Overkill

I'm far from an expert but for a while I was playing around with the idea of building my own scope. This... http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/ubb...s.php/Cat/0/C/2 is the best sky watcher forum I found. This place had some cool scope kits. http://www.e-scopes.cc/ Here's a couple more cool links I found. http://members.aol.com/sfsidewalk/cdobplans.htm http://lefevre.darkhorizons.org/sixinch/scp_part.htm http://www.sjaa.net//beginner.html I've pretty much decided to put the project off till the kids are a little older and can participate meaningfully in the construction. I've got a buddy that recently bought a pricey Schmit-Casagrande scope from Discovery. Its pretty cool, and the fact that it finds stuff in the sky on its own is neat, but he's played hell getting it to work. Nice thing about those automated scopes are that you can adapt a camera to them. With the hand moved scopes things dont stay in the frame long enough to get a decent exposure time. And finding things is a lot more difficult that you can imagine.

The BOD MUST start pushing the classifiers into the data base. I can believe anybody ever thought a provisional division without a realistic classification system would be a realistic test of the divisions viability. As an example. I got an new shooter into USPSA this year. He started out shooting SS because that's the gun he had; bought extra mags and leather gear to play. But then, after shooting 8 or 10 classifiers he's wondering when he's going to get classified. That NOT a good way to bring in new shooters. Sure, adopting a classification from another division is fine for existing members, but you cant build membership if you're new marketing division treats the newbies like a red-hedded step child. Also, WTH is up with collecting the activity fee for SS classifiers and then not providing that key service. That aspect of SS is flat out piracy. Three years is forever for the newbie waiting for their C card. Also, what's going to happen when some new shooter shoots SS for a couple of years, shows up at a major match and kills A class carrying a U card? Legalized sandbagging.

That aint all....

I like to think big.

Dang! I'm lucky if I get 6 months out of a set of batteries in my proears.

Is anybody doing any of the other colors? I'm thinking my Kahr MK9 might look pretty good with an iOnBonD finish. Kahr's stainless is kind of dirty and unattractive.

We've done the same. But we shoot all the pistols, push down all the steel and then shoot the rifles as each squad cycles through. We were actually thinking of turning it into a non-scored, just for fun, thing and shooting it with 22lr uppers. THAT would be good cheep fun, and still good practice for your rifle hoser skills.

No way in heck I'd put that thing on a stage......if I planned to actually be at the match....too many loaded guns around.

The way you "bottle" it is by learning what difference (probably in grip or hand/arm tension) separates this condition from the condition where the gun recoils back onto target. When you understand the difference you'll gain the power to choose how the gun behaives.

I have a week memory for that kind of thing. Buy the time I strip the thing and switch the innards and put it back together I dont remember all that well what it felt like before. Maybe it really doesnt matter then I guess. But maybe not. I swaped in that spring, but I also polished things up some more and put in the minus power striker spring and all together it felt better.

I knew things were going to go bad when Jack used his rifle to jam the fan....wth was he thinking?

So would you say that that one there in the center that's more gold in color and that's one loop shorter would be the Wolff Extra Power Spring?

I've got three in my spare parts bin and I cant if any of them are extra power. Just pulling on them I cant detect any difference.

I compete with a VMII. 1.5 is about as good as I can manage.

Calling him would be too stalker'ish for me. MB: Hello. This Is Matt. Overkill: Hey, Matt. I was just calling to see if you're all right. Is everything ok? I've been worried about you. MB: WhoTF is is this? Overkill: Oh, you dont know me. But I hadn't heard from you in a while and I got worried and thought I'd call to check in. MB: WTH....Taryn, Is this you? Knock this **** off. I was just fixing to get my groove thang on, but then you called and she ran off. Now I have to go catch her again. I just thought it was strange he hadn't posted or put out a pod cast in a while and that his web sites weren't up. Just wanted to make sure he hadn't gone broke or shot himself in the foot or something.

