Walt Sherrill
New member
tangolina said:I looked up hk 7pm myself. It is interesting concept but I don't think it works very well. It is a locked action, fundamentally different from direct blow back. The fluted chamber has nothing to do with the delayed unlocking. It is just an aid for extraction. It shows one of the shortcomings of the design. Nobody wants to go through the trouble of fluting the chamber if they don't have to.
The P7 series (various PSP, P7M8, M10, M13) guns worked well, and were used by police and individuals in Germany for many years. Folks who own them like them, but the do have some quirks or an eccentric feature -- as do some other guns. The P7 guns, however are known for exceptional accuracy and only the SIG P-210/M49, another service pistol, seems to do as well or better.
While the 9mm and .40 versions used gas to help retard the slide, the .22, .32, and .380 versions of the P7 were straight blowback versions.
The fluted chamber did not make the gun hard to use or cause functional problems -- it was just different way of handling extraction and probably no more costly or troublesome than other methods of extracting a round when building a new gun design from scratch. I've never seen the fluted chamber called a "shortcoming" or a potential problem; it was simply viewed as a "different" approach to a standard problem.
The grip, which had to be squeezed to unlock the safety to fire the gun IS sometimes mentioned as an awkward aspect of the design, others consider it an important safety feature. That grip and the HEAT that accompanies a lot of round fired rapidly is why I've never wanted one myself. I may change my mind, one of these days if I find one with a price I can afford.