MemphisMechanic

Garage door track and wheels, weld up your own railroad track and a skateboard to ride inside it. Also, ensure it’s the kind of target you will inherently need to carefully aim and prep the trigger for. Or put it right up in your face. If it’s a “hammer multiple rapid shots at 7yd” kind of situation, Johnny D class *will* shank one a low and shoot your tracks. If it’s going to be a fast target, put it really close. Bullets bending tracks are bad. If the mover fails partway through the match you have to toss the stage, so build it extremely well.

Irons. If there’s one thing running Carry Optics for a year will teach you, it’s that you don’t need this widget on a carry gun. At all.

I have never needed more than 3x23 mags. Usually I don’t barney up, just grab the rear mag and start with 22+1 unless I am going to push past 20. Usually I work with two 23rd extended Walther PPQ mags, and a third standard-capacity sits unused on my belt in the center pouch that holds the standard for emergencies (dropped reload mag, etc.)

Just 14 more posts to go until you can sell that gun. Don’t worry, you’ll get there.

I have a little tiny rechargeable crappy vaccum off Amazon meant for keyboards and computers. It’s incredibly weak. So it works great for cleaning up your press. It’s too weak to accidentally suck powder or bullets out of cases and definitely cannot pick up a Dillion locator button. The nozzle has to be touching powder to even pick that up. Which is perfect. I can spill powder and clean it up without clearing everything off the shellplate. Just a quick spot-sucking.

A guy on here said he had been shopvac-ing a little powder up here and there for weeks. He sucked up a primer. It went off. The lid of the shopvac hit the ceiling and bounced back down. It’s probably bogus, but I choose to believe it happened for amusement’s sake.

You get a diagram? Wow. Luxurious. At my local, we do an all-stage walkthrough for ROs and shooters just before the match starts. Everyone walks every bay. The course designer steps up, verbally notifies everyone of start position and firearm condition, and describes the course. We actually have very little problem with miscues using this method. If one guy wasn’t paying attention, three other guys were listening to the walkthrough and know the stage requirements when you walk into that bay three hours later. It’s also easier on the MD because if we don’t remember a start position or somesuch, we know who designed the stage and can go get the info straight from the horse’s mouth. When I utilize a wall section with a door and want to keep it open (have done this once or twice to permit lowcap guys to flow through the middle of the stage shooting on the move) I’ll drive a stake in the ground to hold it open. Not much room for misinterpretation that way.

You grip changed. Look there. If you’ve been doing dryfire, you almost certainly need to re-train yourself to grip the gun really really hard.

I carefully hollowed out the Large backstrap for my walther til it was paper thin, then packed it full of tungsten weights & epoxy. Even that was only good for ~3.5 oz. Didn’t make much difference. I probably wouldn’t bother to do it again.

I had to go googling in a fit of disbelief. https://www.alloutdoor.com/2019/03/19/iwa-2019-walther-ppq-series-expert-drop-trigger-kit/ I’m slightly astonished anyone would run that, or that they’d produce it. Liability wise, this seems like a questionable idea.

Yes and no. You know the reason for his displeasure was that previous squads shot with the port door closed... and the only solutions left are: 1) Your squad gets to run it door open, and scores are submitted right alongside others ran it with the door closed. It isn’t equitable... but in the allotted time for a local match, it is what it is. 2) Toss the stage. Usually at locals we all agree option 1 sucks ( if you shot it the long way) but we’d rather deal with that than have 20% of the match thrown out. 3) Make your squad reshoot with door closed, or any previous squads reshoot it with the door open. Delays everyone annoyingly. There isn’t a good way out of this. Next time take the 10-20 mins and go find the RM. If there are multiple options, send a couple of shooters in each possible direction so that one of you will find him as quickly as possible. Don’t send one guy to run 500yds in one direction, then past your bay in the other direction. Do your best to make up for it by having guys crush the stage reset time in this bay, and try to get back on track.

Extend gun. Finger lightly contacting trigger. At the buzzer slam the trigger into the grip as hard as you would when hammering close targets. Grip really really hard. Don’t move the gun. You don’t pull the trigger slowly in USPSA. Work on rowing it fast hard and ugly, but still straight.

There is absolutely nothing about a polymer gun that is holding you back. A glock in CO or Production is no obstacle to making A or even GM whatsoever. Not the slightest fraction of one percent. My skill progression: 1. Shoot a Tanfoglio with every legal modification for a year. 2. Sell it and switch to a polymer gun. 3. Make A-class. There was a marked increase in dryfire in there somewhere. You can probably guess where. The farther up the skill foodchain you get, the more certain you become that equipment/gear doesn’t really matter much.