I cant pull his site up and he has not done a pod cast in a month. I was just hoping nothing bad has happened.

I've been struggling for a good way to analyze and preserve reload and chrono data so that its easily accessible and usable. I finally hit upon the idea of taking whatever bullet, powder combo I'm working with and loading up small test batches with powder charges ranging from "too-little", to "probably too much", and graphing the results to achieve a plot of velocities vs. powder charge across the range of reasonable charges. I ended up adding, features to accept the raw chrono data, calculate averages and standard deviations, and record the pertinent load data. I used the curve generator feature in Excel to graph the equation and produce the equation that represents the curve. Finally I put together a little charge weight predictor that takes the equation for the curve and coughs up a charge weight that should get you to the Power Factor of velocity you're looking for. Overall its a pretty cool little spread sheet for preserving and using your load development data. I've cleaned it up, made it pretty and attached it here. (I hope the forum allows excel attachments.) The spread sheet contains 8 work sheets (tabbed at the bottom of the page) for different bullet powder combos. The first tab in the attachment is filled out as an example with some 40 load data I put together. As you can see I put together a series of 7 test batches ranged in charge weights between 2.5 grs and 4.95 grs. With this method you don’t have to hit even number cardinal values, you just need data points between the end points that cover the range. So typically I just load a batch of 10 or so at the low end point, then turn the powder thrower knob, see what its throwing....as long as its something in the ball park, I record the charge and load 10 more,....turn the knob a little more, throw 10, etc etc. I don’t spend a bunch of time trying to home in on a specific value like 4.20000. If its 4.1, 4.16, 4.23 or whatever its good enough for this method Take your stuff to the range and chrono the test batches. I usually work up from the bottom. I do a quick check of the PFs and Velocities as I work up through the batches and stop if I think I'm pushing to hard with the high end batches. At home I plug in the Chrono Data, and Load identification data. In the spread sheet you should only be doing text entry into the turquoise boxes. Yellow boxes are "results" boxes where excel is calculating something for you. The program will immediately start calculating average velocities as you put in the chrono data. When you've entered the charge weight data it will begin plotting the points on the graph. One interesting thing to do is to put in the charge weight data first, and then the chrono data. If you watch the plotted data point as you enter each new piece of chrono data you'll see the point shift slightly as the average changes. Its shifts will get smaller and smaller as you enter more data. This is instructive because you get a feel for how many shots you need to shoot before the average settles down. I've you've entered a bullet weight in the Load Data box, excel will also be calculating and plotting power factor data. Once you're done with the Load Data and Chrono and Charge Weight Data entry, you should have a nice graph of you velocities vs charge weight, and power factor vs. charge wieght. If your data falls outside of the range of the chart you'll have to adjust the chart scales. Here's how you do that Right click on the axis of the chart that needs resizing, just out side of the gray plotted area of the chart. Left Click "Format Axis". Select the "Scale" tab at the top. The first 2 number entry boxes on that tab are the "Maximum" and "Minimum" values for that scale. Enter values in these boxes that are slightly higher and lower than you have in your data set. For instance, if your power factors range from 110 to 195, you might select a minimum of 100 and a maximum of 200. If you charge weights range from 4 to 6 grs., you might select 3 and 7. Do this for all three axies (Power Factor, Velocity, and Charge Weight) as necessary. Once you've got the axies squared away, take note of the Equation at the top end of each data set; one blue (velocity), one red'ish (PF) . This is the equation of the straight line that excel fitted to your data set. The values in this equation need to be transferred by hand into the "Equation Transfer Values" box. I've color coded the boxes so the data from the correct equation goes into the correct transfer box and the ETV box tells which number goes where. By putting this data in here you've activated the Charge Weight Predictor box. In this box you can enter the PF or Velocity you desire and excel will tell you what charge weight should give you the result you desire. One note on data linearity. Excel is fitting a straight line equation to your data. Its accuracy is dependent on how well your data conforms to a straight line. If your data is non linear (i.e. there are big arcs, dips, or spikes in the data points plotted on the graph) the predictions wont be very accurate and may be dangerous. For most of the rounds I've tried this method works reasonably well since the data is largely linear across the range of reasonable values. Excel is capable of fitting non-linear curves to data, but I've not found it to be necessary in most cases. Play with it if you feel like but you'll have to re-write the equations in the Predictor to whatever kind of curve you're trying to fit to the data. Also, before you haul off an make a couple thousand rounds based on the prediction. It would be wise to reality check the result. Take the charge weight excel has predicted for you. Go down to the chart find that charge weight on the bottom axis, go up till you hit the line, then across to the axis you're interested in (PF or velo). It should all match up. Then, take it another step....go to your original data, find the charge weight closest to the one its predicted....do the velocities jive with what's predicted? You might also want to put together a batch of a 50 or a 100 to chrono and function test lest you end up at a major match shooting minor with a gun that only cycles half the time. Anyhow, try it out. Have fun. Let me know if you find any errors. Dang. The forum wont allow an Excel file attachment. If you're interested, PM me and I'll email it to you.

