CHA-LEE

shutr> I have an XDm-40 and an EAA Witness Limited. My EAA isn't an STI, but its not too far from it on a performance level. Simply put, you get what you pay for. Can you compete with the XDm-40 in Limited class? Sure. Will a double stack style 2011 or EAA pistol shoot more accurately and easier than an XDm-40? Yes. There are fundamental limitations to the XDm-40 design that you will never be able to overcome to get it up to the same performance level of the STI, SVI, or similar pistols. For example, the trigger. You will never get an XDm-40 trigger as light, short travel, solid engagement or crisp as the others. Then you have weight balance disadvantage of the polymer frame. A light polymer frame with a heavy slide is a lot harder to control when shooting fast. Lastly there is the inherent accuracy difference. I can shoot my XDm-40 back to back against my EAA at 15 yards and consistently shoot groups half the size with my EAA. Can you dump a ton of money into the XDm-40 and get it close to the performance of a base STI? Sure. But the time and money spent getting it there will be about as much as just getting a standard STI, SVI or EAA off the shelf. Keep in mind that you can take a standard STI, SVI or EAA and get some work done on it to make it outstanding. Performance like this will never be achieved with the XDm-40. It all comes down to your budget really. If you can't afford an STI, SVI or EAA then shoot your XDm-40 in Limited. It will still go bang when you pull the trigger and put holes in the targets like all the other guns. If you are having fun with it, does it really matter if you have the latest and greatest wiz bang uber gun?

Put it in perspective. Do you think a track star would "Train" differently for a real live situation where he would have to rely on running to save his life? Or would he just leverage the thousands of training hours and burned in skills of running take control when the situation arises that he does have to run to save his life? I don't know about anyone else, but I would 100% rely on my USPSA or IDPA "Game Shooting" skills to save my life in a real life shooting situation. Seriously, how many people that carry daily will actually end up firing their weapon to protect themselves or others during their life time? That is a very, very, very small number. Given the very uncommon likelihood of being in situation where shots are fired in public much less you being the one shooting, I don't see why people worry so much about this. I also find it funny that the vast majority of the time the same guys that continually "Train" for these real life shoot out situations, that will likely never happen, are the same guys that could care less about their personal health. They would do themselves a lot more good if they put the same effort into the health. Manage their weight, diet, stop smoking, etc. These are the real killers of us, not some Miami Vice shoot out that you are some how going to be mixed up in on a regular basis. On that note, I will reaffirm that my USPSA "Game Shooting” skills will just have to manage when or if I am ever involved in a gun battle as a regular Joe Blow citizen of the USA. Now if I was in Law Enforcement or the Military that might be a different story. But I still think that the skills of a proficient USPSA or IDPA shooter are more than enough to handle most real life shooting situations you might encounter in public.

Sounds like trigger freeze to me. This happens when you grip the pistol to hard with your strong hand and when you shoot fast your trigger finger "Locks Up" and won't allow the trigger to move back far enough to reset. You can get a trigger job to minimize the reset distance but that is just a band aid for the real problem of you gripping the pistol too hard. The easiest way to test this out is if you take a spring loaded hand exerciser and fully compress it with all of the fingers on your strong hand except your trigger finger. Then as it is fully compressed move your trigger finger in and out like you would be pulling the trigger. If you can't move your trigger finger freely or have a limited range of movement that shows you the maximum grip pressure you should be applying. You want a strong hand grip that is strong enough to manage the recoil of the pistol but still allow you to easily modulate your trigger finger. If the grip pressure that allows free trigger finger movement isn't enough to manage the recoil of the pistol then its time to start working out your hands to build up the forearm strength until you can. I have been using a couple of different hand and wrist exercises to build up my grip strength. My grip power is about double of what it was when I started and it really shows in my shooting. I don't even have to think about gripping the pistol hard when I shoot now. I just point and shoot and the muzzle flip is non existent. I also had trigger freeze issues before doing my hand and wrist exercises. Building up the base strength in my hands and forearms really helps with shooting more consistently and faster. Sure you could get a trigger job done for a couple hundred bucks to minimize the trigger freeze. But a $5 hand exerciser and some dedication will result in a lot better performance overall. I do my hand and wrist exercises as I drive to and from work every day so I don’t even have to dedicate any “Special” time to doing it. What else are you going to do while driving to work other than vegetate or talk on the phone anyway?

