M1911-A1 - ArniesAirsoft - Review Archive

Author

The S.C.A.R.

Registered: January 2009
Posts: 172

Review Date: 20/1/09

Would you recommend the product? Yes | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 9

Positive aspects of the product (pros):	Full metal, feels great, great accuracy (can compare to a TM 1911), heavy and realistic weight (though some find this as a con), Good quality, cheap in the extreme
Cons:	Power is slightly below par comparing with WA and KSC ones, CA 1911A1 instead of M1911A1, No Colt trademarks

Real Steel History
Before the talk about CA�s new pistol line, let�s take a look at its real steel history.
The history of the Colt Gov't / M1911 Pistol began in early 1900s, when famous designer John M. Browning began to develop semi-automatic pistols for Colt company. In the 1906-1907 U.S. Army announced trials to replace its service revolvers with new, semi-automatic pistol. Army required the new pistol to have the caliber of .45 inch, so Browning designed its own cartridge that fired 230 grains (15.64 gramms) bullet, and then, designed a new pistol. In 1911, after extensive testings, the new pistol and its cartridge, designed by Browning and manufactured by Colt, were adopted for U.S. military service as M1911. Prior to and during World War One, more than one million of these guns were manufactured, mostly by Colt and Springfield Armoury, as well as by Remington-UMC, Burroughs, Savage and some other companies. The rights to manufacture Colt/Browning design were also sold to some foreign countries, such as Norway or Argentine.

In 1926, original design was improved, following the recommendations of the US Army Ordnanve Dept. These changes incorporate the following items (see picture above):

1. Wider front sight
2. Longer hammer spur
3. Shorter trigger
4. Curved spring housing
5. Simplified grip panels checkering
6. Index finger reliefs behind the trigger
7. Longer grip-safety spur

The improved design was adopted by US Military as M1911A1 pistol, and served with distinction until the mid-1980s, when it was officially replaced in service with M9 pistol (US-made Beretta 92FS).

The commercial Colts of this design are known as Government models. In 1929, Colt introduced the Government pistol in its new chambering, the .38 Super Automatic, a hotter version of the earlier .38 Automatic cartridge. New pistol had bigger magazine capacity (9 rounds) and sold well on the police market. The .38 Super versions are still manufactured and used mostly as competition guns due to extreme accuracy.
During the 1970 - 1983, Colt manufactured Mk.IV series 70 Government model pistols, which closely resembled original M1911A1s, but with accurized barrel bushings. Since 1983, Colt manufactured Mk.IV Series 80 Government model pistols, that featured added firing pin safety. Latest Colt product, M1991A1, also featured Series 80 slide with firing pin safety.

Colt also developed some more compact versions of its full-size commercial guns. So called "Commander" versions (available as Combat Commanders, Lightweight Commanders with alloy frames etc) have shortened barrels and slides (barrel lenght 108 mm, or 4.25 inch), with the standart size frame and grip, and standart magazine capacity of 7 rounds in .45ACP. These guns were also available in .38 Super and 9mm Luger chamberings. In the year 1972, US Army adopted the M15 General Officers Model Pistol, developed by Rock Island Arsenal, wery similar to Combat Commander, as a selfdefence weapon for high level army officers. These guns had a brass plate insert in the left grip panel, where tha name of the owner should be engraved.
Even more compact version, the Colt Defender, had also the shorter grip that limits magazine capacity to 6 rounds of .45ACP. The barrel of Defender is of 76 mm lenght (3 inch). Commercial Colt Officers' pistols were also very similar to Defenders.
Along with Colt, countless numbers of companie in the USA and other countries manufactured more or less exact copies of the M1911. Some millions of guns were manufactured in the USA during the WW2 by numerous companies under US Government contracts, and probably even more were manufactured for commercial sales. Most common M1911 clones are manufactured by: Springfield armoury, Les Baer, Kimber, Wilson, STI, Para Ordnance and many, many others. Also, many M1911-partterned pistols are still custom built for service duty, sport shooting and self defence.

Technically, the M1911 is a recoil operated, locked breech semi-auto pistol. It has single action trigger with frame mounted safety that locks the hammer and the slide. Hammer could be locked either in cocked or in lowered position, allowing the gun to be carried in "cocked and locked" state, with safety on, hammer cocked and round chambered. Additional automated safety incorporated into rear of the grip and locks the action when gun not held in the hand properly.

Barrel and slide are interlocked via massive lugs onthe upper part of the barrel, just ahead of the chamber. After the shot is fired, the barrel and the slide go back for the short distance, then rear part of the barrel is lovered by tilting link, and barrel unlocks the slide. The slide goes all the way back, extracting and ejecting spent case and chambering the new round on the way back. When magazine is empty, the magazine follower activates slide stop that locks the slide in the open (rear) position. The gun is fed from the single stack, seven round magazine. The magazine release button is located on the left side of the frame, just behind the triggerguard.
Modern Gov't/1911 clones may differ, more or less, from this description: i.e, those guns may have widebody frames that can accept dual stack, high capacity magazines; frames could be made from steel, alluminium alloys or polymer; some could have Double Action or even Double Action Only triggers, ambidextrous satety switches
and slide stops etc.

