SRD

If he truly has evidence that an aftermarket trigger bypasses internal safeties as he says, then I'd like him to be specific. I can only speak for the Apex trigger (trigger shoe and trigger bar in my case) as far as first-hand experience goes. Pulling the slide off my X5 I can see exactly how the internals are interacting. When the trigger is at rest the safety lever is resting on the forward edge of the sear housing, just like it does with the factory trigger and trigger bar. As I pull the trigger to the rear there is some take up (it's not completely eliminated), and the safety lever rises as the sear lowers. Based on my understanding of the FCU nothing indicates a bypass of the internal safeties so he must not be referring to Apex. If he is, then I'd like to hear his explanation.

Sig used to mention a "pre-tensioned barrel" with the X-Five but I'm not sure that's done any longer, at least it's not obvious to me. The top end of my older X-Five is rock solid and doesn't move at all in dry fire. More recently I bought a second complete slide so I could easily switch for either iron sights or an optic, and the new slide is clearly not as tight as my original -- the slide does dip at the rear as the trigger is pulled.

Thanks for the information!

Will the Practiscore app (PS Matchbook, for example) show live results for a match like the upcoming Iron Sights Nationals? I'm not competing, but if it's possible I'd like to watch the results as the match happens. If not the Practiscore app, is there another option for real-time results? Thanks!

Thanks all. The reference to 6.2.5.1 is very helpful. I'll have to be careful going forward.

I need to clarify. Although I called it a barney mag I'm talking about the mag I use to start the course of fire. It has 11 rounds in it, and I pull it from my front pocket and insert it in my pistol and chamber a round. At the start signal I no longer have a mag in my front pocket ... It's in the pistol. So when the RO says "make ready" can I pull the mag I will use to start the course of fire from my front pocket? He said no because it needs to come from behind my hip. I understand that I can't run the course of fire with a spare mag in that pocket, but that's not what I'm doing. Does that change things?

Apologies if this has been discussed -- I didn't find it on my initial search. At a recent match I was told by the RO that, as a production shooter, if I pulled a barney mag from my front pocket at the "make ready" command that I would be bumped to open for violating the "mags behind hips" rule. I countered that the rule states "during the course of fire, after the start signal..." which is the language in 5.2.4. He said that he just completed RO training and they discussed this issue specifically, and he was confident in his interpretation that it applied to the period immediately after the "make ready" command. Am I missing something? Thanks!

If you're having trouble stringing shots to the left (right hand dominant), take a look at this thread I started... http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=105224 Everyone's grip is different, but I found that adding any thumb pressure to the frame seriously affected my accuracy and my ability to track the sights. The article I reference is a great read. Give the technique a try and see if it helps.

The match director's name is Rob. Ask him to add you to his distribution list and you'll get a reminder in advance of the match and a phone number to call for updates if the weather is a problem. His email address is sccpsa at gmail dot com. Scott

I know this sort of thing has been discussed before, but I wanted to share my personal experience. Recently I've been frustrated by a tendency for my shots to string left when shooting at speed, not to mention that my sights never seemed to track consistently. After reading the online article The Combat Handgun Grip (it compares/contrasts the techniques used by benos and Dave Sevigny) I decided to move my support-hand thumb off the pistol completely. Wow, what a difference! My shots are well centered and the sights are much easier to track in recoil. I've still got plenty to work on, but this small change to my grip is really paying off. Brian, thanks for pointing the way! Link for those who haven't already read the article: http://www.handgunsmag.com/tactics_training/combatg_100306/ Scott

Just put another 150 rounds through my 9L at lunch and it did fine once again.

I have a 9L and it's been fine so far, although the round count is still low (well below 1000 rounds). Accuracy is good. One wart I had to deal with ... the barrel had obvious rifling problems right out of the box. I immediately emailed S&W with pictures and was told it had chatter marks from a broken cutting tool. They replaced the barrel. I had them tune the action at the same time. I can't explain why the folks at S&W didn't see the barrel problem during production, but to their credit they fixed it right away.

Not my intention, but I see your point. As a guy who has shot at round paper targets from a static line for so long, it's hard to give up accuracy for the sake of speed as I'm starting to compete. My goal is to see my sights as clearly as possible each time, and I'm hoping speed will come with time. I'll continue to experiment with my sight picture -- it's clear to me that what works for some folks will not work for me, at least not yet.

I'm a new USPSA shooter (three whole matches so far ), but I have a long history of punching holes in paper. Shot my first match with my DA/SA Sig and it's standard bar-dot sights. My accuracy was superb (safe and accurate shooting was my goal that day), but my times suffered as a result. Interestingly, I was far from the bottom of the pack even with my slow times, so I looked for ways to speed things up without losing a lot of accuracy. Shot the next two matches with my M&P and it's three-dot sights, but I decided to blacken the rear dots after reading a lot about quickly acquiring a sight picture. I won't go so far as to say it was a disaster because I finished quite well in both matches, but there were times when I truly struggled to get good front to rear sight allignment without strong visual clues. I've decided to remove the sight black from my rear dots and try that next. Time will tell, but I believe, even at speed, I need strong visual clues both front and back to get my sights alligned properly. Perhaps it's a function of my aged vision, or experience, or both.

When you say the target was hidden by a no-shoot "at rest", do you mean before or after activation? It kind of sounds like you are describing a swinger. Behind a no-shoot before activation, swings behind no-shoots at both ends of it's arc after activation. How much of the target can you see (from ANY shooting position) after it stops swinging? If you can see 25% of the lower A or the whole upper A with the target stopped , after activation, then it's not a disappearing target. My apologies if the description was not clear, but it was indeed a disappearing target. At rest before activation it was hidden behind the no-shoot. After activation it appeared for one swing, and then went back to rest behind the no-shoot. As I mentioned, only a small portion of the border area was visible when the target was at rest both before and after activation.