Another weekend of fun USPSA shooting. I attended a match this past Saturday and it was fun. I had a couple of bone head moments but overall I was happy with my results. I had two blunders though. The first was on a stage where you had to shoot on the move with mixed close and long targets, then reload and shoot through some "Jail Bars". I was so concerned with my shooting on the move that I forgot to do my reload until I was standing in front of the jail bars getting ready to engage the targets. So I lost some time standing there performing a reload when I should have done it while moving to the shooting position. The major blunder of the match was on another stage that was a run and gun where you are close up on the targets. There were four groups of four targets and you could get as close as you wanted as you ran by them. I was doing good through the first two sets of targets, then the reload and when I brought by support hand back up for the grip I bumped the safety back on and then proceeded to waste about 10 seconds wondering why the hammer wouldn’t fall when I would pull the trigger. That is the first time that happened to me but I can see how it could have happened given that I was pushing myself and the reload was a little clunky. I was trying to recover from the sloppy reload by bringing my support hand up fast to reform my grip and it bumped the safety back on. Oh well, that’s just another lesson that smoothness is the key to success. When you try to force things all kinds of crazy stuff can happen. My shooting buddy and I have been filming each other shooting the stages so reviewing the footage after the matches really helps with understanding what you are or are not doing well. I am getting better at moving as fast as I can between shooting positions as well as shooting on the move. But I can see where I need to work on keeping my gun up and engaging the targets as soon as I enter a shooting area. This past Saturday I couldn’t stop thinking that shooting well is really nothing more than optimizing every aspect of shooting on its own, then pulling it all together in a smooth shooting package after the buzzer goes off. I am still in the "Optimizing" of the different steps so I am not too concerned to well the package comes together after the buzzer goes off. I am sure that once I get the basic functions optimized it will be easier to compile the performance into a smooth and efficient performance.

I also wanted to add that for some unknown reason (I can't figure it out) the 10mm magazines are a lot less susceptible to the nose dive issue than the .40 mags. I have done a ton of testing with all kinds of OAL's on the .40 mags and they intermittently jam with nose dives on the 2 - 3 round when loading them to 20 - 21 rounds. Of course, if you use 100% straight cases they feed fine. But overall the 10mm magazines work flawlessly, at least in my gun.

Food for thought, when running the 21+ 1 mags there is a ton of spring tension on the first 3 - 4 rounds and that is where you will run into nose dive issues on reloaded rounds that don't have a 100% straight case. If you have a roll sizer then you can get the cases back to normal, but if you don't then you will be forced to use other "measures" to minimize the effects of the nose dive. The solution that I found to minimize the nose dive issues on regular reloaded rounds with less than optimal case straightness is to use the black 10mm mags. Then run an OAL of 1.225. I know, that is super long. But I have found that with it being that long if the round starts to nose dive as the slide starts picking it up, the nose of the bullet hits the start of the barrel feed ramp and is able to climb up the ramp and chamber as it should. On shorter OAL's (1.175 - 1.185) the bullet can drop below the start of the barrel feed ramp and ends up butting up against the base of the barrel feed ramp causing a jam. How smoothly the rounds are picked up out of the magazine is very dependant on the straightness of the cases. When using new brass that is 100% straight an OAL of 1.175 feeds perfectly all day long. If the base of the case has a ramp or bulge in it at all it allows the cases to catch on one another as the slide tries to pick it up and that causes the nose dive situation. For me, its not practical to spend $700+ on a roll sizing machine or use brand new cases every match. Using brand new cases every match kind of circumvents the whole cost savings purpose of reloading anyway. At least I think so. So your options are as follows.... (1) Use new 100% straight cases. (2) Get a roll size machine to make the used cases a straight as you can. (3) Use an extra long OAL (1.225) to fend off the nose dive condition that will happen when using cases that are not 100% straight.

I gave the iFiber sight a go today at my local indoor range. I used the green fiber and it worked great for me. The extra gap between the front and rear sight really help with the sight alignment on long shots and on the close fast shots my eyes are automatically pulled to the front sight without even trying to look for it. This is a very cool experience if it has not happened to you before. I was using the standard iron sights before and the front and rear sights would seem to blend together. Now I can see a clearly the front sight on its own. I drilled a recess in the slide for the set screw and used blue lock tight to secure it. After running through about 300 rounds today its still solid as a rock. I think its there to stay. The only thing I might try is the different fiber optic colors. I gave each color a test run at home before I settled on one and for whatever reason the green was the best color for me. It allowed me to see it but it wasnt too bright or obvious to distract me from clearly seeing the top metal edge and sides of the front sight. The other colors seemed to distract my focus away from the actual metal edges of the sight. Maybe I am just retarded or something to be so sensitive to the different fiber optic colors?

