MemphisMechanic

Flat-nosed bullets (obviously) tend to be shorter and fatter in profile. That means that in many firearms you'd have to load a 147 very, very short. Makes like CZ or Smith M&P come to mind, which have very short chambers. A Glock will certainly still take them out to 1.140 or 1.150" OAL and perhaps even longer, so I do not think it matters too much.

Hmm. Not familiar with the Unica product line (that means "only" in Italian according to Google)... http://www.tanfoglio.it/eng/home.php Look at the bottom, on the left side. EDIT: I'm pretty jazzed they have a Unicorn logo, however!

If Ben runs a 10-lb recoil spring, why do you seem certain you'll be using an 8? Currently running it and liking it?

Excellent. That saves $85... I wasn't sure if 1pc and 2pc sears used the same housing.

Well the local range has been a popular destination for USPSA for a loooong time. We usually have shooters from up to 2 hours away. And all of our stages are set up the day of. The MD will usually set up one, I try to get there early enough to do two... that leaves a classifier and 2 others in a 6 stage local. Stages start being set around 8:30-9 but we often don't break the first shot until 11-11:30 am. We would if some of the stages were set up on that Friday, which the IDPA MD does for every stage of his matches.

1. It's less work to set up. 2. Faster to set and tape 3. Gunhandling and position entry/exit REALLY shine in a short field course like that. 4. It's something we don't do much of in the US. So far everyone seems to like them.

Careful with that. People will tape/staple/stick a target to ANYTHING and shoot the crap out of it, if it's out there. Walls, barrels... We leave target stands with sticks in them (several) in each bay for a reason.

A carnival full of movers and swingers isn't what makes a stage "better." They are an accent on your main course, which is shooting challenges. A good stage is challenging to shoot perfectly... not challenging to come up with a plan for. That doesn't mean slap partial targets at fifty yards and say "it's hard. It must be good." That means some targets visible for most of the stage. Other targets that invite you to shoot on the move and shave some time at the risk of reduced points. Not slapping 8 paper behind every port "because the rulebook says 8 is the limit." Lately I've self-imposed a limit, let's say two steel and 10 shots on paper, then put walls out, and moved everything around until it was easy for a novice to find a simple plan, but really dominating the stage would mean shooting on the move, taking an easy and hard entering or exiting shot somewhere, and at least two equally valid paths through the stage seem attractive to experienced shooters. (And I do my best to apply the same mindset to longer courses) That, in my opinion makes for a good match. The speedslide stages really help me push things into something more technically challenging, instead of just adding noshoots and laying out a ton of targets behind some walls. Go ahead. Tell me these two attached stages aren't something you'd find really interesting to shoot:

I have a 650. The only thing I have ever regretted about it... is not going for broke with the 1050. I'm certainly happy I didn't choose anything slower!

I like to tell new people "transition with your legs, keep the upper body static whenever you can." Really drives home the basic premise of what we're trying to do, although it's an oversimplification. Shooting USPSA should strain your thighs uncomfortably, unless you spend a lot of time lifting weights. Most people have thighs four times the size of their arms. It only makes sense to use the strongest part of your body (hips and legs) to do the work when you can. Additionally, I believe that shooting from a "slightly uncomfortably" bent leg stance with feet spread wide will always allow you to transition more aggressively. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, so trying to snap your upper body hard to the right is going to twist your legs to the left. Your wide base and the feet anchoring you to the earth are what stop than from happening. Spreading your feet out and getting low will allow you to explode aggressively during transitions without any wobble or overswing. Think of a tripod with a heavy camera on it. The wider the legs are spread, the more the operator can crank the camera around on top of it aggressively without things on top of it starting to rock due to instability.

That's the best "why the 1pc sear is desirable" I've seen. Thanks! Do you need to change the (far more expensive) sear housing when installing the one-piece sear, or can you leave that alone when installing a 1 piece sear in a Stock 2 or 3?

Just be sure to empty the vacuum often. Sucking live primers into a vacuum full of powder can be exciting. I've done it a hundred times, but I've "heard" of someone on Enos blowing the lid off of their shop vac, and no one ever exaggerates on the internet.

You'll make a little bit of a mess - invariably spilling a little powder and maybe losing the odd used primer or dropping a bullet or two to the floor. I found when I had my press set up inside that a shop vac kept in the closet was my best friend. Minimum footprint for your press and the things you want nearby while reloading will be about 3 feet of lateral bench space for a scale, box of bullets, brass to feed it, somewhere to drop completed ammo. But that can all be stacked under or behind the presss when it isn't in use.

First, I'm just some scrub running around with the As and Ms in Production at my locals, then getting curb-stomped at majors. You're not getting GM-level advice here and I'm not trying to pose as one. ;-) The first four targets shot after the reload at 1:04 are "index on center of A and slap away": Side note: I threw away points in the form of 5A 3C on those four close targets at 1:04 instead of collecting 8As. Not because I "shot too fast" but because I wasn't watching the sights. At all. They were in my line of sight, but I was only barely tracking them peripherally. If your grip and vision are dong their job then those should be A's as fast as you can work the trigger - which means you can and should be able to shoot more accurately without slowing down. The longer targets on that stage are shot with a prepped trigger. The difference is fairly apparent, I think.

