I’m back from the SHOT Show, heavier from all of the rich food and my feet are sore from going from booth to booth looking for products to share with you, so let’s not waste time:
Coast HX5R
Coast introduced me to the HX5R ultracompact rechargeable focusing flashlight. It has all of the usual tools like a one-handed slide focus, strobe, IPX for waterproofing and patrol light brightness. There are two qualities that make this light outstanding. First, it is dual power. Unscrewing the cap in the back exposes a USB plug, giving the user the ability to charge it anywhere. It also takes CR123 cells. Second, it is extremely lightweight, a consideration for officers who carry lots of equipment on their belt. Oh, one other thing, I don’t have the final MSRP on this product, but the estimate I got was less than half the price of the cheapest tactical flashlight out there. A Coast light has been my EDC for a couple of years, and my rough handling does not bother it.
Spyderco
I was definitely humbled when I sat down with Joyce Laituri of Spyderco. I met Ed Schempp and Ken Onion, two of the most inspiring men who ever shaped steel.
Ed Schempp told me about the various qualities of Spyderco’s different steels. This was valuable to me because it gave insight about the metallurgy of the new Caribbean Line of knives for salt water. Since I only gargle with it occasionally, I never paid attention to salt water resistant steel.
The Spyderco Shaman is the follow up model that followed the Native, and it carries its superior ergonomics, but is larger and has several unique features. First, it is a CPM S30V blade held solid by a compression lock. I find the compression lock ideal for LE use because the officer can close the knife without placing the fingers in its path. It uses skeletonized stainless liners and contoured G10 scales. Most other styles use G10, but the scales are generally outlined and flat. The scales on the Shaman are contoured three dimensionally.
I anticipate that the Shaman will be widely adopted for duty.
I also got a chance to see some of the Value Folder knives, which includes the Alcyone, a G10 scaled frame lock. It’s similar to the Tenacious, only with eye-catching scales and American-made CTS BD1 Stainless.
The Rook
One of my favorite events at the show was driving the Rook. The Rook is a tracked utility vehicle from Ring Power Corporation. It is built on a Cat chassis with NIJ Level IV reinforcement. Although there are custom configurations, the kit comes with an armored deployment platform, hydraulic breaching RAM, vehicle extraction tool and a grappling claw.
I got to drive it. Shaun Mitchell of Ring Power Corporation gave me a brief operating lesson, then pointed to the area around the range and told me to take it out for a test drive. It is surprisingly intuitive. My test drive included the equipped hydraulic breaching RAM, which the user can apply with great precision. The RAM has several cameras, which allow multiple points of view, including infrared.
The Rook was one of the more versatile tools I have seen for deployment, when things go really bad. It’s incredibly modular, and upgrades like CRBN overpressure, FLIR thermal imaging, and an OC dispenser system make it suitable for any environment. Shaun told me, “When the Rook shows up, it’s checkmate.”
Editor's Note: Find information on used Rooks at Used.RingPower.com.
Archon Type B
One of the most interesting handguns I tried was the Archon Type B. This is a polymer 15 around 9 mm with performance enhancements that set it apart from other 9 mm products.
The Type B is recessed behind the trigger guard and at the beaver tail. The web of the hand rides so high that it looks like the slide is recoiling along the top of the hand. There are subtle enhancements on the beaver tail like an indexing protrusion that encourages a consistent master grip. The grip texturing is called “Grip Mapping,” which consists of course crosshatched squares that are really planed wedges when viewed from the side. The grip enhancement actually reminds me of the moulded Bi-Directional Texturing on Spyderco glass filled nylon models like the Delica 4.
The Type B has a flat faced short reset trigger, one of the best combat triggers I tried on the range that day. Between the low bore axis and short reset of the trigger, this gun was definitely capable of fast, accurate delivery.
The Type B takes standard Glock sights and has a full accessory rail. This was a full-sized gun which Archon called their “compact.”
