Trippin' on the Cobra
A tactical 7-round mag??? Forsooth! Who woulda thunkit?
No surprise there Striker. Good mags are the heart of the gun. Many people mistakenly consider them as accessories...but they're an integral part of the system. Like an algebraic equation...If they're wrong, the rest of the thing is wrong from that point forward. It's been my understanding that Metalform is the contractor for Tripp. Just wondered if there was anything that could possibly identify that.
Cobras...I had the chance to test and evaluate 2 Tripp Cobras a while back, at the request of a forum member who was gonna retail the line. Very well-made magazines...High-quality throughout. The concept is a good one...
Bringing the round a little higher to feed position to address the breakover to hroizontal, giving it a straighter shot into the chamber. It's a quick-fix for a gun that has RTB problems that are related to the feed ramp geometry due to
the frame to barrel specs being a little less than optimum. In guns that are right, they're not necessary. It's a choice...Spend the bucks to fix the gun so that it will run with any decent mag, or spend the bucks for magazines that basically use a band-aid to cover the underlying problem. I prefer to straighten out the gun. Not comfortable with needing to rely on a trick magazine to make the gun reliable, but not everybody is comfortable with modifying or altering the frame in order to make it happen...or they don't
want to throw money at a smith to do it. The Cobras are ideal for these situations if they're reliable in every other aspect.
I tested the mags in a dozen of my pistols that were dead reliable with all my beater mags...Mostly Metalforms, with some factory Colts and 18 USGI "Hardball" magazines. There was even an old Devel mag that I had long since swapped out the follower in for a standard 7-round set-up. Dead reliable. The Cobras' springs were a little soft for my tastes, and one produced a last-round bolt-over-base FTF in two pistols. Expected...The spring still has to be up to the task of getting the last round into position.
Two instances...one per mag...of the last round jumping the follower in
two guns. Slide locked with the round loose in the port. Not expected, but no surprise...Springs! Springs!
Both produced intermittent failure to lock the slide in about half the pistols.
One time it would...next time it wouldn't. Likely related to the spring, because there were no instances of the follower shelf climbing over the slidestop lug. The spring just wasn't fast enough to catch the slide...and
none of my guns are oversprung. In the ones that failed, switching to a 14-pound spring cured all except one...so it was in the mag timing. Good springs
would address the problem, but standard Wolff springs don't fit the underside of the followers.
I understand that there's an option with the Cobras in that the followers are offered with a choice of three different slidestop shelf locations that allows a little tuning for that particular problem. The ones that I had may have had the shelves at the lowest point, and the next step up may have given different results. One step Evidently, Virgil recognized that this might be a necessity with some guns' specs. Smart move, but it still forces the gun to rely on proprietary magazines. Lose or damage the magazines, and you're outta luck.
The raised feeding position does work, though. My guns feed so slick that it actually made me a little uneasy at how hard the slide went to battery when
loading from slidelock. They felt and sounded like they were falling on an empty chamber, and I was a little concerned about beating up the lower lug, slidestop, and its hole in the frame. So, if you have a pistol that fails to return to battery frequently due to stem bind that you can't correct with extractor tension, these will very likely alleviate that problem nicely in most guns. There's still the matter of the springs, though. Browning specified a load rating on the springs for some very good reasons. Dinking around with the spring rates in the gun...ANY spring rate... is a crapshoot, and could cause some problems. Not always, but often enough to approach with the thought in mind that this may not work well.
Cheers all!
