CHA-LEE's Tale

[CHA-LEE]

1 hour ago, DocMedic said:

The MRO will serve you better on the MPX, 25mm objective lens that is completely round will help out with LOS vs that of the DPP. I've had a conversation American triggers about the MPX, and what it looks like is they will release a new hammer design that can be put into a old AR golds trigger that will work with MPX's and blowback guns, They're still experimenting with it if its worth their time to invest building a dedicated trigger. Don't believe the hype on hyperfire triggers, they will also break on the MPX and so far I have heard of two accounts where the disconnecters are breaking. I will either try the Timney short reset 2-stage trigger, or the new KEarms trigger that doesn't use a disconnector. MPX's don't like the heavy's so avoid 147s, mine has ran great with 115s.

 

I would like to see you bring this down to pueblo match one weekend to see how you shred, just don't do it next month... I won't be in the state

 

I am hoping that the MRO sight will work out best because I really like it on my .223 AR. I got a shorter mount for the MRO to get it closer to the bore axis. I will test out the normal height and short mount for the sight. This is a "Spare Time" fiddle project so I don't know when I will get it all back together and ready to shoot. Most of the parts I ordered already should be here next week. But I am sure there will be more parts to order before its really ready to rumble.

[DocMedic]

3 hours ago, thermobollocks said:

 

Uh...

Ok Ran great up too 11,000rnds..then back to Sig at 12k...

[J-Rob]

Ever try any 124's or 135's?

[CHA-LEE]

10 hours ago, J-Rob said:

Ever try any 124's or 135's?

 

For what? PCC?

[J-Rob]

On 6/30/2017 at 9:06 AM, CHA-LEE said:

 

For what? PCC?

PCC, general plinking...

[CHA-LEE]

Holly Busy 4th of July weekend Batman!!! On Saturday I went out to do some live fire training with friends. We setup a large field course that was about 20 yards long with a good mixture of aiming hard, shooting on the move and hustling. At the start of the stage we used two six inch square plates at 25 yards to keep us honest. I aimed hard for those plates all day and shot them one for one every time I engaged them at 25 yards. We changed up the stage by shooting different sections of it several different ways. All told I shot about 300 rounds and it was a good practice session. I was using the #1 Limited blaster and on the last run of the day the front grip screw and tube loosened up and came out. While shooting the stage I could feel something bouncing around inside my support hand and when I was done I looked and it was one of the screws. Luckily the screw and tube were retained in my hand all the way to the end of the stage so we were able to find both parts. I also had the fiber rod get knocked out of the front sight a couple of times during the day which is a nagging issue with this gun. The aging #1 Limited blaster seems to still want to fall apart at random times. But it’s all fixable stuff so I will slap it all together again and make it earn its keep. I am going to keep the #1 Limited blaster in practice / club match duty for the foreseeable future.

 

On Sunday I attended the PSAC USPSA Match at the Aurora Gun Club. The #1 Limited blaster ran great with no issues which was nice. I shot a fairly decent match that day. I had one miss for the day which was on the classifier. I pulled a shot about an inch into the hard cover and couldn’t make it up because it was a Virginia count stage. It sucks to absolutely know that you have a miss but can’t make it up. The only other mistake that I made was on a stage where your gun started loaded on top of a barrel. When I picked up the gun my strong hand was registered way to the right and I had to shoot the first array of targets with a totally jacked up grip. This caused slow shooting and crappy points. After the first array I was able to readjust my grip and finished the stage strong, but it sucks to give away time and points because I can’t pick up the gun correctly. That being said, I have been slacking on doing any table starts in dry fire so I can’t complain too much. If I am not practicing this stuff then I can’t expect to execute it consistently.

 

After the PSAC match I was able to put a few rounds through my SIG MPX. I got the Hyper Fire 24C trigger installed along with some other goodies the day before. I figured I would give it a try using the MRO sight and a normal full co-witness height mount. The full co-witness mount is way too high for this gun so a shorter mount will be needed. The Hyper Fire 24C trigger was “OK” but nothing special. Right out of the bag with no additional fiddling the trigger break is ok, but does have a little bit of lumpiness to the break. The trigger return spring tension is also too light. I will need to do some work on this trigger to clean up the break along with increasing the trigger return spring tension. I was shooting factory 115gr ammo which felt a little more harsh than it should be. But that is expected with factory ammo. The good news is that the bullets were going exactly where I wanted them to go at 15 yards, so this carbine is at least very accurate right out of the gate. More fiddling will be needed to get this thing tuned the way I want it, but it doesn’t seem like it will need much more to get it fully ready to rumble.

