Pistol balance

[Reinhamre]

Hi,
There seems to be shooters who think heavy is better than light when it comes to ISSF shootings.

1. You need power to use it, if you are not an athlete or shoot 8 H a day I doubt you can have any benefit from this at all.

2. Walther SSP is a light pistol from start. YOU decide how heavy and what balance YOU prefer. A weight with mowing parts is in the "Deluxe kit". You can not bye a perfect pistol that will shoot 10´s all the time. One size fits all does not exist!

3. Pardini is not as muzzle heavy as it was earlier so you can not judge by holding you’re "buddy’s Pardini. You can add weight in the grip as well!
The gun has been more balanced. I can even think of buying one again.

4. Air pistol; LP10 is rather light, yet popular

5. There may be a parallel to sailing. A very small boat is the best if you will learn how to sail a boat. One mistake and then you are not going forward at all. Instant learning!
Same thing with pistol, a light pistol and a very light grip. Then you can really see what you do wrong as you pull the trigger.

Guest wrote about benefits from a heavy pistol:

and lessens the effect of any "less than perfect" trigger pulling

This is totally wrong if you want to learn trigger pull!

When shooting for a score, do what goes best but TRY everything when training.

Kent

[Tycho]

100% with you.

[JamesH]

G'Day All,

Agree with all of the above.

Personally speaking:

I would suggest learning with a light pistol - to learn trigger control, steadily graduating to heavier pistols as you improve. Its useful to go back to the light pistol now and then to check just how bad your trigger control is getting.

For competitive shooting if your trigger control is good then light or heavy pistols each have advantages depending on the match.

A lighter pistol will generally be less tiring. If your technique is good enough to do well with a light one why pick a heavier one?
If recoil is reduced, there is not much need for a heavy pistol.
One exception is shooting outdoors in wind.

Forward balance vs rearward balance is also subjective. Personally I find the more recent pistols with a raked grip and forward weighting hard to use. Too much rake and I lose trigger control, too front heavy and I just can’t hold the front up or bring it onto the target consistently.

We did a brief test on the regional pistol squad with a SCATT type system mounted on an El Gamo Compact (light weight, vertical grip, rearward balance) and a Steyr LP1 (I think). Those who tried both thought the Steyr was better in terms of stability etc. The SCATT suggested the stability of the aim was better with the El Gamo.

For rapid fire front heavy pistols just seem to swing around too much. If you have short arms maybe they work but not for me.

There seems to be a trend for longer, heavier, more raked pistols.
If they start light and have extra weights available then there is no commercial suicide in marketing them.

Personally I prefer the balance of the FAS and the Izh35.

Now I just need to learn to shoot.