Point from low-ready (though that may change at tonight’s match, so we’ll see.)

In my hands, the Hi-Point was slower, overall by right about three seconds, which doesn’t sound like much until you realize that Steel Challenge is a sport won and lost by fractions of a second.

Anyway, without further adieu, here are the results:

	14-Jul-10	1	2	3	4	Total
		PENDULUM	SPEED OPTION	FIVE TO GO	ACCELERATOR
Place	IRON SIGHT
1	DENNIS C	10.18	9.36	9.93	9.38	38.85
2	ROD G #1	9.47	9.59	9.7	10.1	38.86
3	BRIAN W #1	9.21	10.42	9.77	11.03	40.43
4	ROD G #2	11.31	9.4	9.82	10.46	40.99
5	BRIAN W #2	11.6	9.88	9.65	10.48	41.61
6	JUSTIN CZ	13.18	10.71	9.77	8.83	42.49
7	PAUL B	11.33	12.06	11.8	9.89	45.08
8	JUSTIN HP	9.93	12.28	11.01	12.26	45.48
9	TOM S	11.4	11.42	13.28	11.21	47.31
10	GARY D	13.65	10.6	15.02	13.29	52.56
11	PAT M	14.6	12.89	16.97	13.72	58.18
12	CARL B	17.13	13.04	15.88	14.68	60.73
13	ALICE G	16.25	16.41	16.8	12.69	62.15
14	STEVE B	15.21	15.89	16.97	14.41	62.48
15	CHARLES B	20.26	14.76	16.2	15.5	66.72
16	JASON H	22.1	14.16	19.29	16.34	71.89
17	AARON E	19.39	13.61	23.05	15.92	71.97
18	BONNIE R	23.97	19.43	22.23	19.71	85.34
19	MICHAEL M	29.52	54.44	30.2	24.23	138.39
20	TIERA B	44.95	21.93	37.68	45.14	149.7

I was honestly expecting to place much lower with the Hi-Point than I did.

Quick Match Update

Shot in two local matches this past weekend, the Lake George 3 Gun match, and our own home-grown tactical rifle match.

Due to a shotgun jam on the first stage of the 3gun match, my time was 30 seconds when it should have been much closer to 15-20 seconds, and I ended up placing 7th.

With RM3G just around the corner, I’m hoping I’ve gotten rid of all of my bad match juju.

Hi-Point Throwdown: Trigger Pullin’

Yesterday I promised to post up my general impressions from taking the Hi-Point out to the range to do some general blasting.

The temperature was in the high 90s, and being a glutton for punishment I dragged out enough steel to set up two Steel Challenge stages, Pendulum and Speed Option.

Evidently, I’ve got pretty good friends, as one of them was actually willing to accompany me to run the timer, shoot video, and write stuff down. Seriously. And you all thought I was a friendless gun dork.

So, anyway…

I ran both the Hi-Point and CZ-85 side-by-side on Pendulum, shooting the stage three times with each gun. However, there is one primary difference between how I shot both guns. With the CZ, I ran the gun starting from the surrender position, drawing from a holster, and then engaging the targets. I don’t yet have a holster for the Hi-Point (anyone got one kicking around in an old holster box you want to donate?), so I ran it from the low ready position. Running the Hi-Point from low-ready is not an inconsequential advantage, especially given that my time from the buzzer to first shot from the surrender position are glacially slow, in the 1.6-1.9 second range.

So, here are the results for three rounds recorded for Pendulum:

Gun	1	2	3	Combined Times
Hi-Point	6.86	5.56	7.04	12.42
CZ-85	22.95*	6.85	4.64	11.49

Here are the times for Speed Option:

	1	2	3	4	5	Combined Times
Hi-Point	5.02	9.01**	7.96	6.81	9.71	28.8
CZ-85	6.97	4.97	5.55	9.22	4.88	22.37

*Two failures: One stuck round due to a case with a bent case mouth, and one light primer strike.
**Jam. Failure to feed.

At a proper Steel Challenge match, you run each stage five times, throw out the worst time, and add up the remainders. You might notice that the CZ has a pretty bad time that got tossed. I managed to have an out-of-spec round finds it’s way into my magazine, which caused the gun to jam up quite bad, followed by a light primer strike.

As for the Hi-Point. Well, the recoil impulse could best be described as meandering. Seriously. The gun has one of the slowest cyclic rates I’ve ever seen. On top of that, the muzzle jumps quite a bit more than other pistol designs, so shot-to-shot transitions feel wonky and a bit slow. When moving from one target to the next, I’ll be honest, the cycling of the gun isn’t that big of a deal.

Surprisingly, the sights are incredibly easy to track. You remember that bright enamel paint mentioned earlier? It actually does a pretty good job of making the sights easy to see and therefore align. Yeah, you heard me. I’m giving actual props to one of the features of the Hi-Point.

So those were the recorded times from the practice session. I also dumped quite a few rounds through the gun (all told, about 200) to get used to how the gun points and functions. So far, the little pistol has shown to be not all that bad. Of course, the point of this whole exercise is to run rounds through it in repeatable circumstances to see if “not all that bad” holds up, and if it does, I’m going to need to find out what kind of side dish tastes best with crow.

In the meantime, here are a couple of videos:

Hi-Point Throwdown: The Beginning.

Ok, so I’ve been lax on updates from the HiPoint Throwdown lately, so this post is going to be a quick info dump and a teaser for later today.

