Ozarksman

I have several STI gen 1 mags and have had mostly good luck with them using the spacers in a 9 major open gun. My gun has had various issues since being converted from 38 super a year ago but have managed to get it nearly 100%. While most of my issues revolved around extractor/ejector tuning (what else, right?) I do have some mag issues using the gen 1 tubes with spacers with my current ejector. I have shortened it and shaped the nose of it from the original extended length ejector and that helped a great deal. So now I am just wondering about using the gen 1 mags without spacers to see if they'd be reliable. I was told that using mags with spacers and a short ejector is problematic at best with 9 major. Have any of you played around with this or should I just saved my efforts and sell them to buy more MBX?

If more weight is desired, stuff a 180gr 40cal bullet into the 45acp case before you place it on the primer push rod.

I started shooting USPSA in 1999 at the ripe old age of 44 so no, you're not too old by any stretch. I made it to master in open, limited, L10 and production by the time i was 50. Don't let your fear of looking bad or not competing well stop you from having fun and learning how to shoot and handle firearms better.

Just so you know...I live near Bob (less than 10 miles), know Bob fairly well, have shot matches and some long range rifle with him as well as had him work on my 1911. That being said...You will not go wrong taking a class from Bob. He's a great guy, has a great personality and tells as good a story as anyone can. His metal work on a gun is unsurpassed. That combined with his being so anal about the minute details of his product, you will find nobody out there producing a better custom 1911 than Bob. Be sure to ask him about his sidekick Drayton.

CWORKS.....I'm up in Mountain Home. Been here for about 22 years now and my home club is Twin Lakes Gun Club. Hopefully we'll run across each other at a match in AR sometime. I will be shooting the AR Section Multi-gun at Ft. Smith the end of October. My son has been over there since Feb. and he thinks they'll rotate out in January....keeping my fingers crossed that he gets out sooner rather than later. Scouts Out...

CASA = Central Arkansas Shooters Association. The range is located about 30 minutes west of Little Rock, AR off Highway 10 on Higginbotham Road. Its a great match and even though I haven't attended in a few years, I know everyone really enjoys the "Stake Shoot". Thats where they break people into teams of 3 people then 2 teams go head to head and try shoot a landscape timber in half. First team to shoot theirs in half wins....big time fun and you get to hose away until your timber is shot to hell. Winning team gets to split the money pot with CASA...another plus. Not sure they'll have the Stake Shoot this year or not...

My son is currently in Afghanistan. A month or so ago, his unit gave up their COP because of the amount of IEDs around it. He says they couldn't toss a rock out of a window without hitting one. They've since built another outpost. He's a 19D scout and goes out on a lot of patrols. I'm glad we have people like you and him serving. Stay safe...

Don't worry that you'll grow to old to move up in class. I shot my 1st USPSA match at the age of 43 using my old Series 70 single stack. Hadn't even so much as practiced drawing from the holster or making reloads while moving! My kids were young teens by then, both involved heavily into sports and other outdoor activities like kayaking, and camping. I made open master at 51 yrs of age, limited master at 52 and master L-10 earlier this year at 53. If you keep at it, you will progress if you train properly and push yourself!

Check out Chris Peters at Metaloy Industries in Berryville, AR. Does great job, had several guns done by him, short turnaround and competitively priced. Website says $240 for a complete S_I racegun. http://www.originalmetaloy.com/ Tom

Doug, Yeah. A guy from my club posted a for sale the other day and I called him. Got over to his house and he starts pulling out these boxes. I ended of with a 550B already setup with 45ACP, another 5 conversion kits, 5 tool heads and 2 powder measures for $175. I noticed a conversion kit for 38Super and asked if he still shot the caliber much. He says "no, but I have lots of new brass if you're interested" Of course I'm interested and he sells me the 600 pieces of new Midway brass for an extra $20. Almost makes up for all the bad deals I've found myself getting into over the years

Just came across a great deal on a used Dillon 550B with lots of extras. One of the extras happened to be 600 new pieces of Midway 38 Super brass for an extra $20 on top of the $175 I paid for the press with LOTS of extra stuff. Have plenty of new WIN and REM brass but have never used Midway before. Is it any good or is it best to leave it for practice and local matches only? Doesn't say +P on the headstamp. Tom

This actually happened to a friend several years ago at Area 4. I think it was the 1st year that L-10 was a division since my friend shot it. On a stage near the end of the match when he yanked back his slide to show clear, the bullet lifted out and lnaded squarely on the RO's timer. Several of us saw it and expected the RO to review the time, but he called out what he saw displayed. The shooter asked him about it and the answer was the timer was correct and that was the time he was getting. The RO wasn't nasty about his reply but wasn't going to review the timer for any problems either. Sad to say, we all knew it cost the shooter several seconds on this stage. At that time, we were all pretty green shooters and just accepted the RO's decision.

We shot this one last month also. Mine was 3.15 sec, down 2, HF 8.8889 for 92.74% for Limited Friend shot it in SS and it scored 100% with a HF 9.6552 28 pts, 2.90 sec....pretty speedy for a skinny gun

If you think that sucks, just wait till you buy bullets again. Prices from Precision Delta have risen about 10% from May and I've heard that they'll be going up even more real soon. A friend who buys components for Wilson Combat says Hornady has gone up nearly double on their bullet prices. I'm wondering when prices will reach the point where people will stop buying!

Several of us got together and bought some MagTech primers thru Graf's earlier this year. Not knowing much about them, I elected not to buy the small pistol primers and went with the Winchesters. A friend bought the MagTech small pistol and has had some trouble with them in his SVI 40. As far as I know his gun runs the factory main spring and all but he has trouble with igniting the small pistol primers reliably. On the other hand, I did buy the MagTech large pistol and have had good luck with them in my stock Kimber. Supposedly the Winchester white box ammo is produced by MagTech and everyone I know that uses it has no troubles with them. Of course, YMMV....

I run the USPSA program at a club in northern Arkansas and we have just 4 pistol bays. We're in a rural area so there is not a good easy way to get here. One way we encourage others to drive any distance to shoot with us is to hold what we call a "2-gun" match format. We basically shoot 2 matches back to back, 3 field courses and a classifier. This does several good things for lots of us. First, it allows folks the chance to shoot two different guns and get credit for two classifiers all in the same day. Secondly, it lets us burn close to 200 rounds and shoot 8 stages for $15 (club members) or $20 for non members. And thirdly, I only have to set up four stages and depend on less people to get the match ready by 11:00am on match day. We don't do scoring at the match but typically I have them out that evening or the next day, never been any complaints about that. Match at 11:00 and we're usually off the range by 3:30 or 4:00 heading top our favorite watering hole. Our normal turnout is around 25 and I score around 35-40 shooters by the time its done. As far as stages go, I think we do a great job of mixing it up with easy-to-hard shots. Since we have several regulars in the 60+ age range, a few in the 70's and even one over 80, we have to be careful of how complex or physically demanding we make our stages.

Rob, I noticed this happening and went back to the info page several times and tried re-submitting until I received confirmation I had been accepted. Only bad part was I tried using 2 different credit cards thinking the 1st one had been declined Guess I'm in either way on the Open/Prod nats if I get the call. Tom