Penny

is that an alien??

Just got word that folks who shipped ammo to the Keep It In the 10 Ring address in the match booklet are not all successful. The address/building doesn't exist anymore. Not all shipments are being forwarded to an alternate address as they were supposed to be. So... track your ammo shipments before you head for the match! Good Luck. Looking forward to seeing everybody out there. Karl and I arrive on Tues. Penny

here's the sherbet. hope it helps.

Chills, Sorry to hear the bad news. I can tell you that Purdue's Vet School has a very active pet oncology program over in West Lafayette, if you want to followup with second opinions, etc. That's the closest location I can think of for you. Also, here is a link to a web site that has tips for pet owners. It's run by a good friend of mine (Dr. Kevin Hahn) who specialized in dog and cat cancer at Purdue and is now in Houston. You might be able to get some good suggestions or a referral to another vet in your area. Good luck, Penny

It has it's moments. I've subscribed for 10 years or so. It often has some pretty good and useful articles by Gila Hayes and others. Sometimes I grumble about the photos or some of the articles written by men for women, although the magazine has made steady improvement. There is almost always a review of a SASS style match or event. As far as shooting magazines directed at women, I'd probably recommend the NRA's "new" magazine "Women's Outlook" first, with Women & Guns as a 2nd choice. Penny

I used to have a light spring in the mag release and would hit the mag button with my left thumb, just sliding my hand down to the release while on the way to grab a new mag. It was very consistent and fast for me -- <1.5 sec on a target at 7yds with A hits before and after the reload. My fingers are short enough that flipping the doublestack gun was slower for me, and I couldn't develop enough confidence that I would never drop the gun during the flip. I finally reached a point where I couldn't reload any faster, and thought I could get down to about 1.0 sec on the reload, but not with this technique. I switched to a reverse mag release built by Jimmy Mitchell. I love it, and it's faster than the "old" technique for me. I couldn't ever make the angle work to hit the right-side mag button with my index finger, so I hit the button with the edge of my right hand middle finger at the 2nd knuckle. This isn't the greatest reload, but here's a video. Penny

The highways from the east into Austin are becoming insane. I drove west from Austin to Smithville to work this morning. It took some of our folks over 5 hrs late last night to get from the med center in Houston to our research park here in Smithville (150miles). We're (MD Anderson) shutting down tomorrow as much as possible, and spending today backing up and packing up critical data, etc. My mom is an oncology nurse in Bryan and they are all preparing for evacuated patients to be moved north to them. It looks like the projected storm track keeps moving east. Hang in there this weekend Sniper! The med center learned a lot from the flooding a few years back, so all the generators are on higher ground, and the whole place should be better prepared. Like Shred said, let us know if you need a place to stay, or if there's anything else we can do. Contact him and he can put you in touch with a lot of us in the Austin area. If you're thinking about heading this way, I'd recommend doing it soon, and maybe taking extra gas and a route other than the major interstate if you can. Penny

Karl and I will both be at the match this year. Penny

I use Jimmy Mitchell's mag catch and love it. As a right-handed shooter with short thumbs, I used to hit the button with my left thumb on the way to grabbing a new mag off my belt. I never felt comfortable flipping a double-stack gun. I finally switched to having the button on the right side and it's faster for me. The angle doesn't work out for me to use my right index finger, so I'm actually hitting the edge of the button with the top edge of the knuckle of my middle finger. I guess I should try to find a picture -- I've got one around somewhere, but this will have to do for now: http://www.bulletworks.com/Mag_catch.html

Just doing a quick search in medline, it looks like there is plenty of evidence for carcinogenic potential of depleted uranium (DU; perhaps obvious because of the radioactivity), as well heavy metal tungsten alloys (tungsten + nickel + (cobalt or iron)). There isn't much published yet about the implications of shrapnel, but I would guess that Gulf War vets with DU shrapnel are being monitored. Penny

That was several years ago, just before the Area 2 match. It was a few hours of drills and previewing the stages in small groups. Our group was with Henning. We walked through all the stages and he talked about how he would shoot them and why. My favorite drill was TGO's "don't be last / don't miss" drill. The whole group was on the line and you had to draw and shoot head shots when the buzzer went off. Anyone who missed and whoever was last, was eliminated. Then you repeat until there's only one person left. The "clinic" was very generous of the instructors, and a lot of fun too! Thanks guys! Penny p.s. the KR site is way overdue for a serious overhaul on content. Keep in mind that the guy writing the content about me is a little biased.

Maybe achieving a big goal leads to a little bit of post adrenaline-high let down? And folding laundry probably isn't good for much of an adrenaline rush. It's a thread drift, but I jumped a couple trains of thought and your post reminded me of an old boss/mentor. Awesome guy who treated everybody right. He died unexpectedly, and afterwards, our building janitor, Bill, was talking about how Dr. C treated him (Bill) exactly the same way he (Dr. C) treated the department head. That attitude brought out the best in all of us slaves, uh, I mean employees. He appreciated the little things, and complimented us for doing the little, daily, boring things right. Consequently, we all worked just a little harder, and Bill made sure we had the shiniest floors in the building. Not sure where, exactly, I'm going with this, but I think those days helped me find more pleasure in the small tasks. Still, lately I find that knowing there's another match, or some other "fun" thing coming up on the calendar, helps get me through the mundane and unpleasant stuff. Consequently, I seem to get bogged down less in the "I hate this stuff" and enjoy what I'm doing just for the sake of doing it a little bit more. Hard to be there all the time, but I think I'm getting better at it. I dunno -- the neutral zone is not for me. I'm always willing to deal with valleys so I can really have fun on the peaks.

