I bought my Colt 1911 from Uttings as the Red Dot Combo which came with the pistol, a Walther red dot sight, 11mm adaptor rail, 3 extra magazines (2 magazines supplied with the pistol), 400 Crosman CO2 pellets and 10 Walther CO2 cartridges total cost £144. The package arrived next day delivery at work, so my wife didn't see it.
First impressions and assembly.
The pistol comes in a blue plastic pistol case with a cut out for the pistol. The foam is pre-cut for two magazines, a small tin of pellets and one CO2 cartridge. This was too small for the extra bits I wanted to keep with the pistol so I purchased a flight case (room for 2 guns) from Maplins with pre-scored foam and made up my own box. The plastic box came with a broken catch and is only really of use to send the gun back should a repair be required.
This gun is heavy weighing in at 1.22kg with the red dot sight in place, about the same as or slightly more than a real Colt 45 (1.1Kg unloaded). Construction is all metal and in the hand feels slightly unbalanced and barrel heavy. As a replica it really looks and feels the part and I'm chuffed to bits with it.
The instruction book that came with the pistol is well written with clear images and it emphasises safety at every step. It does keep talking about 'using the cleaning rod' in such a way as to make me think one was supplied, it wasn't. I compromised and cut a bamboo skewer left over from a BBQ to length so that I could poke out any jammed pellets (I haven't needed it yet).
The Walther red dot sight was a new one on me, never having used one before. It is powered by a CR2032 battery and these are easily available. Mounting the 11mm rails was a simple case of loosening the grub screw on the rear sight (allen key supplied) that sits in a dovetail groove and sliding it out. The new rails have two grub screws. Though they project above the chamber, they don't interfere with the loading of magazines. The sight comes with mounts and just needed to be slid on and tightened up. A small sliding switch on the side serves to turn the dot on and off. On more expensive RD sights, I'm sure that the intensity of the dot can be varied; no such facility exists on this sight. The dot also seems large and at 3m, completely covers the normal size air rifle target. I don't really know what to expect from a RD sight but the dot is also quite diffuse and a little oval in shape on the horizontal axis.
Whilst the original Colt was a semi-auto, this replica is really a revolver. Depressing the slide lock causes the front of the slide to move forward exposing the chamber for loading. The magazines take 8 177 pellets and so far I've tried Crosman CO2 pell pellets (flat headed metal front, yellow plastic tails) and Crosman Accupels - both work equally as well.
CO2 cartridges are loaded by pressing what would be the magazine release which pushes off the spring retained right hand grip. A lever at the bottom of the grip is pulled down, the cartridge is slid in place and then a thumb screw tightened up firmly. Pushing the lever back up (takes some force) pierces the cartridge ready to fire.
Like the real Colt, there are two safeties. The thumb safety shows a red dot when ready to fire. There is also a grip safety. With thumb safety on, the trigger can't be pulled and with thumb off but grip safety on the trigger can be pulled but nothing happens.
First few hundred pellets
The pistol can be discharged using single action by cocking the hammer manually or double action by pulling the trigger. Using single action the trigger is positive but quite light. On double action though the response from all who tried it was 'bloody hell'. It is very heavy and, though I haven't measured it (don’t know how), trigger weight (lbs) must be in double figures. For the first hour we shot with the normal rear sight in place and found the gun reasonably accurate but due to its weight and the feeling that it's a bit unbalanced, I won't be winning any competitions with it. I originally thought that 5 magazines (3 extra supplied in the combo) was a bit over the top but given the pistol's potential rate of fire I'm now thinking of buying a speed loader! My son hasn’t quite understood the term ‘self loading’ yet.
The gun seems to be reasonably economic on CO2. It's still early days but I think I could get 10 mags worth through it before the power starts to drop too much. Even then, there's quite a woosh when removing part empty ones. The pistol is also remarkably quiet in comparison with the other CO2 guns I've heard. The power is claimed to be about 2-3 fps.
Zeroing the red dot sight was quite a problem and I'd to resort to drastic measures in the end and read the manual! I'd been thrown because if the gun shoots high then the rear of the sight has to go down. This starts to make sense because the red dot is a reflection. Once zeroed, target acquisition was easy and many cans were easily taken out.
Summary
I've always admired the 1911 Colt and all its subsequent versions and as a replica this pistol looks and feels the part. It's a big heavy brute, almost agricultural and it turns heads at the range when I've been shooting it. On double action the trigger is very heavy but I'm hoping it will ease off a bit as the gun wears in. There will be massively more accurate and powerful CO2 pistols out there but I like this pistol.
Red dot sights? I'm still reserving judgement and I think I would have been better with the laser combo for an extra £25. Perhaps next time.
Colt 1911A from Umarex
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