CHA-LEE

Here is my addition to the discussion. This is 9mm Major PF with a 124gr Bullet and HS-6 Powder. Spring setup is an 18lb Hammer, Very Rounded Firing Pin Stop, and 7lb Recoil. This setup is close to optimal but not quite there yet due to the whole gun displacement and the small muzzle bounce as the slide snaps back forward. I think the 124gr bullets are simply too much mass to get accelerated at Major PF velocities without causing excessive gun displacement. The next ammo setup I am going to try will be a 115gr bullet with HS-6 powder. Once I get that I will do another slow motion video to have a comparison. I have also tried Autocomp and SP2 powders and both produce way too much gas which makes the dot dive straight down as the shot fires. This dot diving straight down seems to be a fairly unique issue to me as I grip the crap out of the gun. All of the other local Open shooters have not observed a "Diving Dot" issue using Autocomp or SP2 powders but then again they also grip the gun like wussies.

Why do you care so much about the frame to slide fit "wearing out"? You would probably need to shoot 10 times the value of the gun in ammo through it before the slide to frame fit would become an issue on a properly fitted gun. Since the ammo is the most expensive item in this equation I would suggest focusing on reducing those costs instead of worrying about the "Cheapest" expense in the equation which is the gun.

In all of the videos the primary "Muzzle Flip" generator is the slide bottoming out against the frame in the back position. You can try different angles of firing pin stops and hammer spring weights to increase the leverage against the slide coming back super fast and slamming into the rear position excessively. In my testing changing the angle of the firing pin stop has a more dramatic and non-liner affect to the muzzle flip and overall slide speed. Too little angle and it creates an excessive tip up of the muzzle as the slide starts to come back. Too much angle and it unlocks and comes back very easily which usually creates too much slide velocity and an excessive muzzle flip in the rear position. Tuning the angle of the firing pin stop and hammer spring weight is a user preference thing so what one shooter "Likes" could feel like dog crap to another shooter. In all of those videos its looking like there is way too much rearward slide velocity.

We have had team guns that were so flat the dot merely wiggled side to side a bit. It was very hard to shoot with any speed. Shay opened the comp up a bit to allow some vertical rise and times in on the clock testing improved. Maybe I am chasing a dead end. Either way it will be a fun voyage.

And when the wind comes up mid match and takes all of your newly created "sails" into the next county you will be forced to throw the stage out. WIN!!! Could every club waste a bunch of time and money making sure every target in the stage can't be seen beyond the 180? Sure. Unfortunately most clubs don't have the man power or equipment to do it. At some point common sense needs to be balanced with unrealistic expectations. Especially when all of the extra work is required for the few donkeys who can't seem to understand that their muzzle needs to be pointed down range at all times. I would venture to say it's a lot easier to ban the unsafe shooters from the matches verses wasting a bunch of effort to monkey proof the stages for them.

What's your take on the matter when shooting a stage something like Stage 4 yesterday? Where you start downrange and move uprange. That one target on the right side of the COF, left of the barrel was first visible as the shooter moved uprange and was begging to be shot. The stage you point out did allow you to see/engage the right side target up range of the 180 as you were retreating within the shooting area. To me, that was a poor stage design as another set of barrels could have been placed in front of the target so it couldn't be seen until it was within the the 180. But this is also a perfect example of a big kid game using big kid rules. Every shooter is tasked with keeping their gun pointed down range at all times and deciding when and where to engage that target at a safe angle is part of the game. I always say that every stage provides the opportunity to make the wrong decision. That IS part of the game we play. If we dumb it down to a point where everything is spoon fed to the competitors to ensure they make the "Correct" decisions then its really no longer a "Freestyle" game is it?