Two trigger pulls because you let off the trigger? Err... hrmmm? Unless you include taking the slack out or prepping the trigger as a different pull, I'm going to have to disagree. Background: I cut my teeth on Glocks up through IDPA Master and then switched to the M&P and USPSA roughly at the same time, so striker guns are all I've ever shot with a timer running. There's three ways you can handle a striker fired gun: 1. Riding the reset. When the shot breaks your attention goes to finding the 'click' in your trigger. This teaches you to work with the reset but it results in trigger-freeze when faced with multiple hoser targets and the shooter tenses up. 2. "Slapping" the trigger. Coming totally off the trigger so that you either hit the front of the trigger guard or come most of the way out toward it... between shots. Eventually most of us find ourselves having learned to do this on close easy targets. Surest way to prevent trigger freeze - and you can be pretty abusive with your trigger press at ten feet on wide open USPSA torsos. 3. Prepping the trigger between shots. This is how I shoot everything that isn't "trigger slapping" distance. The finger comes out well past the reset point into the slack portion of the trigger press, and begins prepping the trigger again before the front sight returns. I want to be back in contact with the sear and finishing my trigger prep before I have cleaned up the sight picture and need to fire my next shot. Unlike releasing until you hear/feel it reset, you're acting instead of waiting for a click to react to. I am absolutely certain that I drive my trigger differently depending on the difficulty of the shot. I assume what you meant was that there are different ways to handle the same trigger press, but a striker gun always has the exact same feel to the trigger between contacting the sear (the reset point) and breaking the shot. It's all in how you game it and deal with that pretravel that messes with SA shooters heads. For reference my Glock was mostly stock minus trigger and striker spring, with a 3lb 8oz trigger and factory travel. My M&P is a little sportier, with a 2lb 9oz trigger and about half the reset travel of factory due to an internal overtravel stop.

It's been mentioned by others who directly compared them in two recent threads that the length and weight of the factory and Xtreme pins are the same. The only difference being the rear of the FP (where the hammer strikes) is domed on the Xtreme.

I have a friend with a Square Deal B setup for 9mm and .40 who wants $350 for everything, if you're looking to load pistol on a budget. Conventional wisdom says that 147s knock down steel better than 115s at equal power factor. Don't bother shooting groups to judge the gun's accuracy at anything less than 15yards. A 1" group at seven yards DOES NOT translate to 3" at 21 yards. Things spread out quickly with distance and shooting at 7yds can hide a lot. Glocks aren't accuracy machines, yet I've never failed to shoot one under an inch at 21 feet unless I shanked a shot. I do groups at 25, and on the "operator side" of things, I'm good for 3-4" groups at that distance. If it holds that at 25yd freestyle - and shrinks further when shot rested on bags - I'm happy with my gun and ammo. Or always have been, since I've always shot plastic striker guns. Knowing the Stock 3 should be much more accurate will probably get me to practice more at distance and try to improve on that 3" group size!

Are you certain of that? Someone here measured one and it was almost exactly the same length. I think. At least, people on the internet are repeating it... so it has to be true.

Practice > widgets.

Probably worked over by Jim Bodkin, if I had to guess. Until a year or so ago, gunsmiths were the only headache-free way to get good triggers in these. Now that they're popular (because the gun is winning a lot and supply caught up with demand) we are seeing a lot broader "home tinkerer" knowledge base. Xtreme parts don't have to be bought directly from France. Patriot Defense is making some seriously cool stuff and you can call a guy to learn how to fit it. My original point was that if you put a few months of obsessive practice behind a gun with a "polishing and springs" trigger with a tiny bit of takeup and creep... and do the same thing with $250 worth of PD and Xtreme parts to have a 1911-like single action... there's not going to be a difference found in how you place at a match with either gun. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy tinkering and I'll be buying the parts too. But they're not mandatory in order to have good scores at matches. It's just fun to work on guns.

Well, what bullet are you loading and how long are you able to load them? That's probably going to be helpful information to help the others determine. Or, when was your gun built?

So an [EDIT 3/32"] roll pin works. Excellent.

I have a friend who swears by having a Dillon resize / decap in station 1 and a U-die in #2 on his 650. Obviously, you lose the ability to run Dillon's powder check in #4 when you do this. I use a standard Lee sizing die (the "non U" flavor) on a 650 and I'm quite happy with it.

Another suggestion: oftentimes people burn out because the are setting up nothing but long field courses with 32 rounds. The stages I'm getting the most compliments on lately have been short or medium courses with more of an IPSC flair, because they're something different. This website is a terrific resource for such things: http://www.speedslide.com/ I'd personally rather shoot 6 stages (maybe 2 short, 1 medium, 1 classifier, and 2 long stages) ... than do 4 stages (classifier & 3 long courses) that are all variations on the same old thing. Some of those stages really illustrate how much fun you can have with just a couple of walls, too.

I'm wondering if it's solid, or at least .125 (1/8") wall tubing... I can manage a section of our wall quite comfortably on my own. Propped up on one shoulder they're not too taxing to carry from bay to bay, and a friend and I have stacked 3 or 4 of our walls and walked them down a bay or two quite comfortably. As I said, ours might as well be conduit. Very thin.