It was time for me to upgrade.
There it is above the Ruger it just relegated to backup gun status. The Pardini is wearing a 1" Millet Red Dot, which I find to have a very clear and well-defined dot. This gun will be primarily used for rimfire bullseye with the dot. I'll take it off for any upcoming Standard and Sport pistol matches at the Ohio State University.
Just a little more cheesecake photography.
I had three brands of ammunition to test. I planned to zero with Aquila Pistol Match. I also wanted to test CCI "Green Tag" and CCI "Blazer", which I have about 5 bricks of from when they cost $10.
All targets were fired at 50 feet from an MTM plastic pistol rest. It is a fairly stable rest, but not completely infallible.
I was dialed into the 10 ring with just 3 five shot groups with the Aquila Pistol Match.
Like it says, that is 15 shots into one ragged hole. The Aquila was pretty good stuff, but the price just went up to $22 a brick around here.
There's the CCI "Green Tag", which my shooting partner traded me for 50 rounds of my Aquila. A bit smaller hole. Not sure what "Green Tag" costs these days. I think around $20 a brick.
Hmm. Not too shabby for $10-a-brick ammunition, don't you think? The gunshop that was selling this for $10 has recently sold out and the Blazer now runs about $14 or so around here. That means I can get two bricks of the stuff while some people are foolishly spending $35 a brick on Wolf Match .22 ammo.
Why spend that kind of money when you probably aren't going to get much better performance than this? And more ammo means more range time. That'll pay a fatter dividend in the long run than being able to say you only shoot Federal Gold Medal Match or Wolf Match Target.
But all was not goodness and light. About five times during the session the pistol failed to pick up the next round out of the magazine. Twice with the Aquila, 3 times with the Blazer. I had one failure to extract with the Green Tag.
I chalk this up to two things...hopefully. First, new gun. Might need some breaking in...although my friend's Pardini hasn't done this yet and he's been using it for about a month now.
Second, I didn't really clean the pistol when I got it. Yeah, yeah. Shame on me. Should've taken it apart and inspected for any preservatives and lubed it properly. What I ended up doing was putting a few drops of oil into the action and cycling it some. I'll have it apart tonight for better cleaning.
That's me trying some unsupported one-handed shooting as I would in bullseye. Not so great.
Problem is that the Pardini comes from the factory with fairly heavy 1st and 2nd stage trigger pulls. I haven't adjusted it yet for lighter pulls. My target analysis card claims that I was jerking the trigger, and I believe it. As it stands now until I adjust the trigger, my $340 Ruger with the Volquartsen trigger kit actually has the better pull.
I expect that will change.
