MemphisMechanic

Do you personally flip the round from the gun, tip it out the side onto the ground, or cover the port with your hand to catch the round? How do you unload? Okay. Great. Rock on with that. Then show the RO a clear gun... and trigger/holster when they're happy. That applies to any and all "getting the chambered round out of the gun" techniques. The biggest complaint I hear about fellow round flippers is that they magoutfliproundhammerholster before the RO has finished the word "if". But please know that this isn't true of all of us. I've never seen an award given for clearing a firearm the fastest, so I am not racing to finish this task. .

A non-functioning firing pin block will get you DQ'd at a match where they actually conduct an equipment check. It has to work in order to be Production legal.

Stand-and-shoot is the weakest part of your game. I know, because I'm in the same boat... usually finish with A's and M's at matches, but after 3 years away from shooting I plugged a noshoot in my first classifier, and shot 50% C's and D's on the second. On a related note, I've been dry-firing 4 nights a week since the last match. 8 targets on a wall, 5 steel and 3 paper. Doing every concieveable challenging thing that I've done wrong in a classifier. That second one with all the bad hits was 1 round per target, reload, and repeat. You can bet I'm dry-firing 1 round and transitioning on a lot of paper. Make stand-and-shoot / SHO / WHO / standing draws / reloads your strengths. Not your weaknesses.

http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showforum=22 Here's a link to the Glock section. A quick search through it will give you a bunch of threads where trigger discussions have gone on for two pages or more.

Mind if I ask why you want one - unless you have a stockpile of CZ magazines?

Safely flipping rounds means keeping your hand out from in front of the gun as your first priority, and catching the round as a distant second. Probably one time in ten, I'll flick it over my shoulder or off to the side too far. I just let those go, and present the gun to the RO. Sometimes, he'll catch it for me if he's feeling gregarious. I keep waiting for one of those ROs you hear about online (who despise round flippers and want to DQ us all on principle) to spike it into the ground, and spit on it. Hasn't happened yet, though. I've been doing this a while. Left handed, obviously. The key is cycling the slide at the same velocity every time... just like it is for a righty. A lefty just has to pay more attention to getting the gun indexed in the exact same position every time. Unlike many of the righties who do this, I'm not "flicking" the gun upward with both hands as I run the slide. It stays stationary. So it really is an entirely different technique.

Sarge... one thing I should point out: Look at the way the gun angles 45* to the right when I'm doing this. To keep my muzzle centered downrange, I actually turn my body to the left 45 degrees as I swing the muzzle into position - much like you would do if reloading down the 180 on the move. If you think that through it means the RO can see everything I'm doing much more easily than when they typically unload a right handed person whose shoulder is in their way. I'm pretty fond of believing in personal responsibility, so if someone wants to try this and knocks a tooth out or gets sent home, that's fine. We're all free to choose our own adventure. I only posted the video because someone said it wasn't possible. The RO's who've seen it from behind and to the side, and not from an "atop the slide" angle, have never seen my hand anywhere near being swept. And they have a really good view. Given the angle this was filmed from, I knew I'd be accused of that within the first half-dozen posts before the video was even posted. Range lawyers are gonna do what range lawyers are gonna do, and the Internet exists for us to be politely rude and hypercritical, after all. Occasionally I do actually get an RO who has a personal pet peeve for flippers gruffly telling me to show them the chamber, but the gun is already on it's way up to do so with the slide held back for inspection at that point.

The 180 is the third door on the left. For reference. Or was it the second...? Correct. I unload facing squarely DOWN range. RO's like that choice a little bit more. It's possible this was filmed from an unconventional angle you wouldn't use during a match so that you can see what I'm doing.

You opinion is based upon what, exactly? This is quite literally the worst possible camera angle to make that call from. You're missing the one crucial component to tell - how far "below" the muzzle my hand is when moving from racking to catching. The fingertips are about 4 inches below the muzzle at that point. Not that you can discern that in this clip.

This is nearly a pre-defeated attitude. We have two local lefties who whine and moan and complain that even the slightest bias exists and they pretty much use that as the inevitable reason they didn't come out on top. Then there's me. I have this conversation nearly verbatim all the time: "Man, I feel for you, always having to find a way to shoot stages against the flow. That's gotta be hard." "Not at all. I'm used to it. I think it made me get good at stage breakdowns more quickly, and I expect to have more awkward leans around walls. I get trained on that at every local match. When there's a hard leaning shot for the righties, I actually think it's much more in my favor than it usually is in theirs. They aren't as practiced with it." Did I mention I'm left handed AND shoot production? You better believe I've come up with some creative stage plans to compensate. But at least it isn't revolver.

Being left handed is pretty much a borderline mental disability. We are used to wearing rubber helmets and safety glasses at all times. I know better than to trust myself with flying metal things.

AAaaaaaaand the first comment about "don't do this, the RO can't see in there." has rolled in. It isn't in the video but I follow this up with three brisk racks of the slide, and then hold it open for the RO to see. There's no "speed racer ULSC" going on over here. RO's do not expect this from Leftys, and I find it common courtesy to show them the chamber.

Here you go: http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=236301

We've had endless debates over whether flipping the ejected round into the air and catching it during "Unload And Show Clear" (UASC) while shooting matches. In the most recent one someone jokingly challenged lefty's to do it, and I broke down the technique in a reply: http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=130028&p=2632121 I had one request in that thread and two more via private message to go ahead and make a video. So here it is. https://youtu.be/xnQ2sGmK8vE I'll resume clubbing baby seals and destroying the environment with aerosol cans now. Because flip & catch is just that evil.

