I am also a big fan of the M1911 and would recommend anyone give the weapon extended use. I found the M1911 most effective paired with the Recon class where effective pistol use is much more important.
I was just coming here to say I've been using it today (apart from when the game totally forgot my loadout changes from two days ago) and I've gotten more used to the fact that you just have to keep shooting, I rather like it now. It pairs up well with the ACW-R because I found the magazine to be
just too small, so at medium ranges I found I'd spray an entire magazine and get a few hits, then switch to the pistol to fire off a single round to get the kill. I've had about 8 kills today, actually, but I do miss the long range power of the revolvers... That was more of a satisfaction thing, though, because it does feel pretty good if you hit a guy a few times and then switch to the revolver, fire one shot and get the kill, proper Dirty Harry stuff (apart from the slightly panicked spray and pray dance beforehand)!
The assignments that require me to go out of the way to achieve annoy me to no end. The Repair Tool kill was awful. Destroying an enemy vehicle with the Repair Tool kill was even worse.
I didn't mind the vehicle kill so much because I repair tool vehicles to death quite routinely, people rarely expect it and there's not much else you can do if you're an engineer and up close to a tank (which is the best way to survive them, in my opinion, if you can close the distance anyway). Getting the kill was pretty easy because it just meant getting up behind a sniper camping on Kharg and applying heat. My least favourite objectives have to be the ones that require you to play a different mode, though, I only unlocked the L85 like two days ago because of that.
Today I decided to get all 20 of the M320 kills needed for the SCAR-L, but I'm struggling to get the last four grenade kills as I only had one of those today. I also got my EOD bot kill for the MTAR-21 on a guy in a tank who had switched to the gunner seat to shoot at a chopper and presumably didn't even notice I was 'repairing' him. A useful thing to do is to drive up to the side of a tank and turn so the bot's tracks are parallel to the tank's, then turn to the side and start 'repairing' it. If the tank drives off in a panic you can sometimes keep pace with it long enough to do quite a bit of damage, but I never quite pulled off the kill, personally. Or you can, of course, use it on people. I got my bot destroyed a lot doing that, though, because no one was sitting still for me, the bot is loud and hard to actually drive which makes it kind of tricky to use against an agile target.
Oh and thanks Ryanaldo for the Armoured Kill video, shame they just looped the same clips over and over but it was interesting info all the same.