T Bacus

They are plastic lens. The second shot I fired came straight back at me. It was a full bullet, not splatter. Funny thing is, all the energy was used up breaking the lens, I was not cut, not even a bruise, although the impact was pretty hard. Tim

My comments on the match. No shows, I'm not surprised. The weather for my drive up was terrible and I nearly turned around twice. I'm glad I made it but driving that far in that kind of weather, I'm sure a lot of people decided not to risk it. Equipment DQ's. RIF... reading is fundamental. The rulebook is very clear on what you can and can't do to your gun. Your gun weighs too much or your safety doesn't work you're out. As for letting people finish the match for fun after their guns were deemed not within the rules, well that's the MD's call. Nowhere in the rulebook does it say that a gun with a disabled grip safety is unsafe, only that it is a disallowed modification. I think letting the shooter finish the match for fun is well within the spirit of fair play given the expense of shooting the match. Chrono... 25+ years of pistol competition and I don't think I've ever attended a major match where someone didn't complain about the chrono procedures. Most will pass, a few won't. General unhappiness ensues. Hot range Cold bays or what? I don't know, the SO's gave me some instructions, I followed them. It all seemed pretty simple to me Thursday morning. The Courses of Fire. I liked them. I know how hard it is too design good stages for an indoor match. Angles and safe backstops really limit what you can and can't do. I think all involved did a good job designing and presenting the stages. I wish I had done a better job shooting them. The standards were tough but doable. The speed stages were straightforward and there were some stages that used a lot of props to set the tone, like the house in the main range. Running a match is a careful balancing act, you want to give the shooter a challenging set of stages, but at the same time you have a limited amount of time to do it in. Stage Two. I was sorry to see stage two get tossed, then again I understand completely why they did it. I was one of (I think the first) shooter to get hit by a bullet bouncing back. It hit me in the face, directly on the left lens of my shooting glasses; here they are, immediately after I finished the stage... No match director EVER likes to toss a stage. No matter how good the reason it ends up upsetting some of the shooters but when safety is a factor there is no choice. I'll be back next year (but shooting a real gun:) ).

Currently IDPA, used to use one in NRA Action but stopped shooting that years ago. Currently I only shoot revolver in IDPA, but will stop after the Cherokee Match in Atlanta. My first major with a revolver will be the S&W Indoor in Feburary, then the VA Indoor and finally the Cherokee match. The S&W Indoor will be my first one. Most likely not. I'm mainly doing it for the Cherokee Match. I l like the idea of a revolver only (sort of) match for IDPA, to promote revolver shooting.

A Smith & Wesson 686SSR with Houge grips and a Fiber optic front sight. I will be adding the Wiegand rear sight blade in the near future. Holster is the Safariland 561 with the plastic back plate replaced with a Wilson leather one. Speedloaders are Jet Loaders for use during the course of fire and an HKS to charge the gun at the line. Speedloader holders are from TKW. I'm shooting SSR until the revolver match near Atlanta next year. Hey Duane, bet that match would make a neat article.

The appearance of sandbagging is built into the classifier. Most people can shoot up close reasonably well and with some speed. Some shooters are very fast up close, but lack the ability to shoot accurately at any kind of distance. If you take a shooter who has some ability to shoot fast, but has yet to learn to be truly accurate he will classify low because what he is bad at (shooting accurately at speed and distance) is 30% of the classifier but usually only 5 - 10% of a sanctioned match. Stages one and two of the classifier most resemble the shots you will see in a match, but stage three of the classifier is where most shooters earn their class.

Again, it's about perception. Fluted slides are not allowed because they look racey. Arguing whether or not it is an advantage is pointless, as long as an average shooter can see it, and perceive it to be an advantage, it's not going to be allowed. IDPA is a place for stock guns, or at least guns that look stock. Flat top serrated slides are produced by many companies, Colt, Kimber and Springfield all have production models with flat topped or serrated slides. Flat topped and serrated slides are perceived as normal, fluted slides are perceived as a racegun modification. Arguing that the end result (weight) is the same thing is pointless.

You need to try and understand, it's not always about a competitive advantage, it's the perception of an advantage that IDPA is trying to avoid. The rules aren't written for the few shooters who want to go out and push the envelope with their gun, they are written so that the vast majority, who show op with their Kimbers, Springfields and Colts, won't feel like their guns are uncompetitive. An Ed Brown Executive or Wilson CQB may be light years ahead of an out of box Kimber or Springfield in terms of fit, finish, accuracy and reliability, but to the average shooter they still look like a plain 1911.

Thanks Duane. Hey, I read your articles in the latest G&A Book of the 1911, good work there. I remember the OM 9MM you wrote about in the New-Breed 9 article. That was one sweet shooting little pistol. Tim

So what can you do to a six inch barreled 686 if you want to shoot it in IDPA? The rule book says shortening factory barrels is ok, and I'll assume buying a factory 4" barrel and swapping it out is also ok. But what factory barrel can you buy? Is a 4" Mountain Gun barrel ok? Could you order a 4" SSR barrel and install that? If cutting the factory six inch tube is ok, can I cut it to match the conture of an SSR barrel? Here's the real issue. I want to play in SSR next year and I need to get a gun. The 686 SSR from Smith is a nice gun but I really hate the new guns with the lock. Not because I have a problem with the lock, but I hate the new conture of the frame around the hammer. I also have a really smoking set of Houge Wood grips but they are for a Square Butt, not a round one. Lastly, a new SSR is around $700 and I can pick up used 686 SqButt for under $350.00. What I would prefer to do is take the factory 6" barrel and turn it into a 4" barrel that looks like an SSR barrel. My question is, do you think that this would be A), legal, and , in the spirit of the IDPA rules. Worst case scenario is I just buy an SSR barrel, or a Mountain Gun barrel if the SSR barrel is not avaliable, but I'd really rather modify the 6" one, cheaper to me!

I just picked up two of Wilson's open front mag pouches for my SVI. Pretty happy with them so far. Tim

I run the same sight set-up on all my match and carry handguns. Some kind of plain black rear blade and a black front sight, slightly ramped with a tritium insert and white ring combo. The white ring is easy to see in daylight and the tritium front is all you need for IDPA low light events. I don't like the way fiber optic front sights change in apperence depending on the amount of avaliable light. Tim