I have a set of the Limited wood grips that I would be willing to part with for cheap, if anyone wants them to do some kind of frankingrip project with.

I got to shoot this past Sunday and the weather was great. We are really getting lucky with the weather here in colorado, at least on the weekends. Last week I did a lot of dry firing and draw training. I was able to wittle down my 1.5+ sec draw down to .8 sec from hands at sides and 1.0 from surrender position. I tried out my new drawing skills on Sunday and was able to do a .9 sec draw from hands at sides and a 1.0 sec from surrender in competition so I was really happy with that. Picking up at least half a second just on the draw is great for me. I did have some trouble with nose dive issues on my EAA though. The reloads I have been doing so far still leave a little belly at the base of the bullet and that really causes problems on the EAA mags. Then if you combine that with putting the rounds in a slightly dirty container is a perfect recipe for failure. Of course that caught up with me on one speed shoot stage and then the classifer stage right after that. I got a tip from another shooter about using a standard resize die on position 1, then a Lee undersize die on position 2 as the Lee die resizes further down the case than the standard Dillon die. I made that change to my Dillon 650 reloader today and the belly issue is now gone for the most part. The dies can't go all the way to the bottom of the case so there is still a little bit of a radius on some rounds, but it is 100% better than what it was before. I am going to give these new rounds a test run this week at the local indoor range. That and I am now going to keep all of my loose ammo in an ultra clean container so there is no chance of dust contamination. Overall I was happy with my results this past weekend. There was really only one long run and gun stage where I felt a little lost on but I was only 4 seconds off the stage winner. Target transition was my enemy on that stage. There was a section that had four low 6" steel plates intermixed with paper targets that were blocked by no shoots so you had to sift from one side to another to get access to all of the paper targets. I felt fine with the paper targets but going from the paper to the steel back to the paper really messed my timing up. Oh well, it was a good experience and if I could have reshot the sage after the match it would have been cool to try a couple different strategies. Maybe next time....

Once again, thanks for the great feedback. I used my new drawing skilles this past weekend at a local match and it worked great. There were only a couple of stages where we had start from a draw and fire situation but I was lucky to have both a hands at sides and a surrender situations. I had my buddy video my stages so I could check them out when I got back home. My hands at sides draw was .9 sec and my surrender draw was 1.0 sec. I know this probably isn't very fast compared to most of the fast guys here but it is a huge step forward for me given that my draw was 1.5+ sec just a week before. Making positive progress in becomeing a better shooter is always rewarding. Oh yeah, I found a video on YouTube of the 2007 DMSC Nationals where Rob Letham, Matt Burkett and Nick Saiti doing some awesome shooting. At the end it shows both Rob and Nick doing surrender 10 yard "A" hit draws on an old style IPSC target at consistant .7 sec times

I Don't think I am doing a "Scoop" draw from hands at sides. From hands at sides at the buzzer I move my hand up to get my thumb over the grip then move down just enough to push the beaver tail into the web of my hand then close my fingers and thumb around the pistol and start pulling upwards. Is this a "Scoop"? I can see how it might be physically faster to instantly curl your fingers and let them catch the front of the grip as you pull your hand up then wrap your thumb around the back of the grip as its coming out of the holster. But that would be pretty dangerous I would think and would probably give you an inconsistent grip. I have never tried drawing that way. For me its more important to get the proper grip position on the back of the grip as for me this builds the foundation of my grip. If that is off to one side or another my grip is toast. So I have always worked at placing the palm of my hand and the web between my thumb and pointer finger in the correct place as I move down to grip the gun.

Thanks for the feedback guys it really helps!!! You guys rock!!!