Source from: http://world.guns.ru/handguns/hg04-e.htm

Introduction and First Impression

Classic Army came into the airsoft market with a rather hazardous start with their MP5s and Armarlites, and it was not until the 3rd and 4th version of the MP5s and Armarlites that began to improve finally.

Now Classic Army is a world leading airsoft manufacturer, they began to venture into the gas-blowback path. The first releases of the Classic Army pistols were the Glock 26 and the Colt M1911A1.

When I first knew that Classic Army released an M1911, my first reaction was �What?�.

If you are a Colt M1911 fan, you would know that several companies have made a number of M1911 GBBs years ago, namely Western Arms, KSC, Tokyo Marui, KWA, Wei-E-Tech, Kuan Ju Works, Ho Feng Corporation and Bell. Numerous M1911 springers were also produced by several low-end manufacturers. So the first question I thought of was �Will the Classic Army M1911 be able to compete against some very good 1911s made by KSC, WA and TM?�

People quickly stacked up several forums, with people asking tons of questions if any people would recommend these two guns to anyone. I decided to follow some people�s path to purchase one and see if it�s good. Classic Army has a bad reputation (even nowadays) of releasing some bad things at the start, before they could mend those mistakes in a year or two. Some people even avoided their products.

(If you are wondering what the silver magazine is, it is a TM M.E.U. magazine, as the CA magazine is just ok)
My previous encounter with a Classic Army product was the MP5A2 Sportline. The Sportline was quite good on both externals and internals, so I decided take the risk and plunged in to buy this product after six months of on-and-off thinking if it�s good or not.

I decided to buy the M1911 because of these reasons below:
 I am a fan of pistols using .45 ACP ammo
 I like the M1911 from the very start when I entered the airsoft community
 The M1911 is big and menacing on its looks

Several days later, I took the CA package from the delivery truck and ran inside my room to open it. Once I opened it I began to snap photos.

Classic Army doesn�t care much about their box arts for their new pistols. The lid reminded me of Maruzen and Tanio Koba � both companies didn�t decorate their box like Tokyo Marui and KSC do, they just constructed their boxes out of plain brown cardboard with a monochromatic picture of the gun and some words in English on it as well. The only difference between Classic Army, Maruzen and Tanio Koba is the CA lid is constructed out of corrugated cardboard box and has a dense polystyrene bed underneath the lid, just like early KSC boxes.

This is a Version 2 M1911A1. The difference between CA�s first version and the second version is the second version M1911 has USMC trademarks on the slide while the first version M1911�s slide is blank. The box featured a big drawing of the gun and the big CA marking as its background. Below the picture are some infos about the gun (No Engrish, finally!). Inside the box is a dense white polystyrene bad, provides several cut-outs for the gun, a magazine, a cleaning rod, a multi-functional tool and a box marked with what it said to be .45 ammo inside it (in fact, it�s a small pack of BBs inside it).

The first thing that strikes you about the M1911 when you take it out of the box is the weight. The gun clocks at 1 kg unloaded (The TM M1911A1 weighs just 760g)!
The slide is painted in deep grey, probably not parkerised (I don�t know if it is or not, but judging from the acclaimed parkerised WA ones, I think this one is not parkerised).

Some of the markings are quite shallow (reminding me of KSC) but those shallow markings are laser engraved as well. The only ABS parts on this gun is the fake �wooden� grip, the rest are all metal!

Closer Look

Let�s start to take a closer look at the gun. I discovered the gun is about a 75% clone of the TM gun when I tore open the gun down to user level. The following parts are the parts not interchangeable with a Marui one:

The slide rail does not have an extra part at where the rails of the slide narrow down, which help prevent the slide lock notch from wearing down�probably because of a save-money measure.

The forward-left side of the rail on the frame is extended in width so that it engages the slide rail in absence of the extra part they ommited (which are present in KSC, TM, WA, WE and Bell M1911s).
The recoil spring guide does not have a hole at the base.
The hop-up chamber does not have the protrusion where the recoil spring guide goes on.
No recoil buffer for the recoil spring guide
Ejection port is lowered
The finishing is slightly lower than the TM one, and the paints are thicker when applied onto the laser-engraved markings. Anyway, it looks good.

One thing I noticed about this gun is the same thing that usually appears on TM products (except from their 1911A1 and so on) � seams. There is no seam line on this M1911, which is an encouraging news for airsofters to buy a good M1911 which doesn�t have any single trace of a seam.

The frame of the gun is quite good. However, there are some casting lines on it, which slightly spoils the beautifulness of the gun. The grips are ok, but far from convincing as wood replicas. Aftermarket ones can be fitted easily.

