Breaking in my new Walther PPQ M2

Alright. I’ve had this baby for almost a month now.. And, as much as I was itching I couldn’t find the time to take it to the range and try it out. Well, that all changed yesterday..

 

So.. I set out to go to the local indoor range and put about a 100 rounds through it to “Christen” it in battle… and to find out for myself if what I had been reading in forums and blogs (all rave reviews and opinions) is true about the Walter PPQ M2 (in 9mm).

Well, it is!

Let me be a bit more specific..

First of all after taking a few courses – beginners and intermediate from the local KRTraining – I’ve been feeling a bit more confident about my knowledge but I can’t still say that my skills are there yet. So, I had this 100-round range practice drill, which I got from the KRTraining website and which I’ve been using at home for the dry-fire practice parts only. I wanted to take this full drill sheet with me to the range and start at No. 1 and go down to the end. I did.

Here are the results… (and I’m no marksman, I swear.. just an average guy who wants to get better at all this..)

100-round range practice

First image shows exercise No. 2 – three 5-round groups from bench rest. Mine wasn’t seated by the way and instead of sand bags I had a tightly wrapped phone book – courtesy of the range.

All 15 went in. A bit high and to the left and one way down, but considering that this was my very first time ever shooting from bench rest, not sitting and using phone books as the rest for my gun (and not being a marksman… just wanting to be) I think I did fine. All I can say is that I am absolutely sure in more experienced hands the Walter PPQ M2 would have done much better. I know I was the limiting factor in this instance.

Below is exercise No.3 results – Standing, two-handed grip, Weaver stance at 25 yards, 10 rounds. All went in. Again the limiting factor was me.

Still all 10 went in. So, me.. happy.

Exercise No. 6 results below…

This was 25 rounds (5 rds x 5) at 7 yards two-handed Weaver stance. The things to practice in this exercise were: break the shot, see the gun recoil, release trigger to reset point (and no further), break the next shot, repeat. The shots should have been spaced out equally and not spastic (see the original 100 round practice – link above). Mine were exactly as I was instructed.

As it becomes evident the Walter PPQ makes even a bad shooter look like a decent shooter. Most of the rounds went right in the center. Good group altogether. A couple hit the target borderline between 9 and 8 and two fell in the 8 zone – I’m sure I flinched here.

And, this below is from exercise No. 9.

My assignment in this exercise was to set two 6-inch plates (I used the same target I initially used for the 7 yd center-mass exercise, but instead aimed at the elbows) at 5 yards distance and shoot from left to right and back to left as I maintain the same trigger control as in the above exercise (break shot, see bang trough, barely reset trigger, break shot).

I set out to do 6 shots in each side alternating between left and right. It’s kinda obvious that I missed one of the right hits – it clearly went out… but I’m happy with myself – I managed to maintain the smooth bam-bam-bam every second or so instead of the spastic bam……. bam..bam………..bam, etc.

I have to say that one of the assignments I had for myself was to learn to “see the shot through” – in other words to learn not to close my eyes in the instant the shot breaks. I can’t say that I succeeded, but I was getting close at the end.

I think I’m steady on my way to become an average shooter (smile).. especially with a such a fine hand-held lead-blasting tool like the Walther PPQ M2.

About the pistol…

Trigger

I’ll just say this: All I read and saw in forums, blogs and videos about the PPQ’s trigger is true… and more.

This is the experience… This is exactly how it feels.. don’t worry about the actual lbs of pressure. It’s just a representation of how it feels..

You begin pressing on a trigger that sits rather past the center formed by the trigger guard. The pressure feels something like 2 lbs. It is smooth and light. All of a sudden at around 6-7 mm of the take up you feel a very well pronounced tightening. You can easily double the pressure at this point and the gun won’t fire – that’s how it feels. It’s a very distinct tactile feedback point! If you do exercise No. 5 where you take up to prep point (right before the break point where the gun fires) and back and do that continuously you will be able to do as many reps as it takes to get tired in the trigger finger but you will NOT break the shot! That’s how good the tactile feedback is!

Pressing on..

At the prep point it takes probably what they say in the literature about the PPQ – 5.6 lbs of pressure – to break the shot. The reset is very short – 2.5 mm only! And, there is a very well pronounced – audible and from a tactile standpoint – click where the trigger resets.

