LWRC Range Trip
Today I took my newest LWRC rifle to the range to break it in. This is a combat rifle and I expect that it eventually get pretty beat up, but it’s always a good idea to run through some firing drills before you rely on it. Some of the biggest malfuntion problems I have seen on the firing line were with supposedely brand new out of the box rifles. Sometimes there are bugs or issues that are easy to fix, but you really need to put some lead down range with your rifle or pistol before you rely on it. I’ve mentioned before about a time when I saw a guy show up with a Beretta 92FS inox pistol and it jammed after every round. The shooter was very frustrated because this was it’s first range trip. Well, turns out that the pistol was bone dry and had absolutely zero lubrication on it and with one wipe down, the gun ran flawlessly. The same should go for any firearm. I strongly suggest cleaning guns every once in awhile, even if you haven’t shot them. Lubrication can run off of guns or drain off, and I also highly recommend using a small level of grease on even pistols, especially if they may sit in a gun safe for long periods of time.
My LWRC defanitely runs on less lubrication that any direct impingement rifle, but I am going to use small amounts of Break Free CLP on it just to help reduce the amount of wear on the parts. I have tested previous LWRC rifles out and they have all lived up to my expectations. The product has been modified over the last 3yrs, but I’d have to say that they were big improvements, mostly on the bolt carrier and short stroke piston designs. My favorite configuration is the shorter version that is close the militaries version of the M4 Carbine. The M4 Carbine is the fastest CQB rifle, but it is possible to inhibit the speed of the rifle by putting too much optic on the rifle. The rifle is meant for close range fighting and anything more than 4X is too much. The lethality and ballistics of the M4 make it a very good close range fighting rifle, but even though the rifle is accurate out to 600yds, it is a very week round at those distances. You may be better off with a longer barrel AR15 variant and mounting 4-10X rifle scopes if you aren’t looking for a close range fighting rifle. I am starting to see a trend away from magnification on the M4 and even many of the Trijicon ACOGS are now mounting red dots because we know that even 3-4x magnifications will slow you down at pistol range distances.
Optics have multiple purposes. They can be used for Astronomy, Scouting, birdwatching, target shooting, hunting and military purposes. With the emergency of combat optics for close quarter combat, scopes used on rifles have gotten smaller, more compact and sometimes have zero magnification. The point is to give you a good sight pictures and a reticle that is easy to follow.
Another issue you may run into when using hunting style optics on a military style rifle is this. What are you going to do if the optic fails or breaks? Are you going to need to u se a screw driver to remove it or can you detach it quickly? Quick detach optics and accessories can become very important if you have a failure of some sort. For instance, I’ve seen plenty of incidences where soldiers in Iraq took bullets in their optics but the rifles still worked. Always have backup irons on an M4 is a good idea. Not only can batteries on something like a Eotech gun sight go down, but sometimes that can actually get broken from being slammed around or from fragmentation. The Mini 14 ranch rifle is a very manueverable Carbine. Even though the Eotech optic is primarily for military purposes, I’ve found the Eotech to work very well on a Mini 14 Ranch rifle. The MOA dot works well with a gun that can shoot MOA as long as the rifle barrel has not heated up, which normally occurs after the 3rd shot, but from a hunting standpoint, I rarely know anyone that takes 3 shots on any hunting trip.
We have been waiting for the Eotac womens pants for almost a year. We expected them to arrive in June of 2009, but there were production delays which we suspect we’re due to re-design changes. Later we were expecting them in the Fall of 2009, but once again, there were shipping delays. We’ve been holding backorders for the Style 702 pants and just got around to fullfilling the orders in April of 2010 and we were crossing out fingers that the design would be well accepted. When the tactical pants first arrived, we shipped a lot of them out to associates as beta testers to see what there opinions were before we started stocking the product. We have carried other brands of womens pants in the past, but we dropped them because statistically speaking, the return and complaints about them were about 85% complaints about fit and sizing. You may think that is a really bad stat, and it certainly is, but desigining womens tactical pants are much harder than designing mens.
I had the opportunity to get out to the range again this week. I tend to bring the same bullet weights with me to firing ranges whenever I’m shooting my ARs because there can be really big differences in bullet trajectory when shooting out to 600yds. There is also a very big difference between bullet drift with just a few extra grains of weight. I’ve pulled the trigger on 150gr FMJ bullets out to 500yds that missed targets just depending on whether or not I fired during a wind gust or not. It’s really a lot of fun to shoot distances because you find out that it’s not all about how well you hold a gun down and how well you pull the trigger. Timing is something that really plays a factor when shooting into the wind. I use to shoot at a range that had a wind that blew from right from 100-300yds and when you got out to the 400-600yds, the wind blew from the left.
Cleaning more than one rifle at a time can be a really pain in the neck. Depending on the number of calibers you are using, you’ll have to change each brush you use, each punch, and each cleaning patch to properly clean your rifle or pistols. I never really felt the need to change from a traditonal rifle rod to any fancy gun cleaning kits for a long time. Some of these gun cleaning kits look very nice, but the reality is there are several cleaning kits out there that have made traditional gun cleaning obsolete. Granted, I will have to say that I do have a few friends that sweat that they still need to use their cleaning rods to clean bolt action sub-moa rifles, because Otis gun cleaning kits and bore snakes aren’t 100%. I’ll have to leave that up to personal choice, but I don’t see it.
I realize there is still a place for using cleaning rods to clean out the barrels of a rifle or pistol, and that running a white cleaning patch through a firearms and having it come out just as white is something that tells us our job is done. Gun cleaning has gotten easier over the years. If you are cleaning your firearms after each use, there is no need to be sitting there for hours and soaking your rifles in this cleaner and that cleaner and they running through the routine 2x’s. Gun lubrication has taken long strides in practically eliminating the need for having to use more than 2 gun cleaning liquids. The really issue I see is in having a lubrication that also has preservatives to help protect metal from rust. I have some friends that use Mobil 1 for all of there AR15 lubrication, but Mobil 1 doesn’t protect a firearm as well as BreakFree CLP does.
Next week there will be a Police and Security Expo in Atlantic City, New Jersey and Eotac will displaying some of their A-Tacs and Direct Action products. We’re still not sure about everything that Eotac has coming out this Fall and in 2011, but seeing some of the info about what is coming soon really makes us think that 5.11 Tactical is going to have some real compeition out there. I can’t tell you the number of times we’ve had customers call us up and complain about the tactical pants that they have been wearing from 5.11. Many of them complain about how things use to be and how they end up with different sizing even though they keep ordering the same sizes. I was checking out some of the 5.11 tactical shirts that were the Covert carry design and I may pick up a few, but I personally think the Woolrich Elite CCW shirts are a much better feel. Even though we are very selective about the products we carry, I’d have to admit that every big name manufacturer has a niche market that some of their products perform very well in.
Elite Operator Tactical came out with a new tactical shirt a few months ago and although we like to test products out for a few months before we become too critical about them, we defanitely got a winner here. The Eotac style 410 Shooting Sports Polo is made of a 100% polyester material and is excellent for breath-a-bility. It’s been getting up in the 90F temps here in Virginia and it’s time to clear out the Spring weather clothing and get into summer gear. The Style 405 feel slightly lighter weight than some of the Woolrich Elite Series Polos I have worn in the past. We all have different styles and needs when it comes to what we want to wear, but I’d have to admit that the Polos I wore in the past were extremely hot and I could absolutely not wear them in 85F temps comfortable.