Observing Eclipse: Kimber has set the 1911 World on Fire with Its Great Shooting, Good Looking Pistols. The New Eclipse only Fans the Flames Higher

Guns Magazine, Feb, 2002 by Massad Ayoob

Let us put it this way: The biggest compliment that firearms professionals can give to a gun is to trust their life to it. During much of the test, I carried the Eclipse cocked-and-locked behind my right hip as my first line of defense. As the phrase goes in one of my part-time jobs, "further, the affiant sayeth not."

The Feel of the Gun

The interface that the Eclipse presents to its user is excellent. I prefer the flat housing on a full-length 1911, and the Eclipse came so equipped. The semi-long trigger allows the average-or-longer finger of an adult male to reach in and contact it with the distal joint, which is the technique this writer has found to work the best. If you prefer the older paradigms of the fingertip or the pad of the farthest index finger joint contacting the trigger, the Eclipse works just fine that way, too.

The ambidextrous safety levers were just the right size: big enough to be fast and positive to release, small enough that they weren't accidentally released in routine carry. The checkering on the front and backstraps was just right: rough enough to stay in place in the hand during extreme rapid fire of heavy defensive loads, but not so rough that it chewed up the hand during extended firearms training sessions. Nor was it so rough that it kept the hand from sliding into its preferred grasping position during the draw stroke.

The grip safety is standard issue M-l high-tech, which fortunately is the current paradigm of the upswept beavertail that guides the drawing hand into the proper position. It flares out at the bottom to guarantee that if you use the old-fashioned high-thumb position, you will still activate the grip safety when you need the gun to work. This is a good thing. With the standard 1911/1911A1 pistol, the high-thumb grasp often moves the web of the hand so far back that the pistol may not fire when you desperately need it to.

Carrying and Shooting the Eclipse

I wore the 4-inch Eclipse in the same kind of holsters I'd have used with my 4inch Colt Commanders and 5-inch Government Models. There were no surprises. The pistol was flat, it had no sharp edges, and it was comfortable to wear. If I'd been wearing a tailored suit, I'd have worn something smaller. I wasn't, so I didn't.

Nothing snagged the covering garment to make it ride up. Nothing slowed the draw. I tried an Alessi CQCS designed by veteran narc Dave Spaulding and a Josh Bulman belt scabbard when carrying outside the waistband and used a Ted Blocker LFI Concealment Rig, a Milt Sparks Versa-Max, and a Mitch Rosen Ayoob Rear Guard for inside-the-belt carry.

Shooting the gun? Accuracy testing is one thing. Combat shooting is another. I like to run any gun I'm testing through some sort of a stress-producing competitive environment. The schedule didn't allow an open match, so I shot the Eclipse out of the Sparks IWB (inside-the-waistband) holster when I ran the pace-setter drill for an LFI-I class.

The pace-setter is what we call the instructional staff demonstrating the qualification course of fire for the students. We've found over the years that when you ask people to perform a physical skill set, they do it better if their instructors have shown them immediately before the test what is expected of them. This particular course was a closecombat run done under time, with the whole class watching (in case you didn't have enough stress already), with the maximum 5point target ring being the center of an International Defensive Pistol Association silhouette. Now, the center zone of an IDPA target measures 50 square inches according to firearms instructor Dennis Luosey, who crunched the numbers. By contrast, the International Practical Shooting Association target has a center zone for the maximum five points that measures 66 square inches, not counting the head of the silhouette in either case. Most police silhouette qualification targets are vastly larger than either in their volume of maximum-point targ et zone.