2011s are all the hotness these days. Once the sole province of STI and custom shops, the rebranding of STI (RIP STI Marauders) into Staccato opened the door for the 2011 as a serious, practical, pistol platform, not just competitive shooting. Of course, some of us “old-fashioned types” (stubborn dillweeds) never really gave up on the OG single stack 1911. I did retire from carrying old slab sides a while ago, but as anyone from the shop will tell you, I still love 1911s. For years, I’ve abstained from buying a 2011 simply due to price: looking at a 2500-dollar minimum pistol, plus mags, new holsters, and ammo for proof testing, kept me from satisfying my curiosity.

     But, that’s changed recently. See, Fuquay Gun employees go through a lot of education behind the scenes, and we’re routinely visited by spokesmen and shooters to do briefing on products so we can stay up to date, and give accurate information to customers. A gentleman representing Live Free Armory came by and introduced us to a new product, a sub $1000, 2011-style pistol, the Apollo. As an old 1911 shooter, I was instantly skeptical. Traditionally, IF you’ve decided that you’re going to shoot a lot of handguns and you want to do it with a 2011, you’re usually going to spend a good chunk of change. But after finding out that LFA makes a huge amount of the parts themselves, including the frames, slides, and small parts (extremely uncommon in the 1911/2011 world) I was curious, and since one of the guys had recently bought one for himself, I cheerfully decided to abuse his. Hey, it’s not my gun….

     This is a full 5-inch, railed, 9mm, 2011 with a bull-barrel, full-length guide rod, “Night Fission” tritium sights, ambi safety, and optics cut for the “K” series red dots. My buddy had mounted a Holosun dot on top, which I shot for the duration of my testing. The frame seems to be 3D printed, perfectly fine, with a good texture grip and an undercut trigger guard. Out of the box, the feature set is well thought out: aggressive texturing, a direct mount optic that doesn’t need adapter plates, co-witnessed sights, and an ambi safety are all featured. I picked up a DeSantis OWB holster and went to work over the course of a few range sessions, and one match.

     The Apollo shot extremely softly, as you’d expect from a 2011. Single-action triggers might be a crutch, but it’s a good crutch. It was easy to knock out 2.5 second bill drills with this gun from concealment. Not blazing fast, but when you consider I was shooting the gun for the very first time, fast enough for me. The magwell was flared enough that reloads were easy and smooth, and I don’t feel the need to add a larger one. I tested the gun with the supplied magazine, two duramag mags, and two staccato 20 round mags, all worked fine. Accuracy was acceptable, doing about 3-4 in groups with most ammo, and 2 in groups with Federal HST and Gold Medal Match.

      Of course, all this means nothing if the gun doesn’t function, and it did, it worked great… nearly flawlessly! The owner had about 200 rds through the gun on his own, I fired 337 in my first range session, 120 at the match, and 200 at my last range session, putting the gun at about 800 rounds total. Since I wanted to play with a variety of different ammunitions, my first range session consisted of 177 rds of S&B 115gr, 50 rds of Fiocchi 124gr, 50 rds of Federal Train/Protect 115gr, 30 rds Federal 147gr Gold Medal match, 25 rds Scorpio ammo, and 5 random rds of Federal HST I had in my bag. 

     Lets not kick around, the Apollo is not built exactly like a $3,000+ 2011. But for it’s sub-$1000 pricepoint, it’s pretty darn good. It’s soft shooting, reasonably accurate, and exceeded the performance expectations I had for it going in. It might be a pistol that needs regular maintainence and a few tweaks here and there, but if you want to get into a 2011 without dropping a 3 months of grocery bills into it, the Apollo is the way to go.