I got the Dillion XL650 and it works awesome. Once you have the dies and powder drop setup its ultra easy to use and fast. I can easily load 600+ rounds in an hour even with taking breaks to relaod the primer station and double check the power drops every once in a while. I am not sure if the Dillion 550 comes with an automatic Case Feeder or not, but I would highly suggest getting one as well. It saves a ton of time by not having to manually position the case and the bullet. With the Auto Case Feeder all you have to do is manually place the bullet on the case with one hand and run the lever with the other hand. Then the pace of round production is all in how fast you can sustain the motions of reloading. P.S. - I also baught my Dillion XL650 from Brian Enos via his website and his EZ buy packages take a LOT of pain out of ordering it. He has the kits setup just the way you need them. That and Brian is a super nice guy too

I have searched and searched on this site and could not find any solid answers so I figured that I would start a thread with the question...... What are realistic times for drawing and firing one shot in the "A" box at 7, 15, and 25 yards? Both from surrender and relaxed at sides hand positions. In my Dry Fire practice my peak sustainable performance at 7 yards is .8 sec from hands at sides and 1.0 sec from a surrender position. If I try to push myself any faster than that it feels clunky/forced and is not very consistent. I know that I could probably carve a few more tenths off of those times by working harder at optimizing my movement and eliminating unneeded movements, but what is realistic in a competition? I would say that most of the stages I have shot only half of them require you to draw and fire at a target right at the buzzer. The other half of the time you have to draw as you move into a shooting position which to me puts less focus on ultra fast draw and more focus on getting to where you need to be faster. I also would like to know if there is a draw time guideline based on holster type. I am currently using a Blade-Tech holster and you have to pull the pistol up about 5 inches before you can start moving it forward. This to me would obviously take more time (1 or 2 tenths?) than a race trigger guard mount style holster that allows you to instantly move the pistol forward with minimal upward movement as you grab it. Thanks in advance for the feedback!!!

I have been reviewing the videos of my stages at the Area 2 and am eager to give a couple of things a try this coming weekend. Moving faster and wasting less movement is going to be my main focus. I just hope that the weather holds out so we can shoot this weekend.

I too had a great time at this match. This was my first time going and it was awesome. I shot on squad 5 and everyone was great. We were very laid back and I think one of the few squads that didn't have a predetermined or micromanaged shooting order. We would just throw our slips on the clip board and shoot how ever they came up. This seemed strange to the RO's at the stages when we said that we didn't have a shooting order. The one and only GM on our squad got DQed on day 1 with an AD during a mag change so that sucked but he took it in stride. I wish he didn't have the AD and get DQed so we could all watch him work his magic on the stages. All in all it was a great match and a HUGE thanks needs to go to the Rio Salado crew for putting on an awesome match. TON'S of work had to go into that event to make it run as smooth as it did. I will be back next year for sure. Hopefully by then the swingers wont beat me up so bad

Belated updates to the Desert Classic…… Day two was rugged for me. I had three stages with ultra fast swingers and they killed me. To many misses on these swingers totally blew out my overall score. I was trying to get two hits on each in one swing pass and was missing them badly. One of the Master shooters on my squad said to just take the extra time and get one hit on the swinger per pass and that worked great for the last stage. Too bad I didn’t get that advice earlier on, oh well some lessons are harder than others. We finished up the day doing a Chronograph and my major loads ended up with a 166.2 PF. That was a surprise to me as when I tested them back home the same loads were in the 168 – 169 range. The humidity level is pretty much the same between Colorado and Arizona so I don’t think that was much of a factor in the difference. I do know that the temperature in AZ was about 20 deg hotter than when I tested them in Colorado. That and the altitude is lower in AZ, so those two things combined are probably what lowered the PF of the loads. Either way, I was glad to make Major PF. Day three consisted of just one stage and that went pretty good for me. Shooting on the move is one of my weak spots and this stage leveraged it heavily. So my time was a little slower than most on this stage but I got all of my hits which was good. When all of the shooting was over the awards ceremony happened and I was in awe over how many awesome goodies were on the prize tables. I counted up 25 guns on the Limited prize table alone and that was the second biggest table there. Needless to say that was just the tip of the ice burg of all the prizes. My 73rd overall in Limited netted me about $150 worth of “Loot” from the prize table which to me is pretty impressive given how far down I was in the results. I had my fellow squad members video my stags and after reviewing them I can instantly tell what I have to work on. I need to get moving from place to place a lot faster than I currently am doing it. The videos showed me just moseying from one place to another. I can also see where I am taking too long to transition from one target to another. If I can speed these two things up my results will be a lot better. To me, moving faster from target to target or from position to position is like a free bonus because I can move faster, I just wasn’t. Seeing myself shoot on video was a great wake up call to what I am actually doing right and wrong. If you have not had someone film you shooting, I would highly suggest getting it done at the next match. As they say, a picture says a thousand words. Overall I was very impressed with the Desert Classic Area 2 match and will be going back again next year. The stages were awesome and the whole show was run very well. If you are in the area and have not attended this match I would highly recommend it.

