Mas Ayoob brought one of these along when I took his LFI-II class in 1989. I don't remember if the gun had been announced by then or not, but it was definitely the first I (or anyone else, or Mas himself, for that matter) had ever seen.
I didn't shoot it, and I don't remember if anyone ever did. What I remember most about it is that Mas took the right grip panel off, whereupon that wonky spring immediately exited the gun. Luckily it was quickly found, but neither Mas nor a few bystanders could figger out how to reinstall it. I thought I could do it, because I had recently built up an ODI Viking (essentially, an all-stainless Commander with the Seecamp DA conversion built in) from a "kit" of unfinished parts. But I couldn't figger it out, either (the spring had jumped out before ANYONE had seen it installed, so no one present had any idea where it went, and how). Turns out it was much different from the ODI/Seecamp guts, and I couldn't figger it out either. Last time I saw the thing, Mas and a couple other students were still trying to get it back together.
And the ODI Viking? I never did get that POS running right. Turns out the slide's firing pin hole was so far off center that reliable ignition wasn't achievable. I complained to RANDCO, which had closed out the ODI "kits," and they sent me a new slide. This one had the firing pin hole in the right place, but had been mis-machined in the locking lug area; when firing, the barrel would start to rise MUCH too early and jam into the slide's locking lugs. After spending hours polishing both lug surfaces with no real improvement, I finally gave up and just put a Ciener .22 Commander slide on the ODI frame and turned it into a dedicated .22. I basically turned it over to my teenaged son, who happily put many thousands of rounds through the backbirth during his high school years.
The DA on that gun was horrible. I smoothed everything up as much as possible but even so it was still quite heavy. I experimented with lightened mainsprings, which helped some, but wouldn't reliably ignite .22 rimfires. I eventually just yanked all the DA guts out of the wretched thing and dropped in a spare three-hole 1911 trigger which I had pulled out of a used Commander I'd bought just because I don't like three-hole triggers. The gun remains that way to this day, and gets shot occasionally. It's okay, but not one of my favorites. I'm thinking of reinstalling the DA junk just for the hell of it.
It's the second pistol in the top row of this pic of my .22 trainers:
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