The Black Campbell

I found a Kimber CDP II Ultra in the local gun store, used, for under $1000.  I had looked earlier in the day at one in another store for $1300.  My wife likes the 1911 platform, and the 9mm round is still cheap and easy to get, so I figured getting her off of the .45acp round might be advantageous for the next 3-5 months, while the ammo supply catches up to demand.

Appearance:  Fit and finish are top notch, as one would expect from Kimber’s Custom Shop.  The CDP is an alloy frame in black, with a silver slide (the opposite of my CZ-85’s look) with cocobolo grips.  I find the grips a bit thick for the gun, but not uncomfortably so.  It’s a 3″ barrel, 8 round single stack magazine, with beavertail, skeletonized trigger and hammer.  (Guessing the trigger pull at about 3-4 pounds.)

Nice gun.  Looks great, light weight, and small enough to easily conceal.

We took it out to the local indoor range and put 150 rounds through it, the first 100 were 230 gr Winchester FMJ, the last 50 Brown Bear 230 gr FMJ.  We did have double feed malfunctions on the magazine that came with the gun (there were small dents in the left side of the mag), but the extra Kimber mag bought had no troubles.  All of the malfunctions were the wife’s, I had none and suspect they were due to her limp-wristing the gun for the first 60 or so rounds.  She only had one or two more malfunctions on the original magazine after that.

The accuracy for me at 10 yards are about 2″ at a speedy pace of shooting.  Her accuracy was about Texas at 7 yards, but by the time she was done shooting, she was blasting 2-3″ groups at 10 yards.  One magazine fired at 15 yards by me gave up another 2.25″ group.  Accuracy is solid, recoil is surprisingly stout for a 9mm due to the light weight, but still much more controllable than her Rock Island Officer’s Model in .45acp.

After the range, cleaning is the usual Kimber headache where you have to capture the recoil spring with a little bit of paper clip or the wee tool for it (that Kimber makes you buy separately!)  Lock the slide open, capture the spring, drop the magazine and move slide forward to get the slide stop out.   Take off the slide and barrel.  Move the lug back to get the spring assembly out.  Remove the barrel.  Reverse once done cleaning.  Getting the friggin’ slide to get back onto the frame is fun and takes a bit of patiences…but it works.

Overall, the wife gives the gun top marks for looks (5 out of 5), a 3.5 of 5 for accuracy, a 3 out of 5 for reliability, and a 3 out of 5 for ease of cleaning.  I give it an excellent (5 out of 5) for the looks, 4 out of 5 for the accuracy and reliability, and 3 for ease of cleaning.  My marks were higher on the reliability and accuracy, as I had none of the troubles she did.

For this reason, I expect that a few more trips to the range will increase her ratings on the handling of the gun.  It’s a bit pricey for a 1911, in my opinion; a lot of the current crop are too expensive, especially when you can get the fantastic CZ or Tanfoglio for half the price.  But if you want a 1911 in 9mm, it’s this or Kimber’s Aegis, the Springfield Armory EMP, or the STI.

Here it is with the CZ-85…

The FN FiveSeven handgun has received a lot of notoriety since it was released to the civilian market (10 years too late, thanks to the Clinton AWB) in 2005.  Since then, it has gained a reputation that runs from “glorified .22” you’ll hear with the .45 aficionados (who view anything not starting with a .4 as too small to be an effective round) to the super-weapon that has such penetration it’ll shoot clear through to the core of the planet! of the anti-gun screeds.  It’s called the mata policia in Mexico, and it was the weapon Major Hasan decided to shoot up a bunch of unarmed soldiers with at Fort Hood.

It’s been my carry gun since 2005.  I would have been carrying it early, had it been available.  I had a chance to fire the P90 during an open service shoot in the 1990s and was impressed with the submachinegun, but I never got a chance to fire the pistol until I bought one.  After 10,000+ rounds through the gun, I’m still a fan of the platform and the round.

