Posted: 6/5/2011 11:37:06 AM EDT
| I just received my P30S. This thing is sweet! I had a question about when the slide is supposed to release. Is the slide supposed to automatically release when a magazine is inserted? The owner's manual says that the slide may release and chamber a round when a magazine is forcefully inserted, but is the gun designed to do that? Do shooters intentionally insert a mag forcefully to get the slide to release, without using the slide release or racking the slide to chamber a round? I've always racked the slide on my Glock to chamber a round. I never used the slide release because I'm left handed for one thing. I'm liking the ambidextrous controls on the H&K. |
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Hummm. Mine's not doing auto releasing. I'll have to try inserting the mag at a slightly different angle. It's not a big deal if it won't auto release at this point anyway.
I found out that I have to keep my thumb away from the slide release lever, or else the slide won't lock back when it's empty. I'll have to change my grip a little from how I was gripping the Glock. |
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It's not an 'auto release,' and the gun is not designed to do that. The magazine is not hitting anything to cause it, and there is no spring tension on the slide stop / release that would cause it (there is a spring that pulls it down, but it is not what is causing it). The slide comes forward when you load a mag because of how forcefully you insert the magazine into the butt of the handgun. If it is inserted forcefully enough, the mass of the magazine slapping in can dislodge the slide stop from the notch / catch in the slide, either by causing the slide to travel to the rear a very slight bit (as though you were sling-shotting the slide), or the sudden jolt and then stop of slapping the mag in causing the slide release to move down to as though you used your thumb to drop the lever. If you could take some high speed video of people doing a reload, what you might see (not everyone does this) is that once the tip / top of the magazine enters the butt of the gun, often times the shooter not only inserts the magazine up / in to the gun, but accelerates the gun down towards the magazine (as though they were clapping their hands together). When the mag seats firmly, it's a little bit of physics––things in motion tend to stay in motion, and the slide stop keeps moving down, because there is very little force keeping it engaged with the slide.
As a poster above noted, sometimes it seems to matter how the mag is seated, ie, slapping the mag straight in won't do it, but slapping on the edge of the basepad when inserting it will make it do it. For me, it takes very little force for this to happen on my G21 and some of my single stack 1911s, but it does not do it my P30, regardless of hard I smack it. I suspect its part technique, part smoothness of the contact area between the slide release and the notch in the slide. Don't worry if yours does it, and don't worry if yours does not do it. ETA When our agency switched to G21s a few years ago, we noticed the prvelance of this happening in training, so we started to mention it in class so the students would recognize it when it happened to them on the range. The problem with this was that now they all wanted and expected it to happen, so when they had to do a reload from slide lock, half of them would just keep slapping the magazine as hard as they could (after completing the reload) to try and get their guns to 'auto release,' when they simply could have pulled back on the slide and released it normally. |