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My bullseye .22—rba ps600

A brief introduction to my .22 pistol is in order. I purchased this RBA PS600 from the late, great Don Nygord as part of a package deal. Nobody, including me, had ever heard of an RBA pistol. A quick call to Don produced the following back story:

                           

RBA is apparently a well-known supplier and contractor to the Italian arms industry. They were a major creditor of Morini during their much publicized flirtation with bankruptcy and financial ruin. As the story goes, RBA had a significant backlog of finished Morini parts (the CM-22 Match Pistol being a primary item they were supplying for) and decided to contract Peters Stahl to do final assembly, testing, marketing, and sales of the unassembled pistols. Enter the PS600, a virtual CM-22 clone. Now, we have all heard the stories about the feeding and extraction problems with that pistol; for $600 bucks with a dot sight already mounted (and Don Nygord’s word that the pistol functioned flawlessly) I figured it was worth a shot.

 

The pistol currently has an Optima 2000 sight mounted (yes, I know …). I love the way this setup is put together, but what a pain in the nether regions when the battery goes dead! The Optima mounts the battery underneath the sight—you must remove the sight from the pistol to replace it. This would be a minor annoyance if not for the fact that this rig is set up with the sight mounted directly to the handgun—no sight base. Because the mounting screws are in slotted holes, it is very difficult to index the sight so that it returns to zero when remounted. I am going to experiment with scribing a reference line on the shroud. I’ll keep you posted …

 

Latest news—the kind folks at Pilkington Competition Products are going to ship me some Morini CM-22 accessories (magazines and barrel weights) to check for compatibility. It will be nice to confirm that some spare parts are available if needed. I can’t stress how helpful they have been. I won’t be buying anything from anyone else if they have it.

 

UPDATE—July 2006

As mentioned in my Blog, the weights and spare magazines have worked out very well. Everything fits perfectly, so there is at least some truth to this pistol being functionally identical to the Morini CM-22. The JPoint sight has a very short battery life—I need to replace it every two weeks or so, regardless of whether it is in the box or if I am shooting it often. The master plon is evolving, more to come ...

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