You might also consider using the pits targets for 2 different stages. One for a standards like stage like you did, and another for a field course. You could have the shooter engage numbers 1,3,5 say from 130 yards or so, from box A, have them shoot some close range stuff set against the side berms and some flash targets down range while advancing down the range, then engage 2,4,6 from closer,...say 75 yards. The guy on the radio could tell the guy in the pits when you leave box A, so he'd pull 1,3,5 and put up 2,4,6. That way you could score the 1,3,5 as disappearing targets (circle mikes) so there wouldn't be so many zeros on the distance targets.

One thing that might help with the 50 shooter limit and timing is to stack the short stages on the same bays so you can run the shooter back to back. Our squad did that on the bay 2 stages. We shot the Wall of Paper, then walked the shooter over to shoot Hell-Prez, then scored both. It made things go a lot faster. We could have done the same thing on the bay 3 stages but didn't think of it in time. With the longer rifle stages you can eat up a lot of time just walking back and forth to score, not to mention the time you save LAMR'ing and ULASC'ing.

I've shot a 32. Recoil wise its comparable to a very hot devensive round in 40. Flex's advice is good, but backwards. I'd recommend that you get a 32 and buy an aftermarket 40 barrel rather than buy a 23 and get an aftermarket 357 barrel. Reason being the glock 40 barrels have notoriously poor case support, the 40 aftermarket barrels are much better. The stock glock sig barrels are comparatively better. This way, you can shoot a stock, fully reliable, when you're carrying in defensive mode, but when you're practicing or competing using inexpensive ammo, reloads, commercial reloads, you can shoot the cheeper 40 ammo with greater safety margins and more readily reloadable brass. Also, WRT the the suitability of the 357 as a defensive chambering, the only thing I've heard thats notable and usual about it was from a class I took with John Farnam. He'd said he'd heard some reports from LEO's that have shot them in public that when they fired a round uninvolved people tended to get down and move away from the scene rather the look around and move toward the sound to investigate. His supposition was that the report of the Sig left people with no doubt in their mind that shooting was going on where as more mild (lower pressure, milder tone) cartridges left people asking "was that a shot", "what's going on" etc. Anecdotal evidence for sure, but interesting none the less and potentially "a good thing".

I bought a conversion barrel. 10mm to 40. After a little dremmiling it works fine, but its nothing special.

That was my plan.

For the actual shooting portion of the match its not that important. In fact some find the additional background noise they pick up from behind the line a distraction. But they greatly benefit the overall match experience by making conversation easier and more natural. .

Thanks. That sounds like a pretty good deal. Decent speed, good security, multiple weapon fits, good retention.

I took the pad off mine, put it on the table saw, sliced off an ammount that would leave me with the same LOP as my rifle, re attached the pad, and ground down the edges of the pad to match the slightly smaller cross-sectional area.