Day one is over at the Desert Classic Area 2 match in Mesa Arizona. There are a ton of shooters here and the stages are awesome. We shot five of the 11 stages today and are scheduled to shoot five more tomorrow. My first five stages were “OK”, nothing to write home about. I had two misses today which was a bummer but no other penalties which is good. I am not trying to push it at this match, just trying to enjoy it. There are some good shooters on my squad and they are all really nice. On the last stage of the day the only GM in our squad had an accidental discharge during mag changes so I think he is done for the weekend. He was discussing the situation with the Match Director when I left and it wasn’t decided whether he was going to be DQed or not, but I am sure they will DQ him given the situation. It sucks to see such a good shooter get DQed, but safety comes first and wake up calls like that are needed when you are pushing the envelope too far. I am looking forward to the shooting tomorrow, I am sure it will be just as fun as today.

I picked up six of the .40 S&W 21+1 magazines today from Henning. Thanks for tracking down the chrome mags and making them available to us!!!

This past weekend I attended two matches. A Steel match on Saturday and a USPSA match on Sunday. The Saturday Steel match was the second time I had ever attended a steel match so it is still a very humbling experience. Needless to say accuracy and smooth shooting cadence is key to doing well. I started by stopping my gun on each target then pulling the trigger and that was working but was taking a lot more time. I was lucky to have GM Paul Clark Jr ROing me on one of the strings and he gave me the suggestion to not stop the sweep of the pistol on each target and just time the pulling of the trigger when it gets in front of the target. This worked out really well for me and not surprisingly I was able to shoot a lot more consistently and faster when doing it. We had a shoot off after the timed stages and as luck would have it I ended up shooting first against Paul Clark Jr. Needless to say he laid waste to me when going head to head, but I was able to shoot my best of the day against him using the technique he showed me earlier. Paul is a great guy and an awesome shooter. I really appreciate the help he offered during this match. It was a shooting lesson that I can apply to many different conditions, not just steel. On Sunday I shot a local USPSA match but wasn't really into it for whatever reason. I was there physically, but not mentally. I just couldn't get into it. I would shoot the stages in a fog and let my subconscious mechanics take over, which ended up in a lack luster performance. I also went against the grain on a couple of stages where I shot it in a totally different manner than everyone else. I am pretty tall (6'4") so I have a little bit of a different vantage point on the targets. One stage in particular was a medium length course with a lot of targets on both sides of two barricades. Everyone else was engaging targets on both sides of the barricades as they were advancing down the course. To add to the fun there were at least 1 or 2 no shoots blocking most of the targets. From my vantage point I seen that I could just stand at the starting position and shoot all of the targets from there. Granted I would have to shoot between no shoots and make some precise shots but it could be done. I figured that I would give it a try my way and as luck would have it the buzzer goes off, I draw and fire my first shot then go to break the second shot and notice that my gun is jammed. The second round in the magazine had nose dived and was jammed up on the leading edge of the feed ramp. So I had to drop the mag, clear the jam then get a new mag in there and get it ready to rumble again. This whole situation took a grueling 9 seconds to recover from but once I got it going again I stuck to the plan and shot all of the targets from the starting position. I had to take a little longer on some of the targets because of their close head shots between no shoots, but if I would have not had the malfunction my hit factor would have put me 9th out of the 20 Limited shooters on that stage. To me that wasn't to bad considering there was one GM and five M level shooters shooting in Limited class that day. Even though I shot the stage differently from everyone else, after watching most of the other people shoot it the "normal" way I could see how they would have a time and accuracy advantage of running through the stage instead of doing it the way I did. Oh well, these are the lessons of stage strategy. Even though I wasn't really into it from a competitive standpoint I still had fun and for me that matters the most. Well, this week I am heading down to Phoenix Arizona for the Desert Classic Area 2 match. This will be my first "Big" match so I am interested in seeing how it all goes down. I really don't have any performance expectations other than to shoot all of the targets and be safe. I think this trip will be more of a learning experience than anything else. At my current experience level it is unrealistic to expect to do well at an event of this size as I am sure the vast majority of the attendees are coming to win, not just experience the event. I will keep this thread updated with my experiences of the match. I am sure it will be a great event to attend and partake in.

