Thursday, February 21, 2013

A New Toy, The Radom P-64


    I purchased this little beauty on Gunbroker.com.  It is chambered in 9x18 Makarov.  Itt is very similar to the Walther that inspired it.  My example is a 1970's vintage police/military issue sidearm.  It is slightly smaller than a Russian Makarov,  roughly palm size.  It is very accurate as you can see below.

    I fired a box of 50 rounds silver bear hollow point from 7 yards.  This was my first time shooting with this gun.  I did have 4 failures to return to battery but the gun cleared very fast with scant manipulation.  I was using a mix of used and new magazines, shooting in the rain and using hollow points not ball.  I did polish the feed ramp after getting home and will report back with results.  

    Being a small gun it did beat my hand a little and still stung when I got home. The grip is two and a half fingers long so my pinky was crammed onto to the magazine extension, somewhat visible in the picture above.  I found the 9x18 to be a nice round, coming from my usual .45 acp.  This gun is limited to 6+1 rounds which is probably enough but I'd rather have too many bullets than just enough.  I am  likely in the market for a CZ-82 which has a slightly larger grip (read pinky friendly) and is 12+1 capacity.  

    Overall I really enjoyed this little commie gun and will continue to shoot it with joy.  The accuracy was outstanding, for me, and the ammo is still cheap and can be had from Hornaday as well as some other non-commieblock manufacturers.  This is a very capable concealed carry gun that I would carry with confidence.

   I can now report that I like my Radom and my Veper as well as all of my guns designed by The Venerable John Moses Browning.