Long story short, I picked the gun up last Friday (thanks to the fine folks at Whistling Pines Gun Club.) On Sunday I took it out to the range to run some rounds through it and yesterday, I shot it in the first actual match.

A few photos from picking the gun up:

Photos by the multi-talented shooter, photographer and all around excellent Stuart Wong.

On a side note, Stuart’s just started with the whole blogging thing, but I suspect he’ll have a lot of insightful things to say about shooting (He’s a GM Production shooter), photography, and other topics. To see the classiest photos of a Hi-Point anyone’s ever taken, click here.

General first impressions:

The ergonomics leave a lot to be desired. The grip feels funky, especially when held tightly, and looking at the spacing for the finger grooves, it looks like it was designed to be held by someone with cartoon fingers.

The safety lever pulls double-duty as the slide stop lever as well. With the gun ready to go, flip the safety up to engage it. To lock the gun open, draw the slide back until the safety lines up with a notch cut in the slide and push it up to engage. I’ll go so far as to label this bit of cost-saving engineering as kind of clever.

The gun also has one of those annoying magazine disconnect safeties, something I’m generally opposed to as it makes the whole “Unload and Show Clear, Slide down, hammer down, holster” process much more of a chore than it should be. Following basic safety protocol completely negates the need for such a device.

Fit and finish is about what you’d expect. The slide is powder coated, and while certainly not pretty like blued or stainless gun, it’s a utilitarian solution that’s both cost-effective and probably wears well over the long-term.

The recoil spring is heavier than what you’d see in a pistol like a Glock, and coupled with the ungainly slide, the gun tends to feel nose-heavy, and cycling it is slightly awkward.

Field stripping is accomplished with the use of a tool that’s provided with the pistol, but I haven’t taken the gun apart yet. From what I’ve read, it’s not as straightforward as breaking apart a more mainstream pistol.

The sights are, well, at first they look goofy. The front sight is painted with a bright yellow enamel, and the rear sight has two bright red dots painted in similar fashion. The front sight blade is wider than I’m used to.

The trigger.
Well.
It’s consistent.
It’s kind of squishy like a Glock trigger without really managing to feel like a Glock trigger.
It’s also heavy:

So those are my first general impressions from handling the gun. Next up will be the initial range report. I’ll be honest, some of the results are a bit surprising…

For Sale!

I’m cleaning out some of my gun stuff.  Anyone interested?

Leupold Mk4 4.5-14×50 LR/T M1.  Duplex reticule, never mounted, includes scope caps.  $750.

Meopta Meostar R1 1-4×22.  Illuminated K-Dot reticule.  Includes a heavy Devtron Scope-Coat.  Mount not included, but we can talk if someone really can’t live without it.  $600.

Burris Xtreme Tactical 1-4×24.  Just got it back from the factory, where I had some crud cleaned off the lenses and the rubber eyepiece ring replaced.  Comes with the box, bikini lens covers, and scope cover.  $525.

Burris FastFire II Red Dot sight.  Comes with factory mount for a Ruger MkII, but adapters are available for pretty much anything.  $150

STI 2011 9mm magazines.  All factory with Delrin spacers.  Unused.  $40 ea, $200 for all six.

RHT/Bolen .40 Limited magazines.  138mm RHT tubes, 4mm Bolen basepads, Bolen followers and springs.  I built them and never got around to using them, so they’re brand new.  $100 ea.

All prices are OBO, plus actual shipping cost any way you want it.  Contact me here on the blog, or at cjrhines-at-comcast-dot-net.

-C

Update on The HiPoint Throwdown

It has arrived. I’ll be picking up the Hi-Point C9 from my FFL tonight or tomorrow.

Keeping Magazines Organized

Ok, I’ve got a problem.

As you might imagine, I’ve got a bunch of guns.

I also happen to have a lot of magazines to go with those guns.

And my current way of organizing them is really not very optimal.

So, does anyone out there have an easy way to store all of your spare magazines? What do you use to store them? Where do you keep them?

Classification Update

Well, its official.  As of this morning:

Christopher Rhines TY-51532 Production M 86.05%

Woo-hoo!

-C

July Tidewater 3-Gun AAR

Yesterday I wandered down to the furthest reaches of Southern VA to visit the folks, and shoot the monthly Tidewater 3-Gun match.

The Tidewater 3-Gun is held on the sprawling U.S. Training Center facility (formerly known as Blackwater, formerly known as Xe, or whatever…), so the Tidewater folks have all the resources they need to put on a smokin’ match.  As usual, they didn’t disappoint.

My own shooting, not so much.  Although my shotgun and pistol game were dead on, my rifle had inexplicably shifted it’s zero about 3MOA towards 8:00.  To add insult to injury, I had planned on going out to the range Saturday to shoot the rifle, but passed on it due to rain.  Sigh.  Lessons learned.

We had four good stages, 2 pistol/rifle (including a very cool mid-range stage on the USTC 1000-yard range) and 2 multigun.  As usual, the kind folks at USTC provided lots of props for our entertainment.  Hitting a flash target at 175 yards doesn’t sound too hard, until you have to hit it offhand through the window of a junked car…

Anyhow, I managed to scrape out like 5th or 6th place.  The always-dangerous Robb J. picked up the top spot, no surprise there.  Congrats, Robb!

Next match will be August 8th or therebouts.  Be there!