 

On Monday I had the day off work so I decided to go on a long motorcycle ride with one of my shooting buddies. We did a long 325 mile loop up into the mountains and back. The weather and scenery were awesome. Even though this ride was a lot of saddle time it was a lot of fun to explore the awesome state of Colorado. It’s been too long since I have ridden my motorcycle and this ride really drove that fact home. For me it’s great to have an opportunity to be fully disconnected from all of the electronic distractions for a while.  I really enjoy having the only thing to worry about being my thoughts, the bike, and the road. I don’t think that riding motorcycles will replace my love of shooting as it’s a different type of entertainment. But it is sure a lot of fun to ride!!!

 

On Tuesday which was the 4th of July my Lady and I had the opportunity to attend the wedding of Josh & Lauren Horner. Josh and Lauren are local shooters that put a lot of hard work into the sport by running matches and helping everyone out as much as possible. They are a perfect example of a Practical Shooting Power Couple. Their wedding was awesome and it was great to see two awesome people celebrate the next chapter of their lives with family and friends. In the months preceding their wedding I kept asking both of them where they were registered for gifts and they both kept saying “We just want Bullets”. Since that is all I could get out of them for a gift I worked with the local shooters to pull together enough bullets, primers, brass and powder to give them 20,000 rounds worth of reloading components. It is awesome to have such a supportive group of local shooters that will band together to make a present like this possible. This is yet another reason why I feel honored to be part of such a great group of people!!!

 

After the wedding my Lady and I went to a concert at Fiddlers Green. The bands playing were Train, OAR and Natasha Bedingfield. I am not a big music person myself but my wife is a huge music fan and loves going to concerts so I was her wing man at this event. The concert was great and the performers were phenomenal. I have been to concerts in the past were the live performance isn’t anywhere close to their recorded performance on the radio. But that wasn’t the case for this concert, especially for Train. They did an amazing job of hitting it out of the park in a live performance while keeping the crowed engaged. The added bonus is that we could see all of the 4th of July firework shows across Denver going on just behind the stage. My wife and I both had a great time at this concert and it was well worth the trip.

 

Now it’s time to regroup from this crazy 4 day weekend packed with activities. I need to get my shooting gear cleaned up and packed up for the New Mexico Sectional match happening on this coming Saturday. We are driving down on Friday and coming back on Sunday so its going to be a short trip. I have been looking at the weather forecast and its currently calling for high temps in the 99 – 100 range so it’s going to be HOT. The top priority will be staying hydrated during the match. If I can do that then I should be able to perform solidly the whole day. We will see how it goes.

 

 

[CHA-LEE]

I found out today that I officially made GM in Open with the latest classification update. No more sandbagging in Master class while shooting Open

[tanks]

4 hours ago, CHA-LEE said:

I found out today that I officially made GM in Open with the latest classification update. No more sandbagging in Master class while shooting Open

 

Well, there is still Production class

[CHA-LEE]

1 minute ago, tanks said:

 

Well, there is still Production class

 

I haven't shot Production since 2008 and I don't see myself ever shooting it again. I go to shooting matches to shoot. To me it doesn't make sense to attend a shooting match and turn it into a reloading contest. Thus why I shoot Limited and Open where the quantity of bullets in each magazine are plentiful.

[3gunDQ]

^amen to that. Congrats on the new GM card in open. 

[warpcorps]

Congrats on Open GM Cha-Lee! 

[59nolimit]

Congratulations on the GM again!! Nice work!! I hope to make it back to CO and shoot a match with you again yet this year. 

[CHA-LEE]

I got a chance to head out to the range today to do some accuracy testing with several different firearms.

 

First up was my Varmint Blasting AR chambered in .204 Ruger. Up to this point I have only shot Hornady 32gr Super Performance ammo through it and had great results with it. I decided to give some 40gr Hornady Super Performance ammo a try to see how it compares to the 32gr stuff and was shocked at the results. At 300 Yards the 32gr ammo was consistently producing 1 inch groups. The 40gr ammo at the same distance was low right with a 1.5 FOOT size group. It’s crazy that a slightly heavier bullet would devastate the accuracy like that. I guess I am stuck with 32 grain ammo for this Varmint Blaster. The cool thing with this gun is that there is very little drop from 100 to 300 yards. It’s like a laser beam of Prairie Dog devastation. I am planning on taking a varmint blasting trip in August so it’s nice to make sure this AR is ready to rumble.