If the Official NROI interpretation of rule 2.1.4 is that targets should NEVER be visible beyond the 180 then there should have been at least 1 stage per Major match thrown out in all of the major matches I attended in 2015 including the Limited Nationals. Not to mention the 50+ club matches I have attended. I am yet to see a any level match throw out a stage because targets were simply VISIBLE beyond the 180. When I read rule 2.1.4 its intent is to make sure that targets are not placed beyond the 180 and that is the ONLY place they can be engaged, which forces the shooter to break the 180 to engage it. I have yet to see this actually happen as well since common sense usually kicks in when the stage designers are setting up the stage and realize that the target is beyond the 180 in the only place it can be engaged. The "As and When visible" portion of the rule is what gets everyone's nickers in a twist because it can be interpenetrated in different ways. My interpenetration of "As and when visible" means the first time the target can be seen. If a target is first seen and is with the 180, its good to go. If you choose to run past a target, look up range to find it AGAIN then point your gun at it breaking the 180, then you will be rewarded for your stupidity with a DQ. This is a big kid game with big kid rules. We can't put a seat belt, airbag, or warning label on everything. Shooters need to take 100% responsibility in keeping their guns pointed down range at all times. If you can't keep from pointing your gun up range then its time to find a different shooting sport to participate in. To clear this rule up I think NROI should define what "As and when visible" really means. Is this when you first see the target within the COF? Is the "visibility" restricted to the confines of the 180? Is this being able to see a target anywhere within the COF beyond the 180?

I am working on making a truly "Flat" shooting Open gun setup right now. Its close, but not quite there right now. I think it is possible to produce a near zero dot displacement Open Major setup. But it takes a crap ton of objective observation while shooting, troubleshooting and retesting. Not many people are willing to put in that much effort to find a truly "Balanced" setup. I am finding that more often than not shooters tend to jump on one bandwagon or another and simply roll with however it ends up shooting. That isn't a bad thing as finding a setup that works reliably is good. But working "good" and fine tuning to make it work "Perfectly" are two totally different things.

This Saturday it was too cold to shoot outdoors plus I had to do some wrenching on my car during the semi decent weather we had. Later in the day I was able to do some hammer spring and firing pin stop testing at Rick’s shooting into his bullet trap. We tried a bunch of different configurations using the 124gr HS6 loads. The best combo ended up being an 18lb hammer spring with a rounded firing pin stop and a 7lb recoil spring. The 18lb hammer spring took out a lot of the excessive slide speed so it wasn’t slamming into the back position super hard. I had to switch the 8lb recoil spring with a 7lb after that to eliminate the slide snapping back forward bounce of the muzzle. There is still a little bit of muzzle flip and post shot bounce with this setup but I think it’s about as good as it’s going to get with the 124gr bullets. I was able to try Rick’s Open gun with a normal plastic grip with the same ammo and the dot noise was dramatically worse. I think that the extra weight in the metal grip does a good job of damping the overall vibrations during shot and this reduces the dot noise. I also got my #3 Limited blaster back from Rick as he worked his Cerakote magic on it. I went with the same Black Slide and Burnt Bronze frame/grip setup and it looks great. Now I have three Limited blasters that all look the same. I was able to get the #3 blaster back together and ready to test out. Since I had to remove and replace the sights I needed to sight it in and planned on doing that on Sunday. Once I get this bad boy sighted in I will run it at a few matches and practice sessions to make sure that its still ready to rumble. It will be nice to have two fully functional Limited blasters that are ready to rumble. The #1 Limited gun is getting a new slide to fix the accuracy issues so that one is still out of commission for a while. On Sunday I was able to head down to Pueblo for their club match and the weather was nice. It was a little cool in the morning but there wasn’t any wind so it was not bad at all. Since I still haven’t figured out the Open gun ammo I decided to shoot Limited. I bought my #3 Limited gun and the Open gun to play around with at some point during the match. The stages for this match were a lot of position to position stop and go type of movement with a lot of targets setup close to the 180 so you couldn’t move through the positions. This is the typical stage design flavor at this match so it was to be expected. I shot the match fairly solid with only a couple of small issues. There were several stages with some difficult shots so I decided to aim hard and not go blast crazy for this match and I was rewarded with a clean match with zero D zone hits. Not donating any D’s, Misses or No Shoots to the competition was nice. When our squad got backed up behind another I was able to get my #3 Limited gun sighted in. It only needed a slight windage adjustment which was nice. Then on the next stage we got log jammed behind the squad again so I decided to reshoot a large field course with the Open gun using the 124gr bullets. I used the exact same stage plan as my Limited run so I would have a fair apples to apples comparisons. I was able to shoot the stage 2 seconds faster with the same quality of hits as the Limited run. That was with a couple of extra shots on steel as well. The interesting thing is that I didn’t “Feel” like I was shooting faster with the Open gun. I actually felt like I was shooting slower because I had to wait for the dot noise to settle down before I could break the next shot. If I can get the dot noise settled down even more with the 115’s then it should allow me to break the next shot even sooner. Either way it was fun to shoot the Open gun on a stage and get a valid comparison to Limited. Open runs should be 10% - 15% better than Limited based on my research of major matches so it’s looking like I am on track. But this is only one data point so it really can’t be considered a “trend”. On Tuesday we are planning on testing 115gr + HS6 powder setup with this new spring combo to see how it runs. Hopefully this will be the perfect combination so I can settle on a bullet weight and then start fiddling with powder drops to fine tune the load. The process continues………….

