Suggestions for "practical" Co2 pistol

[Barison82]

When I did Practical Pistol, almost everyone - including me - used Tokyo Marui Hi Capa 5.1's in 6mm bb, using 'green' gas (actually we tended to use higher pressure 'black' gas), modified to one extent or another. A few people tried CO2 but generally it was expensive in caplets, a bit of a hassle, and most of the time ended up smashing the guns to bits. TM hi capas have a vast aftermarket spares industry and are easy to work on. Priority modification is a metal slide because the plastic one will crack if you are using black gas. I liked to keep mine fairly stock-looking (although I did short-stroke it), but some people spent....a LOT of money. A lot. TBH you don't have to, a lot of it is in the mind; Reliability is the most important thing.
At one place I shot practical you could have used a pellet pistol, but if you had done so you would have been at a distinct advantage when it came to speed reloading and pace of fire. BB guns are plenty accurate at the range and for the size of targets you shoot in practical.

For IPAS I used an Umarex S+W 586 - perfect if you have a slightly larger hand. Also a slight advantage in that it is 10-shot. Most other people used a mix of CP88s and 586s, with the odd Umarex 1911 thrown in. Again the Umarex pistols have been around for years so there are plenty of spares available.
Only went to a couple of IPAS matches where BBs were allowed. If outside they suffered greatly in the wind and at longer targets, semi auto was not a massive advantage as far as I could see.

Doing something like IPAS or practical sorts the men from the boys when it comes to pistols. You'll put a hell of a lot of shots through in one day or evening, equivalent to months of normal plinking duty. Anything with reliability issues quickly falls by the wayside. The above will work, a lot of guns won't.

Hi eyebull, thanks for your feedback. I have just purchased another pistol which is an A.W.E 1911 MEU 6mm airsoft - with full trades (Springfield Armory). It is part-by-part compatible with Tokyo Marui, and is full metal, using green gas. I also have a few mods for it (6.03mm tightbore barrel, slide spring, wood grips etc) Reliability is the main thing as you say and this looks like it does 'what it says on the tin', and is easy to maintain. I can't justify spending serious amounts of hard-earned on an airgun, as long as the basic thing is sound and works properly, everything else is a luxury to make it more like 'real steel' but has no real practical purpose. I've seen those Japanese Inokatsu 1911s and whilst they are stunning replicas, some of the prices I've seen (over $2,000 in one case) is insane, for a pistol which fires plastic BBs - a real steel firearm counterpart can cost well under that. Other than making it feel more true to the real thing, it has to my mind, little other practical use.

IPSC/IPAS is the only discipline that really interests me, and I'm a huge fan of the 1911 in all it's incarnations, so I would get more much more enjoyment out of having a 1911 airgun replica as a sidearm for competition shooting, rather than a 'true' air pistol for 10m Olympic target discipline with .177 pellet. Still on the fence about the 1911 pellet variant. The Umarex/KWC 1911s are great because of the availability of parts and they are interchangeable. As you mention, there seems to be little application for 4.5mm BB, which relegates this medium largely to back garden plinking etc. But it's interesting to hear you mention their accuaracy if used on the range, as I've read other comments where it's said BBs are not accurate. I'd love to shoot indoor IPSC/IPAS at 10m with 4.5mm BB as well, which means I can use a GBB pistol and I feel that in this environment, tight groupings could be achieved. But it doesn't seem like it's an accepted standard generally.