Can't help you with the images. Sorry. I'm sure they are around somewhere though. I've seen Hornady bullet boards (nice wall hangers) and bench top mats from Sierra. This page is a link to info about the about the .22 bee and hornet. At the bottom of the page is a link to the diagram of the cartridge specs. Not a photo, but should give you a good comparison of the two. Penny

For bullets, most of the manufacturers now have images of all their bullets on their websites. You can sometimes find promotional posters etc. in retail gunshops. For cartridges, the NRA basic pistol book has nice scaled photos and commentary. I can't find a link to it on their website at the moment. Their Reloading Guide has a lot of pictures too. If you're really into it, NRA also sells a book called "Cartridges of the World."

Robert, Don't despair! It may take some time, but you'll get there with some work. I see a lot of beginner - intermediate shooters on the range. .40S&W and esp. .357sig in light-weight framed guns like the Glock take some work. IMO, both of those calibers have a sharp recoil that results in a flinch. Often, I can "cure" a flinch in a shooter just by handing him or her a 9mm Glock. You might consider shooting a 9mm for a little while. Once you have more experience shooting well with a 9mm, you may be able to adapt to the .40 more easily. Second, since you mention trigger pull -- it's easier to get away with poor trigger control with a lighter, shorter trigger. When you dryfire, do you see absolutely no movement of the front sight? If you can't dryfire "perfectly," then the grip on the gun may be too big (or small) for you as others mentioned. If so, you may have to consider a grip reduction or other modification. If you're confident that fit is ok, then try this trigger reset drill. Get somebody to help you: Dry fire the pistol. After you press the trigger, continue to hold it back. Have your friend rack the slide for you. Slowly release the trigger just until you hear the reset click. Dry fire and repeat a few times. Then do this live fire. Fire a shot and continue to hold the trigger back. Reset only as much as needed. Align the sights, press the trigger again as smooth as possible. I'm not a big believer in "surprise break" of the trigger for pistol shooting -- especially with the glock, you need to know how to take up the slack and know about where the trigger will break. As others mentioned, fire 5 or 6 shot groups from a rest and then from standing. I would suggest starting with 6-inch paper plates at 7yds. If you can keep them all on the plate at 7yds, then move on to 15-yds and beyond. Focus on the front sight and a smooth trigger press. Grip hard with your non-dominant hand. Good luck!

All the books previously posted will give you some good drills to do. Matt Burkett has some good drills also. Here is a link to a simple 3 target practice drill I've used a lot. As a beginner, you probably won't be able to get off all the shots in the time limit, but as you repeat the drill over time, you can keep track of your progress, and see areas that need improvement. Another drill that helped me learn the difference in speed at different target distances was to set up 3 targets at 7, 25, and 15 yards (or some variation) and alter speed in order to shoot As. You can shoot this standing still or on the move. Then throw in barricades, ports, etc. to make things more interesting.

Well, there was that one target that got taped early on stage 18....... and the range gods didn't smile on the reshoot. But in the scheme of things, it turned out not to matter all that much. Would have boosted my ego to shoot a big stage above 70%, but it wouldn't have changed my overall finish much. Squad 30 was great, and I had fun, so I'm glad I got to shoot with all of you. Next time, I'm bringing THREE guns... so I'll have a better chance of making it through nationals with a gun that's holding zero and runs for the whole match!

I'm on the left standing in front of Jon and behind BJ.

I tried a sample of Hoppe's Elite recently. It's supposedly not petroleum based, non-toxic, and seemed to work pretty well. It got the job done well enough that I'll probably buy a larger container to try again. I've been using Hoppe's Benchrest, but that stuff usually gives me a splitting headache. I like FP10 for oil too -- I like the way it smells

I didn't take a lot of pictures, but here are a few of people in my squad, plus Shred in the shootoffs. SC2004 pics

IMO, Win231 is a bad idea for 230 JRN. OK for lead. Even though the reloading manual lists a load for that combo, there can be very sharp pressure spikes resulting in blown cases. Also, lots of inconsistency with PF based on position of powder in the case and result flash/overpressure. At the time, I was trying to make 175 major PF, and had lots of velocity fluctuations with 5.4 gn 231 + Star 230 JRN., 1.250 OAL. It's my understanding that one of the reasons Titegroup was developed was for cowboy .45colt loads because the SASS shooters were blowing up guns with 231 loads. I spent a lot of time talking to people at Winchester. One guy told me about the pressure issue with the jacketed 230s and suggested WSF or 540 at the time. No one else would admit to any problem and after I sent pages of various data -- powder charges, case weight, bullet weights, OAL, chrono'd velocities, etc -- I got a letter back from Winchester telling me that I was incompetent at reloading. So.... be careful with 231. Penny

A little off-topic, but I had a request from somebody yesterday who wants to get into Olympic-style rifle shooting (in the Texas area). Anybody got contact info I can point this guy to? thanks, Penny

Hey, I'm with you SigLady. I think it's interesting that there are so many NTs on the forum, but not surprising. Keith, I'm curious -- is there a personality system that you think more highly of? My first introduction to MBTI was at least 15 years ago where a group of us took a long version of the test. I was completely skeptical and thought it was a waste of time, complained about how "hard" the test was because "it depends" wasn't an option, etc... First time I'd done one of those "personality things" that seemed like it was cheating-resistant. Penny (ENTJ)

SoCalDep, No, I don't know how those wheel guns work Here is a pic of me trying to shoot limited on Friday. Penny p.s. buy your wife an open gun!

All my competition guns have been hard chromed by Virgil Tripp Great service and fast turn around. He's also got a polymer coating that I don't know much about, but if you call or email, you'll probably get a lot of info out of him. I'm a happy customer. For re-blueing, my gunsmith Alan Tillman [ ArtEnt(AT)austin.rr.com ] does a really nice dark blue finish. My husband has a BlackT finish on one of his carry guns that's worked well also. Penny