 

The next thing I tested was my SIG MPX setup for PCC. I was able to test the lower profile rail mounts for the MRO and DPP sights along with the 45 degree offset mount. In the initial configuration I had the MRO mounted in the upright position with the DPP on the 45 deg mount. I sighted in the MRO at 15 yards then tried to sight in the DPP at 5 yards but it didn’t have enough adjustment to get the POA/POI dead on. I did some POI testing at 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 yards with both the MRO and the DPP in the upright position. The MRO had a POI drift of about 14 inches from the closest to the furthest positions and the DPP had about 10 inches of drift. This was with each sight mounted as far forward on the receiver as I could get them. To me this POI drift from close to far is a LOT to think about when engaging targets in rapid fashion. I tried the MRO in the 45 degree position to see if it had enough adjustment to work with a 5 yard zero and it was able to adjust enough to make it happen. But it feels strange to have the larger MRO sight on the side and the DPP up top. From a clean sight picture perspective I do like the DPP better than the MRO as it is obstructing less around the glass. But the DPP is more susceptible to sun glare that washes out the dot. I didn’t have enough ammo to do any more sight location POA/POI testing. But I do want to redo the POI drift testing again with the sights further back on the receiver as that should reduce the grand total drift from close to far. I am also thinking about trying iron sights at the 45 degree angle to see if that is a more viable option for the really close stuff. Nothing of what I tested so far in sights or sight locations seemed to be the correct solution that will work in all conditions. So I still have a bunch more testing to do in order to find a good balance that will work effectively in all conditions.

 

The good news from the MPX testing today is that I got the Hyper Fire trigger tuned up the way I like it. I bent the trigger return springs to add some more trigger return spring tension. I also polished up the sear and hammer mating surfaces to eliminate the slightly lumpy break it had right out of the bag. I am using the heaviest hammer assist springs and this final setup produces a 2.5lb break that is both clean and has a more positive trigger return spring tension. I can now run that trigger as fast as my pistols without much effort. The interesting thing is that I can shoot faster with the gun canted in the 45 degree position. I am not sure why this is, but it is what it is.

 

After I got the MPX packed up I was able to verify my zero on my #1 and #3 Limited guns. I prefer a 10 yard POA/POI for my Limited guns and both of them were able to produce all rounds touching groups without much effort. Its nice to know that both of these blasters are fully ready to rumble for the section match this coming weekend. I will be using the #3 Limited blaster for the match and the #1 will be the backup.

 

Now it’s time to get everything cleaned and packed up for the NM Sectional Match. I will be leaving early tomorrow morning to drive down to El Paso Texas for the match. Hopefully I can get there early enough to check out all of the stages.

[tanks]

On 7/5/2017 at 5:26 PM, CHA-LEE said:

 

I haven't shot Production since 2008 and I don't see myself ever shooting it again. I go to shooting matches to shoot. To me it doesn't make sense to attend a shooting match and turn it into a reloading contest. Thus why I shoot Limited and Open where the quantity of bullets in each magazine are plentiful.

 

Don't ever move to CA ;). We were all getting ready to load 10 rounds in our Limited and Open guns last week until a Federal judge put an injunction on the magazine ban. Hopefully, it will stick.

[CHA-LEE]

That is a bummer about the 10 round limit in CA. I won't even risk attending matches there any more much less move there. I hope that the mag ban injunction sticks but I wouldn't count on it. 

[CHA-LEE]

I attended the New Mexico Sectional match hosted by the Fort Bliss Range in El Paso Texas. I know, it’s a little confusing that a New Mexico section is being hosted in Texas, but that is how this section is setup given that El Paso is just past the New Mexico border. This was a 9.5 hour drive from Colorado and I took my little lady with me to this match. We drove down on Friday so I could check out the stages then shot the whole match on Saturday. My wife enjoyed checking out El Paso while I was busy shooting on Saturday. It was hot on Saturday topping out at almost 100 degrees. The dirt at this range is mostly light colored so there was a lot of reflected light and heat off of the ground while attending the match. It was hot and there was a lot of sweating going on, but it was fun. I stayed on top of being hydrated and drank about 2 gallons of liquids while on the range. This served me well as I didn’t feel like I was running out of gas before finishing the match. After the match I was pretty worn out but I didn’t feel that way while shooting.