I am glad that you liked my article and found some value in it. I re-read the article and still believe 100% of what I wrote. The only thing that I have changed in my own iron sight setup since then is to switch from a Neon Green to a Neon Orange fiber in my front sight. The Neon Orange is a little better in the less than optimal lighting conditions for me. I e-mailed this article to the Front Sight people three times and never heard anything back from them. I always see them begging for more content to be submitted for the Front Sight, but continue to ignore stuff I submit. I may not be the best writer, or the best shooter, but I at least know what I am talking about from experience. I guess a no name chump from Colorado isn't popular enough to grace the pages of the Front Sight. Their loss.

Last night I was able to do a bunch of testing with ammo and springs. Initially my Open gun had a 6lb recoil spring and 15lb hammer spring. When shooting the 124gr HS-6 ammo this resulted in excessive dot “Noise” and leaving the glass during the shot. I knew that the 6lb recoil spring was too light, so I switched it out with a 9lb. The 9lb calmed the dot noise down, but it produced a post shot slide slamming back forward dip of the dot. I then tried a 7lb and 8lb recoil spring to find a nice middle ground and the 8lb recoil spring produced less not noise and the dot stayed on the glass through the whole cycle of the gun. I then shot some 115gr HS-6 ammo and it reduced the maximum dot deflection but increased the dot noise. The 124gr ammo seemed to produce a more pronounced “Push” felt recoil than the 115gr ammo. This makes sense as the same recoil feeling difference is observed when shooting lighter bullets of pretty much any caliber. I took some slow motion video of both bullet weights and the whole gun is displacing more with the 124’s vs the 115’s. But I think the majority of that is due to using too light of a hammer spring. During the shot the slide is coming back and slamming into the rear most position at a very high velocity. A heavier hammer spring or less rounded firing pin stop will be needed to absorb some of the initial slide velocity so that it’s not hitting the back position super hard. I need to do some more testing with heavier hammer springs and different angled firing pin stops to get the slide speed properly tuned. The good news is that the HS-6 powder seems to be the best so far from a gas vs comp perspective. I didn’t observe the excessive downward dart of the dot at the break of the shot like I did with the Autocomp powder. So far it’s looking like the HS-6 powder is going to be a good balance of gas vs comp vs grip. The bad news is that I still need to do some more spring and load testing to get the overall gun displacement and post shot attenuation minimized as much as possible. Currently it’s moving around more than my Limited gun which needs to be resolved. If a comped Open gun has more muzzle flip and movement than a Limited gun that isn’t a good thing. I will get it figured out, it will just take some time and testing. I still want to test out the 135gr and 147gr bullets to see what they do when pushed at major PF speeds. But based on my 115gr vs 124gr testing its seeming like the lighter bullets are going to work better because there is less mass to deal with during the shot. We will see how it goes. I still have a goal of zero dot movement during the shot. I know this is a lofty goal and there will always be some dot movement due to scope and scope mount movement but I still want to try to eliminate as much dot movement as possible.

