Folks, the PTR PDWR is a fun gun! Yeah, I said the “gun” word because it just fits. After taking the time to lubricate and clean the pistol as I wrote in the last post, my two brother-in-laws and I took it out to the range.
Plain and simple, it ran like a top. We did not have one single problem of any kind. We were running surplus aluminum mags from Robert RTG. The ammo was Prvi Partizan (PPU) .308 M80 145gr FMJ. I’ve had great luck with PPU ammo over the years and have run a variety of their calibers and loads. This .308 ammo comes in a heavy plastic sealed “battle pack” that SGAmmo sells. If you don’t know SG Ammo, they are a great ammo supplier that is a family run business. I buy most of my ammo from them and have nothing but good things to say about them.
We sighted the Vortex 1-6×24 Strike Eagle scope in at at about 25 yards and then just had fun. We weren’t shooting for accuracy but were having fun shooting “zombies” as we called them with the big Splatterburst 18×24 silhouette targets that I really like.
This time out, I was using my new Howard Leight electronic ear muffs. These are cool because they have directional sound amplification for normal sounds – like talking with your friends. When you shoot, they immediately cut the sound off and protect your ears. This is a real nice feature for me as I can’t hear a thing when I wear ear muffs due to my hearing loss and have to take them off to talk to someone. At any rate, these Howard Leights have a great reputation and I must say that I am very happy with them.
One of my brother-in-laws was wearing my new MPOW headphones and thought they did a really good job on cutting down the sound. These are a bargain price at Amazon and work way better than my old cheap Silencios in terms of hearing protection.
Now we did have a funny lesson learned – see how short the barrel is relative to the Caldwell front bag? Yeah, if you get the muzzle brake over that bag and fire, it will rain some kind of brown pebbles (corncob media maybe?) down on you as the muzzle blast shreds the top of the bag 🙂 I have to confess, I am the one who did it and had to use duct tape to seal the top up so we could use it the rest of the day.
The whole point of the range visit was for me any my two brother-in-laws to have fun and function test the PDWR. It performed admirably – neither of them are shooters and, for Jamie, this was his first time shooting anything – I think he did great.
Not one single problem – no feed issues, no ejection issues – it just performed great through about 200 rounds.
At any rate, I did learn a few things:
- It upheld the good opinion I have of PTR firearms.
- The SOB brace can handle .308 recoil just fine and lines the eye up for the scope great.
- As expected, the Vortex scope was great.
- The weight of the PDWR absorbs quite a bit of recoil making it a pleasant shooter but there is still recoil that moves you off target with any kind of rapid fire.
- The muzzle brake does an okay job but I am going to check into alternatives to cut the recoil down further. The bird cage design is okay but there are definitely better designs out there. The PDWR has a 5/8″-24 TPI threading so there are definitely options.
- The PDWR handguard moves forward and backward more than I care for. I am going to experiment on tightening it up or either moving to a DTAC handguard or back to the original PTR handguard. Note – the PDWR uses a MP5-style handguard.
Bottom line, I am very happy with the PDWR and plan to work with it some more on the above plus see how it does as I work my way back to 100 yards. Everything in this sessions was at 25 yards or less and I am curious how it performs as the distance grows. I would recommend the PDWR to anyone looking for a short HK91/G3-type roller lock for short distance use.
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