My range day, NAA minigun and pocket pistol shoot off (pic heavy)

[raxar]

So I decided to take the new NAA .22lr out today to determine my carry ammo, and thought I might as well bring all the pocket guns for a little comparison

Here are today’s contenders



Clock wise we have a Taurus 85 DAO .38, the NAA with folding grip, Russian Makarov and a Skyy CPX-1 in 9mm luger.

First I tried out the NAA with all the different .22 loads I could get my grubby mitts on. My first round of targets informed me that the gun shoots 8+ inches low at 7 yards (!). I’ve never shot a gun that produces anything resembling groups that far off of point of aim as such a short range. The good news is that CCI minimags gave this decent 4” group with a little bit of Kentucky windage



I also wanted to know what performance I could get out of such a little thing so I tried so highly unscientific water jug testing.



Using CCI minimags, Stingers, Remington vipers and Federal lightnings got some interesting results. Both the minimags and Stingers managed to penetrate all 4 jugs and go flying off into the great beyond never too be seen again, and since I couldn’t recover the bullets I can’t tell if they expanded or not. Unfortunately one of them hit the very top of the jugs and didn’t get the full distance of water to travel through so I can’t say for sure how much penetration it would have gotten had it hit dead center.

For those that don’t know how far a bullet will penetrate in a bad guy by dividing the amount it penetrates of water in half (12” of penetration in water would be 6” of bad guy). Each jug is 6 inches of water, so you want your bullet to go a minimum of 4 jugs..

I found this to be a pretty impressive result because I’ve had 9mm luger and 9mm Makarov hollow points only manage to go through 3 jugs and bounce off the 4th

The Lightning and Vipers were a different story, I found the viper sitting in the 3rd jug after bouncing of the 4th, and the lightning only penetrated 2 jugs then hit the sawhorse, bounced off and landed a few inches away. I did manage to recover both bullets



Interestingly enough he viper actually had the imprint of the canvas material on the nose of the bullet.

Examining the jugs to determine path of travel also revealed a surprise



It seems that all three bullets that hit center were tumbling by the time they hit the second jug (the first jug had no keyholed entrance holes). If these bullets behave the same way in flesh it means that they begin to yaw within 3 inches of entering the body. I doubt this means they have any 5.45 esq wounding ballistics I but was not expecting to see it at all. It also means that the HP’s didn’t expand at all, but a .22 traveling sideways is probably wider than an expanded HP would be anyway

I also tried out some .38 blazer 125 grn +P’s for the 85 to see how they would perform.



I was expecting better performance out of these so I switched to bigger jugs, each of which is about 18" thick.

I was quite pleased to find the blazers shot right to point of aim at 7 yards and produced a very nice group, but the water test was a disappointment.



It penetrated the whole way through both large jugs and came to a stop in the third, unfortunately it didn’t expand at all. You can see there is some material in the HP but I don’t think that’s why it failed to expand. I’m certain the culprit was the low velocity of the 2” barreled Taurus. Which leads me to want to try it out of a longer barreled gun

Those three bullets were the only ones I managed to capture today. I tried some Norma 9mm that I had sitting as well as my 180 grn. Remington .40 S&W HP’s that I use in my car gun, everything either went out the side or out of the back of the jugs.


Another thing I wanted to see today was if the Skyy is in fact a piece of crap or just needed a decent breaking in. I’ve had numerous problems with steel cases getting stuck in the chamber (both brown bear and S&B) so I bought 2 boxes of federal at wally world to give it a serious evaluation. The first 40 or so rounds were hiccup free, than on the 5th mag I got my first failure to extract, afterwards I had at least 10 more and didn’t shoot another mag out of it that didn’t have at least one. The question now is if the problem is in the chamber or the extractor and hopefully will get cleared up with more shooting.

The winner of the day by a wide margin was the Mak, it was the most comfortable to shoot and produced the best accuracy, too bad it’s too hefty to pocket carry.


So what did we learn today?

Remington vipers aren’t all that impressive
If you want a pocket 9mm ignore the skyy.
Little guns can be surprisingly effective
After a few mags a subcompact 9 gets uncomfortable to shoot
I have too much time on my hands

[6gunsal]

Nice write-up, and interesting zebra print You aren't the guy who became a furry before the old gunsnet went down are you?

[Schuetzenman]

Nice range report. So the Skyy functioned well then didn't. Might of been fowling increaseing drag and slowing the slide speed down. Could also be gauling of the slide on the frame rails or what passes for a guide rod. I have a tiny .22 cal. pocket auto that is made of stainless. It seized up after 4 mags at the range. I benched it and found out that the recoil guide rod also being stainless was gauling with the slide. I stoned out the rough spots then put a Never Seize compound of nickle and grease on it. Copper and grease types would probably also have worked well. After that it was always 100% on function.

[mriddick]

I have that same model of NAA mini revolver I carry quite alot, while no powerhouse it's by far the easiest carry gun I own. My Taurus works like yours, meaning it just does It's a 650 (357mag) so I'm hopefully getting alittle more out of my 38 +P+'s I use in it.

[old Grump]

You done good, you also found out why I stopped using vipers and stingers and have gone exclusively to 40 gr solids for hunting purposes. I haven't tried the lightnings but the mini-mags make decent plinking rounds. A little pill bottle filled with sand sitting on top of a fence post at 60 yards reacts quite nicely and you have a lot of time for grinning and giggling before it finally comes back to earth. I am not going to tell you how many times I had to shoot that pistol before I finally connected. My little mind doesn't remember negative details like that but it was more than a couple.

[sevlex]

What ammo were you putting thru the Mak? How did it do on water jugs?

[raxar]

Nice range report. So the Skyy functioned well then didn't. Might of been fowling increaseing drag and slowing the slide speed down. Could also be gauling of the slide on the frame rails or what passes for a guide rod. I have a tiny .22 cal. pocket auto that is made of stainless. It seized up after 4 mags at the range. I benched it and found out that the recoil guide rod also being stainless was gauling with the slide. I stoned out the rough spots then put a Never Seize compound of nickle and grease on it. Copper and grease types would probably also have worked well. After that it was always 100% on function.

the slide is working fine, it cycles back the whole way, it just doesn't take the case with it. I did notice toward the end it seemed to lock into battery and took more pressure to pull back the slide, cleaning and lubricated seemed to solve it though

You done good, you also found out why I stopped using vipers and stingers and have gone exclusively to 40 gr solids for hunting purposes. I haven't tried the lightnings but the mini-mags make decent plinking rounds. A little pill bottle filled with sand sitting on top of a fence post at 60 yards reacts quite nicely and you have a lot of time for grinning and giggling before it finally comes back to earth. I am not going to tell you how many times I had to shoot that pistol before I finally connected. My little mind doesn't remember negative details like that but it was more than a couple.

Federal lightnings aren't in the same class as the vipers and minimags. it's just a high levlocity solid that wally world sells for $1.47 a box, I have a pile of them because my savage loves them.

What ammo were you putting thru the Mak? How did it do on water jugs?

I had some lead reloads so I didn't bother shooting the jugs with it