Springfield Champion

I found myself near one of the better shooting ranges in town last week minus a shooting iron, and wanting to stop in and try something new, I rented a pistol chambered for 45 ACP, specifically the Springfield Champion you see here.

I’d never held a 45, let alone fired one, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I was, however, expecting that bigger rounds would make for a bigger bang.  (.45 ACP rounds are roughly 11.5 mm in diameter, about 25 percent larger than 9 mm rounds.)  So I was a bit surprised at how little difference the larger caliber seemed to make to the shooting experience.  I was expecting more report or recoil, and didn’t really notice any.  Maybe my experience would be different if I compared back to back.

In any case, the Champion seemed nice enough, but the feed spring in the magazine they gave me may have been getting old and tired, because I had terrible feed problems every time I tried to load a full magazine.  I would slide in seven rounds, tap the magazine, load it, release the slide… and the first round would jam half way into the chamber. It never happened with six or fewer rounds, so after some experimentation, I just loaded fewer rounds, and the problem went away.