hhhmmm… how to start? When I was a kid I did all of the country kid stuff of shooting whatever we could whenever it presented its self. But nothing serious or regimented. The only firearm I owned when I was a kid was a super cheap .22 rifle I bought one summer to “Clean Up” prairie dogs at a local ranch in northern Colorado. My buddy and I spent the whole summer shooting prairie dogs and collecting their reward from the land owner. We shot that poor .22 rifle so much that by the end of the summer it wouldn’t hold a 10 inch group at 25 yards. I am sure that a lot of that was user error but being that inaccurate we ended up missing those prairie dogs more than hitting them and by then the fun factor had worn off anyway. So we quit shooting and did other kid stuff and as they say “out of sight, out of mind” I really never could remember what happened to that worn out .22 rifle. Life went on and new interests were found and explored. I have a late model GTO and am part of a GTO club. We help each other work on our cars, attend get together meets and generally have fun helping each other out. Doing this you obviously make friends and find out what their other hobbies. One of our GTO members has been into USPSA, IDPA and 3Gun shooting for a long time and introduced me to the sport of practical shooting. I obviously found this very interesting and started doing as much research as I could on it. Now we can fast forward to about 5 months ago, when I was reintroduced to the wild world of shooting by purchasing my first pistol. Since I was fairly new to shooting in general much less competition shooting I didn’t want to run out and buy a $2,500 competition gun then find out that it wasn’t something that I wanted to do. I ended up getting a Springfield XDm-40 and used that to retrain myself on shooting from the ground up. I took some shooting classes, did a ton of research and just started shooting as much as I could. I like fiddling with things so modifying and testing my XDm-40 really helped me better understand the basic mechanics of what the pistol should and shouldn’t do, or better yet what I should or shouldn’t do with it. I burned through about 2,500 rounds practicing at a local indoor range before I felt confident enough with the pure basics of gun handling and safety to attend my first competition match. My first competition match was an IDPA match that just so happened to be a Classifier event, which really wasn’t like normal match stage scenarios. It took forever (6 Hours) and I only got to shoot 2 stages before we got rained out. At the time, I was like “THIS SUCKS!!!” but I took heed of many of the experienced shooters comments saying that this match was a lot less fun than the regular matches. The next weekend ended up being a USPSA match that had a regular stage setup and flow to the shooting. Obviously, going from shooting in your “Lane” at an indoor public range to drawing from a holster and shooting targets on the move was a complete wake up call and totally fun. I was hooked instantly and the addiction/affliction was confirmed……. Fast forward to today. The XDm-40 has been put on the back burner and I am now shooting in the Limited class with an EAA Witness Limited .40. I have been to about 15 total matches of mixed venue but mostly USPSA matches. I also got a Dillon 650XL reloading press and have cranked out about 5000 rounds on it so far. I believe that my equipment is to where it needs to be and now it’s mainly down to honing my shooting skills. That’s it right? All I have to do is shoot better. How hard can that be??? I am finding out that becoming a proficient competition shooter takes a long time in its self, much less becoming a good competition shooter. Right now I am in the “Absorption” mode of all the video’s, books, tips at matches, and lessons learned while shooting. I find myself feeling like someone dumped me out of my comfortable kiddie pool right into the middle of the ocean. Man eating sharks, killer jelly fish or Pirates aside the sheer realization that I have a LONG way to paddle to get back to shore seems like an impossible task. Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way going to give up or quit. But it is sobering situation to finally know just enough about competition shooting to know the exact challenge ahead of me is monumental. So what is the “Challenge” anyway? If having fun while shooting is the challenge, then that is already met. I have a great time every time I shoot, even though I still get “Buzzer Amnesia” some times. Some times I wonder if breathing wasn’t a subconscious function if I would actually pass out from not breathing once the buzzer goes off. Breathing seems like such a simple thing to do but when the Buzzer Amnesia hits you never know what kind of basic functions will get screwed up. I have found that I perform the worst when I try to formulate a stage strategy that is very ordered and logical. When I try to break down a stage in my head like “Go here, shoot this and this target but not that one, then reload here and engage this target followed by these other two……” it turns into a complete disaster as soon as I run into any hiccup in my predetermined plan. Knowing that my brain can not deal with a screwed up plan well under the pressure of being on the clock during a stage run, I have changed my stage strategy planning to be more vague. Now, I look at a stage and get a basic flow of how I should engage the targets which will get me to the end the fastest. The only thing that I really focus on is where I should perform my reloads. That way when the buzzer goes off my only thought process is “Find the next target and shoot it”. Not do this one and that one then…… CRAP, I screwed up the order, what do I do now??? WHAT ARE YOU DOING THINKING ABOUT THINGS??? SHOOT, SHOOT, SHOOT, GOTTA CATCH UP…. The stage ends up being a train wreck of a performance and you look like a donkey doing it. I am sure that everyone has experienced that before. So now, I focus on being smooth and relaxed. I start with a very simple stage strategy and just let my instincts dictate my target engagement. Most of the time this strategy works well for me, but I still get thrown for a loop when there is a lot of sawing left to right on a stage with a lot of hidden or blocked targets. I tend to get lost on knowing which targets I have already engaged or not. Right now, I seem to be shooting with a performance that is comparable to the “B” class shooters I compete with. I have not shot enough classifiers with my Limited gun to know what my official ranking is just yet, but regardless of what the numbers are, I can see how my performance stacks up against others. I decided to set a “Challenge” for myself to become a solid “A” class shooter by next December. That seems like it would be an obtainable goal for me and I really look forward to the challenge of getting there. I know that the more I shoot and the more experiences I am exposed to the better I will get by simply turning most of the consciously issued actions into subconscious reactions in given situations. I know that some people will probably read this and be like “Here we go again with a new shooter with delusions of becoming a world class shooter overnight”. I hope that I have not set that expectation so far, as I do know that to become the best at anything does not happen easily or overnight. I will strive to become the best that I can be. Whatever class that puts me in really does not matter as long as I am true to myself about giving it my best. I also expect that doing the best that I can do will take a long time to achieve. This to me is actually cool, because it gives me a life long hobby to have fun with and work hard to improve upon. That is until the Zombie apocalypse happens. Then I don’t think the zombies or I will care what “Class” shooter I am as long as I can get the job done and don’t run out of ammo On that note, I will try to keep this thread updated with my shooting experiences. Hopefully more experienced shooters can chime in when needed to help. I also hope that I can give back to the shooting community with what I learn along this journey of competition shooting.