Page 87 of the USPSA Handgun Rule book answers your question

I have PT stainless smooth grips on all of my 2011's. I prefer the smooth grip surface because I can add grip tape where I want it for more friction traction. I have handled and shot the "Textured" and "Aggressive Textured" versions. The "Textured" version is fine but I still felt that normal grip tape produced more friction than the machined pocket texturing. The "Aggressive Textured" grip is way to aggressive for me. I can't even grip the gun with my normal firm grip pressure without it actually hurting. I am sure it would produce more friction type of traction on your hands than grip tape, but if you can't grip the gun hard because it hurts, then it defeats the purpose. One advantage to the PT grips is that you don't need to use proprietary Magwells, Main Spring Housings, or Mag Releases. Standard STI components work with the PT grips. The SVI and CK grips use proprietary parts which does limit your options. As others have already said, test drive the different grips to see which one fits your hands the best and go from there. Just keep in mind that certain grips have a smaller aftermarket or optional hardware choices to fine tune it as you see fit.

I can see this new trigger being a nightmare to setup in a 2011 where the trigger is in the plastic grip and the sear/hammer is in the frame. With plastic 2011 grips there will always be grip on frame movement while shooting and this movement needs to be accounted for when setting up the Pre/Over travel of the trigger bow. If this new trigger eliminates all of the excessive Pre/Over travel then the depth of sear engagement will be all over the place as the plastic grip moves around while shooting. For 1911's that have the grip and frame as one solid piece of metal this trigger would be great. But for a two piece Frame/Grip setup of a 2011, I don't think it would be very reliable. Even Metal grips on 2011 frames move around while shooting so switching to a metal grip wouldn't "Solve" the two piece movement issue.

Last night I was able to finish up the setup of the Ghost holster and get it positioned properly on my shooting belt. I think this holster will work out but there is the potential of it digging into my leg at one point like most race holsters do. I really won’t know how bad it is until I wear it all day at the range. I did a little bit of dry fire with the setup and it will work pretty good once I get use to it. I had to do some grinding on the safety levers to keep them from digging into my hand and also reduce the length of the slide racker. It’s a little strange to “Feel” the slide racker and back of the C-More with my hand/thumb while grabbing for the gun aggressively. I feel like I have to position my thumb in a specific place to sneak it in between the C-More and the safety. I guess that should be expected when going from Limited to Open where the Limited gun does not have any extra parts to get in the way of appendages. The good thing is that I am yet to do any “Dot Hunting” during draws. I did freestyle, strong hand, and weak hand draws and every time the dot was right in the center of the glass when the gun was fully mounted at the end of the draw. I guess all of the hard work of honing in my gun handling mechanics with the Limited gun are paying off. The weight of the Open gun is different than the Limited so that is a little strange feeling while dry firing. I still need to make up some dummy rounds so I can dry fire with a normal weight magazine and that should bring the feeling of it back to “normal”. I will still need a bunch of dry fire with it to get use to avoiding the C-More with my thumb and looking for a Dot instead of an Iron front sight. Tonight I am going to test out some 124gr + HS6 loads at the indoor range. I will also test out some different recoil springs to see what that does to the dot tracking. It will be interesting to see what all of this does to the tracking of the dot.