Under the hood the Type B was even more intriguing. It used a captive recoil spring, consisting of two springs, which also had a separate recoil spring. The slide retraction and recoil made it feel like the custom progressive recoil springs that some gunsmiths use to gradually slow down the velocity of the slide, creating a softer feel and quicker recovery to the next target. If I had a guess, that’s exactly what they did here.
The features of the Type B are much too complicated for a simple overview, but the one that had my curiosity going was the recoil system itself. Instead of using a standard linkage, the barrel is suspended in a yoke-like device, which contacts the lugs of the slide and barrel. When a cartridge is fired, the slide comes out of battery slightly, then the barrel assembly disengages. On a conventional locking action, the barrel dips sharply while the mechanism unlocks. On the Type B, the recoil movement is less than half of similarly designed firearms. More importantly, the barrel barely dips in its plane.
Why is this important? If we were to look at a cutaway of the way the action works, we would see that the feed area of the magazine is higher (and therefore aligned) in relation to the chamber. The bullet barely moves from magazine to chamber. Less movement, less wear. Less movement, greater reliability. Less movement, reduced chances of cartridge deformation. This is a very different handgun indeed.
The Type B has the latter part of the fire control system in a single area, which is what many designers have done lately. This is the trend towards putting all of the metal parts into a single chassis in a polymer frame. In fact, we looked at a gun called the Honor Guard, a USA made handgun with interchangeable polymer grips and a single chassis that can be switched in a matter of seconds. The Type B did this, too, but no amount of prying got anybody from Archon to admit that they would eventually release several different interchangeable grips for a base model.
First Tactical and Dickies
There were two different clothing products that stood out at SHOT. The first was from First Tactical. I was lucky to have met up with Cory Nykoluk, the design chief for First Tactical. Cory is the guy that spends all his time asking “What if…” before products are released.
The First Tactical Defender Pants are made of a cotton and Cordura Nylon blend. The material has a mechanical two-way stretch and a moisture wicking finish. The actual “feel” of these tactical pants should be enough to give them a try on patrol. It is made of the kind of micro ripstop that doesn’t reflect a grid pattern when the officer is standing in bright sunlight.
The engineered features really make the Defender Pants really stand out. For example, the cargo pockets are designed with a strategically placed accordion so they don’t bulge when filled. The area behind the knee is actually angled, allowing complete articulation, but removing the “floppiness” of cargo pants when the officer is standing still. Even the rear belt loop is aligned with the rear scene in a manner that makes the design inherently strong.
I had a look at Dickies Tactical Apparel, too, and their ripstop cargo pants and short sleeve shirt have the usual hidden pockets and strategically located ventilation. There is definitely a notable feature of Dickies Tactical Apparel—they are much cheaper than similar products.
Leupold
The new Mark5HD rifle scope from Leupold & Stevens Inc. is definitely an elite shooter product with what they call Twilight Max HD Light Management System. This is a combination of coatings and optics to give edge to edge clarity. Closer to dusk, color and contrast changes. Although scope design is a factor, coatings improve the shooter’s ability to discern targets.
The Mark 5HD scope uses a 35 mm main tube. As soon as I heard this, I asked the question that every long-range shooter would have asked at the time—who makes 35 mm mounts? Leupold does now. That’s a good thing, since I have actually seen how they make their mounts, which is why they are on my guns.
A thicker main tube also translates to 31.5 usable mils of adjustment. There is a lock dial and a pop up indicator system in the turret so the shooter can do elevation adjustments in the dark. When I asked John Warren of Leupold & Stevens what he thought about 31.5 mils, he said, “I wish I had this [while deployed].”
While this is certainly not everything I saw at SHOT Show, I hope these few were notable enough to pique your interest.
About the Author
Lindsey Bertomen is a retired police officer and military small arms trainer. He has taught shooting techniques for more than a decade, in addition to teaching criminal justice at Hartnell College in Salinas, California.