 

This match was only 8 stages, but all of the stages were fairly large field courses with a lot of running and gunning. I was on a fun squad of local New Mexico and Texas shooters and we all worked hard to get through the match. We started out the match on stage 5 which was a fairly aggressive fast blasting stage with a couple of moving targets in the back. I shot this stage solidly with only being down 3 C’s. The next stage was a funky teeter totter shooting area stage and I didn’t do so well on it. I ended up with an uncalled miss on the far right target which I can only assume went over the top because there was only on hit on the target. Then on stage 7 I had two major mistakes that cost me at least 3 – 4 seconds. I got a poor grip on the gun on the draw and it caused my support hand to hit the mag release during recoil which dropped the mag free. I had to do a standing reload and rack to get it going again. Then I totally fumbled the reload going into the second position which wasted more time. It sucked to have two crappy stages back to back, but I pulled it together after that and had some fairly solid runs after that.

 

Stage 2 is where I had another mega disaster run where I got SUPER LUCKY. This was an unloaded start stage with your gun on one barrel and all of your mags on another barrel. The front section of the stage was 16 rounds so one mag should be more than enough. The stage was laid out where you had to go to the extreme left and right sides to engage two pieces of steel. The steel was a large popper in front of a mini popper and you had to wait for the front one to fall before you could engage the mini popper behind. At the start of my run I had a makeup shot on the left side steel, then when I got to the right side I shot the big popper dead center and it didn’t fall. I shot it dead center again and it still didn’t fall, so I shot it a third time and it finally fell. But by then, I had shot the gun dry and had to run over to the barrel to grab another magazine. I got the gun reloaded and engaged the mini popper then continued on with the stage run. When the run was done the RO pointed out that the mini popper didn’t go down. I called for a calibration on the mini popper which I was sure it would go down as they usually do 99.9% of the time. I didn’t even watch as the he RM did the calibration shot because I knew my goose was cooked. The shot was taken and the mini popper didn’t fall. My squad went crazy as we were all in disbelief that this mini popper didn’t go down during the calibration shot. I was issued a reshoot due to range equipment failure and the RO tuned up both of the poppers as they were both too heavy. My reshoot went much better and I was very lucky to have that opportunity. In all of my years playing this game this is the one and only time that I have won a calibration challenge on a mini popper. I think I should go buy some lotto tickets tonight with that kind of luck.

 

I finished out the remaining few stages with fairly solid runs but I still wasn’t sure how my performance was going to stack up against my primary competition at the match which was Mark Miller. Mark was on my squad and we had fun shooting together all day. He had a few challenges through the match as well but was shooting pretty solid most of the time. I knew that both of us were way ahead of the rest of our squad from an overall performance perspective but I did know that both Mark and I were really close and I couldn’t tell if he was ahead or not. After the results were tallied I ended up being ahead by 20 match points which was a surprise. If I didn’t have the super lucky steel calibration wining reshoot on Stage 2 Mark would have won by at least 30 points. Sometimes you get lucky, and sometimes you don’t. This was my turn to get lucky I guess. Overall it was a lot of fun and cool to make some new friends. Hopefully I can make it back down there again sometime next year.

 

I want to give a special thanks to Javier Carreno who did an awesome job of videoing all my stage runs. Thanks a lot buddy and I hope that I can help you out with some video duties at the next match we shoot together.

 

 

[Glock26Toter]

Nice work on making the Open GM Class!  It sure has been fun watching you grow as a shooter bro.  I'll miss that when I move, but we'll see each other at the majors and hopefully I'll be able to give you a run for your money by then.  

 

On the popper calibration, I always tell people there is only ONE answer to "would you like to challenge that?"  It can ONLY go in your favor.  No extra penalty points given, and even at .01% chance there's still only a positive outcome from it.  Always say Yes, and hope for one of the many things that could cause that sucker to fall early.  I calibrated a crazy 50 yard mini popper once.  There was slight evidence of an edge hit so we all knew it was going to fall.  But I relied on the calibration gun being an iron sight gun.  Sure enough, the dude hit the thing way above the calibration zone.  Gamer's gotta game!