I got some more goodies in the mail yesterday for the Open gun. A Ghost “The One” holster, Recoil Springs, and another Magwell. I had to do some minor fiddling on the Open gun to swap the magwell and tune the pinned grip safety. The trigger still needs a little bit of work to clean up the break but I want to shoot it some more before I dive into that. I spent most of the night wrenching on the Ghost holster. It comes with two muzzle perch brackets of different lengths and one is too short and the other was too long for the Open gun. I had to take the long bracket and drill/tap a new hole lower down then cut off the excess of the bracket so it could be adjusted to engage the front of the comp like it should. Then I noticed that the brass screw lock/unlock assembly in the trigger guard was screwed in deeper than the side wall of the plastic holster frame in the trigger guard channel. This was rubbing on the side of the trigger guard leaving brass marks on the trigger guard. That won’t do, so I removed the brass screw and cut down the depth of it. Now the trigger guard isn’t rubbing on the brass portion of the lock and only the plastic side of the holster channel. After making these modifications the Open gun fits into the holster perfectly and is securely locked in place when the holster is locked. It was fun wrenching on the holster to get it to work right, but a little unsettling to know that right out of the bag it requires a bunch of unconventional wrenching to make it work. You would think that a $150 Race Holster would be ready to go right out of the bag, especially one that is designed for a specific type of gun. Since I spent several hours wrenching on the holster fit to make it work properly I didn’t get a chance to actually mount it on my shooting belt and tweak the angles to my liking. I will dig into that tonight and see how it goes. I put some spacers in between the belt mounting plates so I can slip it on/off the shooting belt. This will allow me to easily remove and replace the Blade-Tech/Boss Limited Holster with the Ghost holster while using the same shooting belt. In a pinch I could probably use the Ghost holster with the Limited gun but the muzzle perch is too far down to engage the barrel. It retains the Limited gun by the trigger guard but there is a little bit of flopping around due to the muzzle not being retained. I am looking forward to continuing the fiddle session with this holster tonight so I can actually see how well it fits me while on the belt. It will also force me to do some Dry Fire with the Open gun which is a good thing.

No problem buddy. I don't mind "Panda Proofing" the stages before the match starts to make it fair and fun for everyone. If we all pitch in and do our part to help the matches happen its a lot more enjoyable.

Last night I attended the Whistling Pines indoor USPSA match. We had four stages of mostly close blasting type of shooting. I did pretty good on the field course stages but shot like a donkey on the classifier. I racked up two misses and a no shoot on the classifier which wasn’t good but I couldn’t see my sights that well and tried to push the speed. Those things don’t mix well. Oh well, it is what it is. I had fun shooting with friends and that’s really all that matters. I have a little more fiddling to do on the Open gun to get the trigger just right but other than that it should be ready to rumble. Rick checked it out to see how things were wearing after the weekend and he said everything is looking good so far. I need to shoot it quite a bit more to really see how its breaking in and determine solid functionality. I am planning on doing some more load testing with the 124gr bullets this week and I will try to get some slow motion video of the recoil as well. We will see how it goes. In the mean time I need to get the holster and mag pouches setup and debugged so I can actually use this bad boy in a match. I am going to try the Ernie Hill race holster to start off with, but I also got a Ghost “The One” holster to try out as well. Both should be able to work with my Limited gun as well so I can switch back and forth easily.

This is a good example of knowing the rules as a competitor will improve your match experience and performance. Many shooters don't realize that they can request that a popper be calibrated before they shoot the stage. If you observe other shooters hitting a piece of steel with solid hits in the calibration zone and its not going down but the shooters hammer it down with multiple shots, then simply call for the steel to be calibrated before you shoot the stage. As a competitor I have only had to call for a calibration prior to shooting the stage twice out of a crap ton of matches I have attended. But in both instances the steel failed calibration and needed to be readjusted. As a Match Director or Range Master I do my best to ensure that the steel is adjusted properly and set it up so it won't require adjustment throughout the match. Proactively having all of the steel shot with calibration ammo in the morning and at lunch break on each day of the match goes a long way in maintaining proper calibration. Then placing heavy poppers on a small sheet of plywood works wonders in keeping it from digging into the dirt and requiring repeated adjustment to keep it calibrated properly.

My buddy Dominic hooked me up with some 135gr bullets to try so now I have 124, 135, and 147 bullets to try out. That should give me enough bullet weight options to balance the bullet weight/gas to the comp. My goal is to have the comp basically keep the gun from muzzle flipping but not go negative. If I can keep the dot centered in the glass with a "Buzz" oscillation/movement during the shot with my normal firm grip that would be awesome.

Shadow> I may be pushing the gun down just before or during the shot, but I doubt it. Especially when I can observe a better/worse downward dart of the dot shooting different loads that produce more or less gas. The other thing I observed is that if I grip the gun with less pressure, then the dot dips less and eventually tracks upwards if I use a really weak grip. When I shot these different loads I am in "Group Shooting" mode using a very refined trigger pull and keeping consent observation of the dot during the whole process. I could be pushing the gun down to attempt to manage the recoil, but I doubt it. If I do its usually post shot as the slide is cycling and I would think that a dot tracking path would be UP, then Down. So far what I have observed is the dot starting in the center of the glass and then going straight down from center when the shot breaks, unless I grip the gun like a wussy. I am planning on doing some slow motion video of these different loads so I can actually see what is really happening when the gun fires.