... and of course... you need to be SURE that make-up shot won't follow your first hole into the C/D zone or the no-shoot. Making up a C with a C doesn't help very much. But we all manage it fairly often until we learn our lesson.

We cannot tell you. The main thing were are missing? How effectively you used your time. How do your times compare to those two classifications above you? If you're new and B shooters are beating you by five seconds... Well... I can promise you that you won't make up 5 seconds on a 15 second stage by shooting faster. Unless you are an A-shooter or better, the best place to focus upon for improvement is doing everything ELSE more quickly. Move more efficiently. Reload faster. Etc. You're shooting good points. Keep that up while carving your raw time down to a smaller and smaller number number. Your title of this post is very telling - most newbies think they must be fast OR accurate. Hit factor is the highest points in the shortest amount of time. Change your thinking to fast AND accurate.

If you only have the money for the Dillon 550, get it. Even if you have to wait a month or two to purchase all the things you'll need to actually be able to load on it. You will NEVER regret that purchase. I found titegroup to be a very good, forgiving powder to learn on. And under 124 or 147 bullets it will feel beautiful when compared to your factory ammo. I have since progressed to even faster, softer powders than titegroup - but still continue to recommend it to new loaders. It works in all of the common USPSA type reloading calibers. 9, 49, and 45. I load bullets from blackbulletsinternational which are much cheaper than your locally available jacketed ones will be, but buy in small lots at first... if you feel the need to. Most of us get our powder/primers from one place in bulk (I buy 10k primers at a time) and our bullets from another. (6,000 at a time)

Thanks! Very helpful post.

You're loading on a wheeled cart? After screwing my (already massive) reloading bench to the wall and seeing the night and day difference that made... I'm a bit skeptical of anything on casters that weighs less than about 2,000 pounds.

This is the first time I've heard of an issue from primers that weren't too high!

"A's and close C's" is the phrase I head Ben Stoeger use during his class about two dozen times in 4 days. I'd say you're onto something, if the national champ in Production is teaching the same approach. Trying to shoot all A's... but at a pace aggressive enough that one shot in every half dozen or so is going to wander an inch or two outside that scoring zone.

Wise move. My gun has all of the overtravel removed but I left the pre-travel unmodified. Along with springs and an Apex sear, it's plenty light and sweet. I don't know why people obsess over deleting the pretravel, given the difficulty in maintaining a functioning firing pin safety (striker block)... either it's because they're used to 1911s and the pretravel messes with them, or they aren't aware how easy it is to disable that safety on accident. I found that a few weeks worth of handling an M&P made "taking the slack out" of the trigger automatic. Every time it's presented to a target, you simply roll the trigger back until you're in contact with the sear, and stay back there until you reload, etc.

I run the bearing under the shellplate. Cures snapping shellplate 70% and cost $10. Worth it just to get more consistent ammo out of the wobble-free plate. Switch to cheaper crushed walnut for tumbling media. The vastly smaller particles won't jam your press and they sort out much more quickly when you use a tumble separator. Think sand instead of small gravel sized pieces. It's relatively cheaply found as lizard/reptile bedding from Petco, too. If you learn what you're doing you'll never, ever have a primer on the ski jump. I didn't even bother to install a fix for it. Tips for this: Keep a piece of wire long enough to use for a twist-tie handy. Clearing jams and such, tie the arm that ratchets a new primer up and out of the way really fast... so that up and down motions don't ratchet primers down the chute. I bent up a piece of coathanger and it lives on a magnet glued to the side of the press. Disabling the priming system on command is incredibly helpful. More commonly than full-on jams in a 650, you'll have crappy cases or 380s or whatever cause you to pitch a case. Now you have a prime and no piece of brass to put it into... staring at you in station 2. Before your next session, run 30 pieces of 9mm brass through the press at station 1 only pick it off the shellplate before you bell the case and obviously don't prime it. Toss that deprimed, resized brass in a box next to the press. Now you have something to put into station 2 whenever you reject a piece of brass or the sizing die crushes a case mouth... and you just keep going. Similarly, have some brass handy that hasn't been through station 1. Just cleaned brass meant for the casefeeder. You'll find you need a few of those too. Also, don't be afraid to play with the timing of the shellplate to priming situation: there are two bolts on the left side of the press down low that control exactly where the shellplate ratchets to. Adjust those anytime your press seems to frequently have a "hitch" as the primer first hits the bottom of the case pocket. Primers matter more in a 650: CCI and Federal go through mine like butter. Wolf and Winchester hung up on the troublesome foreign headstamps & WIN 9mm brass without beveled pocket shoulders much more often. I run CCI pretty much exclusively now, and use Federal SPP for big matches. My press eats both like candy, and we all know that a gun that lights off properly seated CCIs at all of your local matches will easily pop federal primers all day long when you get to a major.

Go to the pet store. Pick up a bag of crushed walnut lizard bedding. Never use corncob again Walnut is much, much smaller in size and prevents this. Also never gets stuck in primer flash holes if you decide to tumble deprimed brass some day. I prefer walnut for those reasons and also because it cuts quicker - cleans your brass more rapidly. It won't get brass quite as shiny as corn cob, but it's still nearly clean enough to pass for brand new ammo if you run it for a long time with polishing compound added. Oh, and tape a couple of spent12gauge hulls under the ports in the bottom of your casefeeder so that you won't get walnut/corncob dust all over your bench anymore!