The slide is equally as good as well. Luckily there are no casting lines on the slide, but there are some patches of casting marks on the frame.
The metal parts are equally well finished as well, with the exception of the safety and the hammer, which features some minor casting marks on it, slightly spoiling the effect on the gun�s realism.

Unfortunately, the barrel is kind of disappointing. The finish of it is just so-so, and there are already several wear marks on the barrel within three days of usage. I�ll try to polish the barrel one day.

There are no licensed Colt markings on this gun. The only markings on this gun are:
On the LHS of the frame: �MODEL 1911-A1� with �CAL .45� beneath it. The marking �USMC� is just above the slide lock. On the LHS of the frame are the markings �G.H.D.� below the slide lock. The marking �P� is just near the magazine release and a proofing mark on the trigger guard. On the RHS of the slide are the markings �MARINE ENV M1911-A1� and a US Marine Corps logo behind the chamber. The chamber is marked �.45 ACP�. The RHS of the frame are marked with a Springfield Armoury QC mark at the back of the frame. A serial number is just right below the Marine Corps logo. The US Army logo is just underneath the MARINE ENV logo. There�s also a 76 on the front of the trigger guard. The only CA marking is �CA 1911A1� to the left of the US Army logo.

Being an M1911A1, the trigger is shorter than the early 1911 models and the curved backstrap are featured.

Some people disliked the simple sights of the M1911, but hey, this is supposed to be a WWII gun. You can paint big white dots on the sight, or swap them for a NOVAK one (needed to modify the slide before you can proceed).

The magazine can hold 24 rounds but a full charge of Green Gas can only discharge about 28 rounds�well, you can do the math. Some people dislike its consumption of gas and avoid them, but the 1911 fans of die-hard ones won�t be affected too much. Using 134a can fire more rounds (but with less power).

The magazine is a disappointment, but probably because I have seen too much KSC and WA magazines. The CA magazine has leakages, and when I bought another CA mag it showed the same problem. I was frustrated at this so I bought two new TM M.E.U. magazine (which is why I often use them nowadays). There�s absolutely no markings on the CA mag save for five holes on each side.

Overall the gun looks good on the quality and realism. It�s a shame that there aren�t any licensed Colt markings and there are some casting lines on the frame. The leakage of gas on CA magazine is a small glitch (which you can fix that by buying better mags from TM and WA). But other than that, the gun is a very good wall-hanger if you needed it to be.

Shooting Impressions

The accuracy of the 1911 is quite good. In a 6m / 6 round test, the gun achieved a 24mm grouping (5 shots out of 6), which is quite good for a sidearm with a normal length barrel. Honestly I did not expect anything more than that.

Power

Over 10 shots, my CA M1911A1 achieved an average of 270 fps with Green Gas at 25.5C, which experiences suggest to around 290 fps at around 30 C, and around 250-260 fps at 20C, which is slightly below par with most WA and KSC pistols, but is enough for CQB matches.

Overall

Overall the tests� results mean that this pistol is an impressive performer. It excels in accuracy but the power is slightly below par with other KSC and WA guns. A high-flow valve by Guarder is all you need to do to make it more powerful.

Field-strip

Field-stripping this gun is a faithful replication of the real steel�s one.

After removing the magazine, slide the slide back until the slide lock aligns with the slide release. Then remove the slide lock by pushing it through the frame from the RHS). The whole slide can then slide off from the frame. You must also remove the bushing with a quarter turn anti-clockwise before you can remove the barrel.

Then press the recoil spring forward and remove it from the slide.

The barrel can be removed from the slide by sliding it forward all the way until the barrel comes out entirely from the slide.

Conclusion

So, is the world better with another M1911? In my opinion, I would agree with it.
If you want a great stock 1911 for skirmishing, this is great value straight out of the box (better than the more expensive Bell on every aspect). There are also tons of accessories for your 1911 (�cause your gun is compatible with most TM compatible aftermarket accessories). It also performs adequately. The replication is good overall. If you are really picky you can better quality after market slides with Colt markings and threaded barrels.

It is not a perfect gun, being big for some people, and there are some casting lines on the frame and bearing non-Colt markings, but we can always modify the gun and forgive the mistakes above for its performance, just like the TM GBB range. As a fan (not die-hard) of both .45 ammo and the 1911, My recommendation is to try this gun out for both skirmishing and collecting (If you are patient enough to correct some of the glitches this gun accompanies with), you won�t regret it, in the end.
To sum up, here�s a pros and cons list:

Cons
Fake �wooden� grips
Not parkerised (What a shame!)
The power is slightly below par then standard (some consider this as a pro)

Pros
Full metal
Good accuracy
Laser-engraved markings (some consider this as a con)
Heavy! (Some find this as a con)
Trigger pull is fairly light
External and internal qualities are mostly excellent
The CA logo is greatly understated
Trademarks are deeply engraved and accurate in placement
The gun is sturdy with no hints of movements