So, you can easily fire this baby tons of times without ever going beyond the point of trigger reset.. forget about trigger slapping! (This trigger slapping, by the way, happens to me no matter how hard I try when I do fast shooting with my Ruger LC9S Pro. The reason is the trigger reset of the Ruger is all the way close to the beginning of the take up and when fast shooting just to make sure that the trigger resets I actually slap it.. all the time! Not the case with the PPQ. Not even close!)

In summary, the trigger is the best I’ve ever tried.. in my short time I’ve been into guns. And, I own a few and have tried a few of them – in 9mm S&W M&P, Luger LC9S; Glock and HK in 40 S&W and a couple of 1911s in 45 ACP (one of them is mine).

Ammo likability

This is in no way a review of the Walther PPQ M2 much less an extensive review. All I’m doing here is I’m documenting and sharing my experience with it. That’s it.

That said, I want to mention about the ammo likability of this gun. I tried several different (mostly cheap) brands of brass ammo – Tulammo Maxx (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Federal, Perfecta (Italy) and I even tried a few rounds of Spear Gold Dot 124 gr +P (man, that hurt – those are about $1.50 per piece… I could see the dollars flying out the muzzle with every shot I took with them!).

I had to try the Spear Gold Dot 124 gr +P because I wanted to know if these will be good as my “social” (concealed carry) ammo – whether the gun will like them. It did like them!

Out of a hundred rounds the only hiccup the gun had was with one round of the Tulammo – it was a miss-fed where the slide didn’t come back all the way to front position – there were probably 5 mm left to lock completely. I did what I was trained for a double feed (although it wasn’t a double feed) – gave the mag a tap (that didn’t fix it), then dropped the mag and cycled a few times to eject the miss-fed round. From there on (and before that) not a single problem.

So, I don’t know what to make of it. I want to attribute this to the specific ammo – the Tulammo Maxx is somewhat shorter may be a mm or two. See the images below – one side by side on the counter and one image where the two rounds are fed into my Ruger LC9S magazine. You can clearly see that the Tulammo is visibly shorter. I have to say that one of my instructors told me that the length of the round doesn’t matter that much for hand guns but it does matter a lot for long guns. That’s how much I know about that.

Any way, I don’t know.. I want to believe that it’s the ammo. That’s how much I like this gun!

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Feel/Ergonomics

This is one truly ergonomic piece of equipment! I have to tell you from all the guns I’ve ever handled in my life (not only shot but also handled in gun stores… so many!) this feels the best in the hand. It just becomes a part of the hand.. and you can’t ask for anything more than that!

The gun is light, but not too light where the 9mm rounds get to throw it around. It is comfy. The grip glues to the hand. It has that checkering that’s so fine that you don’t feel at all, but in the same time it prevents the gun from moving in your hand. It has the finger grooves at the front and side – they are there but they don’t interfere.

The backstrap is replaceable. It comes with two extra – one for large hands and one for small. I use the small one – I have small hands and that one provides the best fit for my hands. What I’m saying is you can adjust the handle thickness to the size of your hand – another great feature!

In summary

The gun is pretty, too! I mean by know it must have become evident that I like it A LOT!

Easy to operate, easy to break down and put back up, easy to look at. What’s not to like! I know some people only go for Glocks, some only for US-made guns, some only for 1911’s. Whatever your case, if can’t convince you if you are one of these people… and I don’t want to. Again, I’m simply documenting and sharing my experience and my personal opinion.

To me Walther PPQ M2 feels like a Mercedes.. The fact that both are made in Germany is a coincidence (or not!).

When I came back from the range my wife asked me how it went. This is what I told her: “Comparing the Walther PPQ to the 1911 and the LC9S (my other two handguns) is like comparing an automatic car to a stick shift car” (she can relate to that analogy – she can’t drive a stick shift).

And, honestly, the 1911 is a classic and it’s a charming tool in its own way. It’s like loving to ride a motorcycle for the simple reasons that it’s more difficult than driving a car, it’s more dangerous and it requires more/different skills. It’s just like that.. for me.

I like my 1911 in my own special way.

But, I like my Walther PPQ in all possible ways!

Tomorrow (coincidentally enough) is my first day of the two-day Combative Pistol 1 with Tom Givens. And, guess what? I’m taking the PPQ as my main gun there.. How will 900-1000 rounds trough it feel over two days? We’ll find out soon enough..

Update: 700+ rounds shot (“Perfecta”) and not a single malfunction or miss-feed on my PPQ!