[Vanniek71]

7 hours ago, Glock26Toter said:

Nice work on making the Open GM Class!  It sure has been fun watching you grow as a shooter bro.  I'll miss that when I move, but we'll see each other at the majors and hopefully I'll be able to give you a run for your money by then.  

 

 

 

I don't like the sound of this moving stuff! Now I gotta give someone else a bunch of nicknames...

[thermobollocks]

I had a calibration go my way at...I think it was Aurora last time? It was like seeing the Loch Ness monster.

[CHA-LEE]

No shooting for me this past weekend. The wife and I went up to Steamboat Springs for a mini weekend vacation instead. The weather was awesome up there and we had a blast checking out the town and enjoying the local activities. I still had to provide some remote tech support for the guys running the HPPS match on Saturday in my absence, but it wasn’t much work. The job of the MD never ends, even when you are not at the match. Either way it was nice to get away from the normal grind for a weekend of fun in the mountains.

 

On the shooting front I need to put in some serious time behind the reloading press this week. When I got back from the NM Sectional match I had a grand total of 300 rounds of loaded ammo left. I usually don’t run myself that low on ammo but it’s been super crazy lately and I haven’t had time to do much reloading. This week I am going to load at least 2500 rounds to get my reserves stocked back up to a comfortable level.

 

Right now I have a lull in the major match schedule. My next major match is the Area 4 which isn’t until September 8th. This is actually a good thing because it will allow me to focus on my own training and equipment before the final major match push towards the end of the year. Once September hits it’s going to be major match crazy until early October as I have the Area 4, Colorado State, Limited Nationals, then the High Desert Classic. Hopefully I am past all of the funky gun failures for the year. If my equipment can stay together during these final four major matches I should be able to pull together some good finishes. I feel that this year has been my most consistent and solid major match performance to date, so if I can keep on the same pace I should be able to hold my own against the top dogs.    

[CHA-LEE]

Last week I was able to get about 3000 rounds loaded so I am getting stocked back up on ammo. This past weekend I was able to attend club matches on both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was the Aurora Gun Club match and I dug myself a deep hole right out of the gate. On the first stage of the day I racked up 3 misses on some fairly difficult hard cover targets. I went into the stage thinking that I could make up some time by engaging these more difficult shots more aggressively and making up any shots that I called marginal. I ended up with an extra shot taken on almost every target but still racked up 3 misses just into the hard cover. The sights were dancing all over the place when I was shooting it so I think I was simply not gripping the gun hard enough to rail out accurate shots at a rapid pace. It sucks to start out a match like that, but it is what it is. The next two field courses I shot very well with only being down 2 – 3 C’s on each stage. We finished on a mega hoser field course that I shot pretty well but the scoring got jacked up and I had to reshoot it. My reshoot was a little better in time and points so that was nice. This was a 15 hit factor stage so it required super aggressive shooting and movement. These mega hoser stages worry me the most because it’s really easy for me to “Try” to shoot fast and it turns into a disaster. It was nice to be able to simply let the shooting happen at its own pace and it result in exactly what it needs to be. When the results were tallied I ended up 5 points behind first place in Limited. As expected, there is no way to hide 3 misses in a club match and still come out on top.

 

On Sunday I attended the Clear Creek USPSA match up in the mountains. We started on the classifier which was Baseball standards. This is a fixed time classifier with four different starts leveraging strong, weak, and freestyle shooting. This classifier starts off with the week hand portion and I failed miserably. My first shot was about 2 feet below the target then the sights would never settle so I was forced to shoot with a super wobbly sight alignment. My gimp left arm continues to be a huge letdown. I am not sure I can do anything about it either so I am forced to eat the crappy shooting with my weak hand. After that I was able to shoot the remaining field courses solidly. We finished on another standards type of stage that was 5 head shots with one shot each, reload, then one shot each again. I was aiming my ass off on this one and doing well until the very last shot where I mashed the crap out of the trigger and pulled the shot low off of the target. It sucked to fail once again at ultra aiming stuff for the second day in a row performing novice mistakes. My live fire training has been heavily biased towards field course stuff lately so I think it’s time to switch it up and do some more classifier style shooting that is aiming and gun handling focused. Right now these type of stages are eating my lunch. That and my continued issued with not aiming at a specific location on steel before shooting. The good news is that I still have time to get these things ironed out before the next wave of major matches. Time to make it happen.   