The pistol itself is a bit odd.  The grip is long, but not thick and is best for people with longer fingers.  I find the grip very comfortable and natural in it’s point of aim.  The safety is ambidextrous and placed forward, above the trigger well.  It seems odd until the first few times you snap it off quickly after drawing the weapon…it’s exactly where it should be; you only have to shift the firing finger, or use your off thumb to strike it off or on.  The slide stop is back, where the right hand thumb can actuate it  quickly.   It is, however, in an awful position for the left-hander.  I’ve learned when slapping the magazine in, to let my fingers on the right hand snag the release.

It is also incredibly light.  With a full 20-round magazine, the weapon weighs about a pound and a quarter (half as much as the CZ-85 I also like to carry.)  You can carry the thing all day without becoming fatigued, but it does feel a bit like a toy — a complaint of some of the reviewers out there.  Frame and slide cover are plastic, and the metal bits are all alloys and aluminum.  Despite the light weight, it’s very tough.  It’s also an ugly bugger…

The 5.7x28mm round is, on paper, somewhat anemic.  The SS197 rounds — V-Max 40 grain bullets — travel at a shade under 2000 fps, and hit about as hard as a .380 ACP round.  The other civilian rounds from FN and their affiliates ( Federal and Fiocchi make rounds for the US market) is the SS192 and SS195 28-grain rounds.  They are almost exactly the same, but the SS195s have lead free primers to make treehuggers happy (and make the ammunition only good for 3-5 years of storage.)  Elite Ammunition loads their rounds in a variety of weights:  from 28 and 40 grain rounds like the factory ammo, to a 55-grain and a smoking fast 32-grain (2400+ is advertised for the latter.)  These specialty rounds will get your muzzle energies into the hot 9mm range.

The real benefit of the round is four fold:  1) you can cram a lot of firepower into a handgun, 2) the round has very low recoil impulse, making it easy to fire and control, 3) the round yaws on impact and according to a friend working for the Little Rock forensics department “is stunning in what it can do.”  4) the SS190 (restricted by law) rounds defeat Class 3 body armor.  The civilian rounds are not armor piercing, but having fired a bunch at a friend’s expired Class 2 vest, we were surprised to find they blew through the thing the majority of the time.  Two out of ten rounds got through his expired Class 3, but I suspect that was due to them hitting an area that was frequently folded and the fibers were weakened.  I know of people who have had great success with nutria and other small to moderate sized vermin with the handgun at 25 yards.

Put the platform and the rounds together…  The FN FiveSeven is highly accurate.  The rounds move at about 1900-2200 fps, depending on which you are shooting, and give you a highly accurate gun out to about 50 yards.  I dropped hits on a pumpkin, outdoors with a mild breeze, at 100 yards.  (Out of the PS90 carbine, I hit a wine bottle at 300 yards with a light crosswind on the first shot.)  At reasonable self-defense rounds of 10 yards or less, sub inch groups are entirely possible, and frequent with practice.

The extremely light weight of the FN, however, makes any twitch of the hand throw the aim a bit.  Granted, this means you’re shooting a 2″ group, instead of a 1″ group, and the small diameter of the bullet means that it looks like you’re not so accurate…until you fire a 9mm or .45 at the same target and have a single round cover the two or three holes you thought were spread so far apart.  I normal practice with a draw from the holster and a panic fire of three rounds to the chest area of a target at 15 yards with 2-3″ groups.

In the time I’ve had the firearm, I’ve had two failures to fire due to ammo issues, no jams, and only one mechanical issue:  I wore out the magazine catch.  FNH-USA replaced it for free…and I got a hat out of it.  The magazine catch is, by the way, reversible for southpaws like me.

Despite the nay-sayers, I’ve never felt the FiveSeven inadequate as a self-defense round, it is fast and accurate, so you can drop two to three rounds in rapid succession with accuracy.  Shot placement usually wins the day, and quite frankly…after the first round goes off, most people do not want to play.

As a carry gun, I feel I can recommend it, even with the high price of the handgun ($950-1200, depending on where you are in the country.)  I carry it, and so do several friends of mine.  I’ve never worried about it malfunctioning, like I did my Walther PPK.  It’s a bit big for concealed carry, but we have open carry here in New Mexico.  As a target pistol, it’s excellent fun, although the rounds are on the rich side at $20-22/box of 50.