(Left) The well-designed beavertail does a lot to distribute recoil and dampen the impact. (Right) The front sight is a basic target blade in a transverse dovetail. It's easy to adjust or replace if necessary. The rear sight is adjustable for windage and elevation. Instead of a dovetail, Sig machined the slide to take the moving sight parts.

But the real changes, and the big improvements, done to create the X-Five are in between the sights and grip. Let's start at the back end. The frame has been altered, and there is a beavertail highly reminiscent of a 1911 back there. It is upswept and dished for the hammer, and when I saw it I wondered if someone at Sig R&D had chopped off a custom 1911 beavertail and welded it to a prototype frame. The result is a frame that, in the .40, is very soft in recoil.

Next is the safety. It doesn't look like a Sig safety at all because the X-Five is a cocked-and-locked, "condition one" pistol. Insert a loaded magazine. Work the slide to chamber a round, press the safety up, and the hammer stays cocked. The ambidextrous safety blocks the sear. While the parts involved differ from the 1911, the effect is the same. And best of all for me, the offside safety lever doesn't bang against my knuckle. I can get my accustomed high grip and not worry about ambi-safety pain.

OK, so we have a cocked-and-locked Sig, with competition sights and a longer barrel. So what? Feast your eyes on the trigger. First, note the screw in the side of the trigger itself. That exists so you can adjust the length of pull. No need to pay a gunsmith lots of money to install a longer or shorter trigger. Just adjust it yourself.

Turn over the X-Five, and look at the triggerguard. Note the holes, fore and aft. The front hole is the weight-of-pull adjustment screw. The rear hole is the overtravel adjustment screw. In case you have any lingering doubts about just who is supposed to be making these adjustments, the correct-size Allen wrenches to adjust the trigger are included. That's right--a competition pistol on which you yourself can make the changes to trigger pull as needed.

The ambidextrous safety is not a hammer-dropping safety. It works like a 1911. The X-Five is meant to be carried cocked-and-locked.

I found I did not need to make any changes. The trigger pull as the X-Five came out of the box dropped the hammer at 31?2 pounds. The overtravel was set with just enough to allow for a high-speed rest but not so short that you could get into trouble. Too many competition shooters seek the "perfect" trigger pull by eliminating all overtravel. What I found 20 years ago (and this is still the case for me) is that if I try to make the overtravel and rest too short, I end up short-stroking the trigger at high speed. I tie up the trigger, pressing again without having allowed it to reset.

The factory setting for length of pull was within the correct range for me. I have large but skinny hands, so I can get along with many setups. However, a trigger that is too long has me pushing shots left. I never had that problem with the X-Five.

The inside of the slide is also a place you will find changes and competition-driven improvements. The recoil-spring assembly has a regular braided recoil spring up front. In the middle is a steel collar, and behind the collar is a single-wire spring. You're looking at the Sig recoil-spring buffer system.

SHOOTNG RESULTS SIG 226 X-Five .40 S&W
AMMUNITION	VELOCITY (fps)	GROUP (ins.)
Black Hills (blue) 180-gr. FMJ	932	1
Cor-Bon 135-gr. P'wrBall	1,241	1.5
CCI Blazer 180-gr. TMJ	1,026	1.25
Armscor 180-gr. FMJ	889	1.25
Speer Gold Dot 165-gr.	1,097	1.5
L-SWC 175-gr. w/ 4.8 Bullseye	1,003	1.25
T-LC 180-gr. w/ 4.5 Bullseye	902	1.5

When the slide moves, it first bottoms out against the buffer collar, and then the buffer collar compresses the second spring. When you go to take apart the X-Five, you'll notice the disassembly lever takes a lot more force to pivot. That's the secondary spring resisting. The barrel is a standard-looking 226 barrel but longer--at 5 inches--which adds a bit of velocity.