I had one question about the sight. Do you think that the back side of the sight will be easier to catch on things since it is square? I would think that if the back side of the sites edges were rounded off or at an angle it would make it a lot less likely to catch on things. Other than that, it looks pretty sweet!!! Just a thought about securing the fiber, you could drill and tap a hole in the side of the back portion of the sight so the diamiter of the hole slightly overlaps the fiber hole. That way you could put a set screw in there and it would retain the fiber by mashing it between the threads of the set screw and fiber hole. More work, I know, I am just thinking outside the box.

Jeff686> It is case hardened. The only way you can really phase it is to use a stone dremel bit to grind away the metal. The only drill bit that was able to make a dent in it was a carbon steel version. But even that would instantly get dulled and have to be replaced. I had to feed about $40 worth of drill and dremel bits to it before I got it done. Like I said before, if I knew back then how much of a pain in the ass it was going to be I would have figured out a different solution. It would have been easier for me to just take the part over to my friends machine shop and have him make a copy of it out of tool steel with the extended mag release built in. Hopefully Henning will start making one that is adjustable. It would be sweet if he made one that you could not only adjust the mag release button hight and location, but also allow you to adjust the spring tension with a set screw on the same side as the button.

Jeff686> I have e-mailed you the spreadsheet. dirty whiteboy> Thanks for the information. I might just pick up some Zero 200gr bullets and give that load a try. I have 4000 of the Zero 180gr bullets so those will last a little while.

Thanks for the feedback guys. I am going to use the 4.5gr load for now. I have been thinking about trying the 165gr and 200gr bullets to see how the recoil feels on those rounds but I don't want to reinvent the wheel as I am sure there are a lot of very experienced shooters here that have already tried them and end up back at the 180gr bullets. What I think I will do is just stick with this load for the next 10,000 rounds and focus more on my shooting technique as I know that needs way more work than what load I am shooting.