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend was odd from a local club match perspective. The only club match was on Sunday night at the Centennial Gun Club which is an indoor match. Since there were no outdoor matches I decided to go out and do some live fire practice on Saturday. We setup a stage that was similar to one of the stages from the New Mexico Sectional match. This was a port to port style stage that made it difficult to blend each position together and I wanted to see if I could optimize the stage plan on it. I started the practice with the #1 Limited blaster but the front sight broke in half after about 150 rounds. This is the exact same front sight failure that has happened about 5 times now where it breaks the front half off right at the dove tail. It sucks that these front sights keep breaking like this, but it seems to be the normal situation on this #1 blaster where stuff keeps breaking on it. Luckily I brought my #3 Limited blaster as a backup and was able to continue practicing with that one.

 

I also had a chance to do some more testing with my SIG MPX. This time I tested a slightly different sight setup. I have the Delta Point Pro in the upright position but moved it as far back on the rail as I could. My thinking with this is that with the sight further back on the rail the POI drift from close to far should be less than it being mounted further forward on the rail. I sighted it in at 15 yards but didn’t get a chance to see what the POI offset was from 5 – 25 yards. I then put the MRO sight on the 45 degree mount and put it about ¾ down the rail on the upper receiver. I sighted that in at 5 yards so I could test it for the up close blasting stuff. With these two sight configurations I ran through the stage using only one or the other several different times. While using the upright sight I could maintain a consistent cheek weld and that kept the dot in the glass easily, but my transitions were really slow and I didn’t feel like I could stop the gun on target consistently. While using the 45 degree sight I had a less consistent cheek weld because the butt stock was in a strange place on my shoulder and this lead to some fishing for the dot. But my transitions and shooting speed was dramatically better using the 45 degree position. I am not 100% sure why I can transition and shoot much faster with the gun in the 45 degree position but I think it has something to do with the angle or point of my strong hand elbow. Using the 45 degree position my strong hand elbow is in a more natural outward position that pretty much matches the angle of my support arm. When the gun is mounted in the normal upright position my strong hand elbow is pointing almost straight down and I think that is creating an unbalanced arm position which jacks up my ability to transition aggressively. I need to do some dry fire testing in front of a mirror to see what is really happening with my arms and elbows when using both of these positions. Since I am a rifle shooting novice I could simply be holding the rifle wrong in the normal upright position as well. More testing and research is needed to see if I can optimize the upright position.

 

It was a good practice session and we got done just in time for the rain to start. We only got sprinkled on before we got everything put away so that was good. The potential rain cut our practice session a little short, but we were all pretty much done by that point anyway.

 

On Sunday I took it easy during the day and got the front sight replaced on my #1 Blaster. I need to verify that it’s still sighted in but that will need to wait for next weekend. I took it easy most of Sunday and waited for the evening CGC match to start. I shot Open at the CGC match and it was a lot of fun. I didn’t have any major mistakes during the match and only shot 1 D zone hit. The only issue I had was having my dot too bright on Stage 1 which was a really dim lighting stage. With the dot too bright I was having a hard time maintaining a target focus and was watching the bright dot instead which lead to way too many C zone hits and my only D zone hit of the match. I need to do a better job of assessing the overall lighting level and setting the dot brightness accordingly during my make ready process. Other than Stage 1 I shot the match pretty solid. It’s fun to make the Open gun earn its keep every once in a while. I find it funny that every time I shoot Open at these indoor matches people ask me if I am switching to Open for good. Nope, I am not switching to Open full time as I still have a lot to learn while shooting Limited. Maybe I will switch to Open full time once I feel that I have gotten Limited all figured out. Until then, Open is just a part time play toy for the indoor matches where the lighting is crappy.  

[PatJones]

Charlie,

On the slide with the troublesome front sight, is the dovetail a little deeper than the others? I'm wondering if there is a little pressure from the top surface of the slide up against the bottom of the blade. Is there a little gap under the blade after installation?

[CHA-LEE]

There is a slight gap between the bottom of the sight and the top of the slide. I also removed material from the top edges of the dovetail on the slide so it doesn't touch the sight at the transition between its dove tail and the under side of the sight.