Given the rate at which you’ve been hurting feelings this past year, I don’t think it’s going to be much longer before you move past winning at the state and sectional level. But that’s good to know.

Intro class is great if you don’t have any friends who are already active in the sport. If nothing else, the knowledge of safety rules and the scoring system would be worth it.

I texted @johnbu a link to this thread. I’m 90% certain I’m correct but he’ll know for sure.

Yes. But it’d be an opinion from someone with a breadth of experience. “B class for life” isn’t generally the guy you want to be listening to. And he posts a lot. That was @B_RAD‘s point. Around here you don’t know if you’re getting advice from a C who started the sport six months ago... or a GM winning <edit: state championships> like @wtturn. I know I’d only bother listening to one of those two guys when it comes to setting up a Glock for competition. That said, my advice is Carry Optics hands down. A plastic gun is a ton of fun in that division, whereas it’s hard not to feel disadvantaged running polymer in Limited division. Personally? I still miss irons and might play around in Production a little bit soon. But I’ll openly admit I’m an A-class idiot who doesn’t practice much, and no one should listen to me.

The holsters are identical, large vs small. The only difference is the mag size it takes and a shifted grip screw hole. The frame actually isn’t appreciably smaller.

Moreso than a match equipment issue, I don’t want the gun going off if dropped! Take a look and grip it oddly or weakhanded and you’ll probably see it nearly clears... but doesn’t.

Shave the tab down flush with the trigger face and reduce the dingus in back so that the gun is still drop-safe yet disengages consistently. Pretty much everyone has to do this with the APEX flat trigger for the Walthers, because the trigger requires a totally perfect pull.

Will you guys at least glance at the USPSA rulebook every so often instead of repeating outdated info? Aftermarket giant hot pink drag race hammers, safeties, and triggers have been legal for a full year now. (You can toss anything you want onto a Production division gun, funnel the mag opening, and grind the finger grooves off your undercut Glock frame, too.)

Nope! With newcomers many of us believe it’s best to proactively warn them - to reduce how much it’ll trip them up, we often do our best as we walk through the stage to say things like “Make sure to keep the gun indexed FAR away from your offhand as it reaches to open this door. If you forget we’ll try to warn you verbally before you sweep your hand.” Or a second example: “Focus on keeping the gun pointed somewhere safe as you back up and come around the end of this wall. If you look like you’re rotating toward an infraction, whichever of us is running you will yell MUZZLE! ... It is not a big deal, just twist the gun more downrange and continue with your run.” To put it simply, it is helpful ROing for a brand new shooter to get a safety reminder as the approach a safety infraction. Veteran shooters - including myself - do not want such reminders. Often the most efficient manner to maneuver yourself might involve pumping your arm hard with the gun held along the 169.78 degree line. (I prefer to index the gun much closer to the back berm but in rare instances you have push it a bit) If you’ve been doing this a while you’re focused on being both fast and safe in such a situation. Barking things at a man already mindful of exactly what you’re seeing is a needless distraction. I don’t want a backseat driver tagging along for my run distracting me. If I mess up... yell stop, and I’ll own it. Otherwise, leave me be and let me concentrate on the movement and my sights.

The ROs job is to keep everyone in that bay safe. It’s safer to avoid safety infractions, than to punish after they’ve occurred. Most of us who RO try very hard to not have to DQ someone - until there’s no alternative. I’ve yelled “STOP!” and then told the wide-eyed novice to “holster before bending over” on many occasions. Same with “MUZZLE!” when a new guy’s eyes shift toward an uprange target and you know he’s about to swing past the 180. It’s common practice. Not for veteran shooters, but most definitely for new ones.

Sweeping is merely a DQ. More than one person has lost their life snatching at a falling gun through the triggerguard on it’s way down. Handguns are drop-safe. Keep your hands back like it’s a poisonous snake on it’s way down and let it go.

The gun is always loaded when it comes to whether or not it’s okay to point it at human flesh. If you bend over, keep the strong hand pointed at the berm. You’d be pointing it nearly straight up in the air over your head if you were upright. Don’t swing the muzzle down. Another little tidbit: When you unload and show clear, index the gun on the back berm and pull the trigger on an empty chamber. Don’t make it go CLICK casually aimed wherever - usually down by your feet or pointed at the wall right in front of you. If the RO and the shooter both somehow missed a round still present in the chamber, that step is your final check before holstering. Where do you want that bullet to go? Definitely not into something right in front of you.