Thanks for the offer. I might hit you up for some during my testing. So far I have 124's to try and a few 147's to try as well.

This weekend was super busy with gun wrenching, practice, and match shooting. I was able to get the trigger job, grip tape, and extended mag release done on the Open gun to make it totally shooting ready. On Saturday I was able to shoot about 100 rounds through it for the initial break in. The good news is that it functioned flawlessly with zero jams using four different magazines. I even shot it with minor Production ammo and that even worked without any feeding issues. The bad is that the Major PF ammo was producing too much gas and the comp was making the dot fly off the glass straight down. I need to do some extensive ammo testing with this bad boy to figure out a balance between bullet weight vs gas volume to get the dot tracking properly at Major PF velocities. All I know right now is that the 115gr bullets with Autocomp, HS-6, and Vectan SP2 are all producing too much gas. I am going to do some testing with heavier bullets (124gr & 147gr) and HS-6 to see if I can get the dot tracking properly. I don’t want to start changing the comp its self until I have exhausted all of the ammo options. I am sure I will also need to do some fiddling with the recoil and hammer springs to get it totally dialed in but I don’t want to screw around with that until the ammo is at least in the ballpark. This is going to take a while but it will be fun to get it all figured out. I also had a chance to test out the #1 Limited gun with the bushing barrel to see if the taller front sight brought the POI back down to where it should be. Unfortunately it’s still about 1 inch high at 10 yards. The real bummer is that I am at the limit of front sight height without feeling like I actually have to point the gun differently to align the sights. I could probably lower the rear sight and get the POI where it needs to go, but then it would require pointing the gun at a strange angle to make the sights line up. This is not a very good situation from a backup gun perspective. I need all of my Limited guns to be the “Same” so I can pick up any one of them and simply shoot it without needing to actually change how I am gripping it or pointing it. The next plan of attack is to replace the slide and see if that fixes the POA/POI deviation issue. We will get this thing figured out eventually. On Saturday I pulled together some friends and we went out to do some live fire practice. We setup a long field course stage and shot it a bunch of times. We shot the stage one section at a time doing it three times before we added the next section and shot that three times. It was a challenging stage with a lot of aiming, moving, and needing to hit specific shooting positions. It was tuff and fun at the same time. I shot over three hundred rounds and it was a lot of fun shooting with friends. After the practice we fired up the grill and had an awesome BBQ lunch in the range club house. Much blasting was had and bellies were full by the end of the day. Doesn’t get much better than that in my book!!! On Sunday I attended the local USPSA Club match at the Aurora Gun Club. For the first day of November the weather was great. It was a little overcast in the morning and I was battling seeing my sights on the first couple of stages. I racked up two misses on one stage, then another miss on the stage we finished on. Two of the misses I called as bad shots but I was already exiting the position and didn’t have time to make it up. One of the misses was totally uncalled because of the lighting and trying to point shoot at targets. Even though I had some misses I shot fairly solid and had fun. It was great that the weather cooperated with us this weekend so we could have some blasting fun in the sun. I am going to the Whistling Pines match down in Colorado Springs tonight for some more blasting fun. Then this coming week I am going to work on some Open ammo to see if I can figure out a bullet weight vs powder combo that is balanced to the comp and my grip of the gun. I am sure I will be in full “fiddle” mode for the next several weeks getting this open gun tuned up and optimized.

I picked up my Open Gun from Rick yesterday................. I will get a chance to run some ammo through it this weekend to break it in and what not. I still need to do some fiddling on it to suit my needs and also figure out ammo, holster, etc so it will be a while before I am rocking this bad boy in a match. But its good to have it in hand to start the adventure.

Setup that same stage in practice and figure out which way is the best way to shoot it.