[CHA-LEE]

This was another busy weekend of shooting. On Saturday I was able to do some more Live Fire practice. I got the #1 Blaster sighted in after replacing the front sight and used it the whole day without any issues, which was nice. We setup a large field course with a lot of stop & go type of shooting positions. I wasn’t really into it that day so my shooting performance was lack luster. I was able to execute my stage plans and hit the targets but there wasn’t any real drive behind most of my stage runs. I only had one stage run where I felt like I was pushing hard like I should. Sometimes practice goes like this and all you can do is push through the suck. I had one failure to fire round during the practice session while using some older ammo I loaded some time last year. When I got home I knocked out the bullet and punched out the primer and there was no primer compound in the cup.

 

At the end of the practice session I had a chance to verify the zero on my Open gun. It’s been a long time since I checked this and I wanted to see if the Delta Point Pro had lost its zero. I sighted the Open gun in at 15 yards before and was happy to confirm that the zero was still intact. I was able to hit a 1 inch paster dead center at 15 yards without much trouble. It’s awesome to have a reliable red dot sight that retains its zero after a lot of use. This wasn’t the case with the C-More slide ride sights I was using before.  It was a never ending process of chasing the zero with the C-More sights and I never knew if the zero had drifted during a match.

 

On Sunday I attended the AGC match. This match had lower attendance than normal because a lot of people were out of town attending the Area 3 match. Having less attendance was actually nice since it allowed us to get done about 2 hours sooner than normal. I shot the #3 Blaster at this match and it ran great as usual. On the first stage of the match, which was the classifier, I had a failure to fire round. It had a solid primer hit and the cup was caved in so it wasn’t caused by a gun issue. Needing to assess the situation, rack out the dud then keep going wasted at least 2 seconds on the stage run. I shrugged off the issue and shot the whole match fairly solid. I was shooting really good points that day and captured 97.5% of the available points while shooting at an aggressive pace. When I got home I knocked out the bullet on the dud round and punched out the primer to check it out. The primer cup didn’t have any priming compound in it at all. This is the fifth Winchester Small Pistol primer I have run into this year with no primer compound in the cup. I must have gotten a bad lot of primers with these random ones missing priming compound in the cup. This is a bummer because I have had very good luck with these Winchester primers for many years. I need to add another step to my reloading process to visually inspect the primer cups to endure there is priming compound in each one. I will do this for all of my major match ammo so I don’t have to deal with this failure at majors.

 

After the match I was able to do some additional sight configuration and ammo testing on the MPX PCC. I was able to chrono some 115gr ammo that was loaded with 4.0gr of Tight group. This ammo was averaging 1325fps so it’s a little hotter than it needs to be. I need to rework the load to try a 3.6gr or 3.7gr powder drop. This ammo is loaded at an OAL of 1.120 and the shoulder of the bullet was hitting the lands and sticking the bullet in the chamber. I need to get the lands throated a little deeper so that this sticking issue doesn’t happen. After the ammo testing I did some more sight testing with the upright DPP sight. I had to tweak the zero a little bit for this reloaded ammo and set the POA/POI at 15 Yards. Then I did some POI offset testing at 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 yards. The 5 & 10 yard POI was about 2 inches low and the 20 yard was about 2 inches high. Then the 25 yard POI was about  2 inches above the 20 yard hit. All together there was about a 6 inch offset in POI from close to far which is reasonable. This offset was much better with the DPP put on the very back of the rail verses being on the front. I am still kicking around the idea of setting up the 45 degree MRO as the primary close target optic then setting up the zero of the upright at 25 – 30 yards and only use it for the difficult distance shots. Much more testing is needed before I settle on a final config.

 

On Monday evening I attended the indoor Whistling Pines match. I chose to shoot Open at this match since I was having issues seeing my iron sights the last time I shot there. It was fun to shoot the Open gun and I had a few target arrays that showed a glimmer of how it should be done properly with aggressive shooting using the dot streak. I was focused on being visually patient with the dot and it resulted in shooting really good points. I was able to capture 96% of the available points and had no Delta hits. We shot the age old El Presidente classifier and I totally blew my reload while shooting it. I slapped down for my magazine and it kind of bounced out of my pouch which caused me to have a funky grip on the mag. I had to do a really deliberate insertion of the magazine during the reload which wasted a good chunk of time. I need to do some more mag pouch tuning on this Open belt rig. I think that the first mag pouch is a little too loose in how it pinches the magazine. More tweaking is needed for this Open rig. It was fun shooting Open and I think I will 100% convert to only shooting Open at the indoor matches. I will still rock the Limited guns outdoors as that is my primary focus right now. But it doesn’t hurt to dabble in Open here or there.