Monday, December 24, 2007 Rama: All I want for Christmas is an STI Spartan By Karlon N. Rama Stage Five
IN NOVEMBER of last year, Armscor bought me a round-trip ticket to Manila and threw in an overnight stay at a hotel to attend the international unveiling of a pistol it was making for the Texas-based firearms giant—STI International.
The Spartan combines Armscor slides, frames and barrels with STI precision parts and gives the shooting public a gun that looks, feels and shoots like an STI, minus the back-breaking price tag.
Dave and Pauletta Skinner, the owners of STI International who flew all the way from Georgetown in Texas to attend the unveiling, explained every inch of the gun to me.
After the unveiling, I spent an entire day with Armscor Senior Industrial Engineer Delfin Cresido at the Armscor plant in Marikina City to observe how Spartans were made—from the investment casting of the frames, to the precision cutting of the slides and barrels, to Armscor Chief Gunsmith Ariel Bernardo’s painstaking task hand-fitting of each gun with imported STI precision parts.
At the end of the day, all my questions were answered and I had everything needed to write a fair review. Still, I left Manila with a heavy heart—they didn’t let me fire the gun.
SPARTAN IN CEBU. So when businessman Joseph Zacarias (joseph-zacarias@gmail.com) sent an e-mail last Nov. 15, 2007 to ask about the Spartan, I could only tell him that I liked the way it looked.
I couldn’t tell him if it shot better or sucked more than any other pistol because Armscor, their gigantic shooting range in Marikina and the indoor facility at the Makati Cinema Square notwithstanding, never let me fire the damned thing.
Lucky for me, Mr. Zacarias didn’t let my childish indignation cloud his day and proceeded to buy a unit from the Armscor Shooting Center here in Cebu.
He e-mailed me again last Dec. 16 to say that the gun had arrived a week before and offered to let me see and shoot it.
Better yet, he said, he was leaving it with Kamagong Gun Club caretaker Obet Perero so I could perform a range test. (Bless your heart, Mr. Zacarias.)
THE ENCOUNTER. The gun came in a standard plastic box with a sticker of the STI logo on it, two magazines from Novak, a plastic bushing wrench from Wilson Combat, a key to adjust the gun’s LPA rear-sight, and a small hex key, also for the sight.
Armscor shipped it with a 36-page Handgun Safety Reference and Owner’s Manual; a soft-cover that, upon closer inspection, didn’t appear to be written specifically for the Spartan but for “all 1911-style firearms.”
Upon physical inspection, the gun has good aesthetics.
The frame is that of a standard government model, enhanced with an STI single-sided thumb safety, a high-rise beavertail grip safety and a flat, checkered mainspring housing.
The slide features precision etched front and rear cocking serrations. The sights are composed of a fiber-optic insert front blade up front and an adjustable LPA low-profile rear.
The gun comes with an STI Commander-style hammer and a plastic STI trigger that breaks crisply at five pounds.
THE IMPRESSION. I went to Kamagong Gun Club, located inside the AFP Central Command Headquarters last Saturday morning (Dec. 22) and, together with some friends, fired off a few rounds.
The gun shot about two inches to the left at seven yards and, with the beaver-tail tang of the grip safety being a bit on the rough side, gave the web of skin between my thumb and the trigger-finger a mild bite.
I went back to the range yesterday and, with the Spartan (sights now adjusted) jammed inside a BladeTech IWB holster, joined a shoot the club held side-by-side with its Christmas party.
It’s amazing what can happen after a few clicks of the gun’s adjustable sights—the shots began to group like little clovers at seven and later at 10 yards.
There was little that I could do with the grip safety (I wasn’t about to smoothen it out with a Dremmel tool without the owner’s permission). But, during the match, it was easy to ignore what little pain could be felt.
The gun performed very well. While it jammed when paired with magazines I’d earlier bought for P500 each from a local gun store, it performed flawlessly with the two Novak clips it got shipped with.
And it wasn’t picky with ammo; gobbling up all the reloads we fed it with. In the end, it was the highest-scoring single stack gun in the match, inching past Jed Narvios though just by mere points.
The results: Standard—Yogie Javier, Benson Yu, Arestil Famor, Nogie Biagan, Ervin Estandarte, Roger Uy, Mario Gaquing, Glenn Diaz, Chito Hernendez and Keith Andaya; Production – Kieth Siao, Oliver Glodove, Cliff Ediza, Tyrone Mercader, Bot Ramos, John Melendres, Eric Ayag, Allan Osorio, Lito Ponay and Jun Sasuman; Open—Cesar Ting, Bayani Atup and Saldie Tan Un Kheng.
