saibot
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Posts posted by saibot
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Sniper Match (1.12.14)
Knocked the spider webs off of the ole bolt gun today and hit a local sniper match. I haven't shot a bolt gun in quite a while but wanted to support some friends who were putting this match together. The weather was pretty nasty and the mud, well, there was a lot of it. I thought I'd be DFL considering how little bolt practice I've had in recent months and the people shooting here are some of the best shooters around. As luck would have it I wound up taking 6th (miracle) so I was shocked and pretty happy with that. I even got most of my brass back!
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So I bought a Zev magazine release and thought I'd post back about it, and what's different about it.
The good:
Very well made.
Ejects magazines much better than the OEM and extended OEM magazine release.
Very positive knurling keeps you from slipping off of it when you're in a hurry.
The bad:
Expect your magazine to eject unintentionally when picking up off of a table.
Too big in the wrong places.
I put it in for a while and love how well I can drop a magazine, but the thing sticks out too far on the wrong area and makes it eject magazines when laying it on the side or picking it up off of a table. Zev, if you're listening, this thing would be PERFECT if you angled the knurled surface the other way. Make the area torwards the frontstrap lower, like the OEM part. Keep it high in the area closer toward the backstrap. My thumb only makes contact with the very rear of it anyway, so the rest is just there to create issues.
You can see in the picture I took the difference in the OEM, extended OEM, and the Zev.
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USPSA Match (1.11.14)
Match day! We drove down to Albany for their excellent USPSA match yesterday and it was a ton of fun. Thinking back, the last USPSA match I got to shoot was in Albany two months ago which is just too darn long between matches. Nevertheless, it was well worth the drive, rain, and wind. I snapped right back into moving well and shooting on the move where it made sense. I did have a very tough time accurately calling my shots and tracking my sights. I've unfortunately got into the (bad?) habbit of looking through my sights instead of at them and it was reflected in my accuracy throughout the match. I did shoot very consistently which is a great milestone for me since I typically pooch up the first couple of stages and do well after that. No big mistakes but some little ones that would have made things a little better. The one glaring error was not reloading in between a couple of positions on one stage and had to do a standing reload for the very last shot since I missed a steel plate and had to take a make up shot. It would have cost me nothing to reload while I was moving. The other thing I did was miss a lot of steel. There really isn't any reason not to go 1 for 1 on the darn steel. I wasn't aiming hard enough on the poppers and missed quite a few of them over the course of the match.
Overall, a very good match for me but I certainly need more live fire. My accuracy is down and some of the skills I excel at in dry fire are still being performed using the old mental program.
I did take first for Production B class which was very satisfying even though there were only two of us shooting B class. But the person I beat almost always beat me in the past so we are always duking it out.
So it looks like all of the work is paying off to some extent. I do need to carve out my live fire practice and adjust my dry fire to work more on accuracy and front sight focus.
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Dry fire (1.10.14)
Hated to miss practice yesterday, but too much work going on. I did get to spend about 1.5 hours practicing tonight and started off missing all of my par times, but after a little bit I was getting them back down where they should be. Man, I hate the decay! After my "benchmark" stages I hit the Stoeger A and B drills, the lots of shooting on the move which had my sights bouncing around everywhere. I'll need to spend more time with that. Looking forward to my USPSA match tomorrow! It's been 2 months since I got to shoot USPSA and I'm hoping it goes well. My G34 had been giving me lot of light strikes, even with a heavier striker spring, so I don't know what's going on with it. It was dang filthy so I did a full teardown and cleaning. The trigger feel different for some reason and not so light. I hope it runs well for me tomorrow. Looking to see how all of the practice pays off. I hope I can make the connection between dry fire and live fire.
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Live fire (1.8.14)
I made it over to the local indoor range this afternoon and got to squeeze off 100 rounds, just shooting groups. They were pretty poor to be honest so I need to work on getting more live fire under my belt. I really like to get a bulk pack of .22 and shoot all 525 rds into little groups at the 25 ft line at the indoor rimfire range. It's always tightened up my groups in the past since my pistol skills seem to decay so quickly. I think I need to win the lotto so I don't have that whole work thing getting in the way of my shooting.
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Dry fire (1.7.14)
Blew the entire hour doing draws and reloads. Rinse and repeat. Still adjusting to all of the change lately and need to settle in a bit more. Pretty dull to read about for you guys. Sorry.
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Dry fire (1.6.14)
I had a really good 1.5 hours dry firing tonight, just having fun. I've been hitting pretty hard lately and it was starting to feel a little bit like work, so I did some of my favorite drills from the Ben Stoeger A and B drill pages. Lots of shooting on the move and just experimenting with stance and keeping the gun up high. Times were generally pretty good but it was more about just having fun. Looking forward to actually making a match this weekend! It's been too darn long.
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Live fire (1.5.14)
I made it out to the range today for some live fire practice today and to try out a G19 as well. I started out shooting groups with the G19 just to check for functionality and to warm up a little. Tried a little strong hand/weak hand shooting, went back to the G34 and did the Frank Garcia Dot Drill which is a butt kicker, some 20 yard practice on steel plates, and then practiced the IDPA classifier. I had a few screw ups and my shooting on the move has decayed a little more than I liked. And even though the sights just weren't tracking too well for me today from lack of live fire, I did beat my old time from the other time I tried the classifier. Today I shot it in 115.88 which I believe would make Expert. The 25 yard barricade shots just have me messing up my trigger pull and I have bunch of hits in the 7 o'clock area. I'm pretty happy with my time since I haven't shot much at all lately and assumed that I would shoot slower. My SHO/WHO shots were a mess, but luckily my speed was there and saved me on the rest of the strings. I also noticed that I really needed to squeeze the heck out of the gun with my support hand to get the sights to track correctly and it really tightened up my groups.
And one other neat note; Me and a friend were on Steve Anderson's "That Shooting Show" today to talk about the FaceTime Dry Fire Tune Up. That Podcast should already be available, if not, in the morning.
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Dry fire (1.4.14)
I got so much out of Steve Anderson's Tune Up that I hosted one for a friend of mine today. It was really cool to watch my buddy go through the same thing and knock a bunch of time off of his drills.
I did my usual drills tonight and just got right up on a target and started drawing to the head. It took a little while to get my grip and NPA to index perfectly again but I had a nice breakthrough building off of my Tune Up with Steve. It's hard to describe, but I "slowly" and smoothly get my hand on the grip, then I "snap" it up and out of the holster to the index point on the target, and OMG it's smoking fast!!! I was consistently drawing to a PERFECT A zone sight picture in .7!!! Hot damn!
/must remember the feeling...
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Brain Enos has a nice discussion in his Practical Shooting Book of impact of "tensing up" while shooting and the importance of shooting with focus but staying loose. While I understand what he is saying training your body to stay loose when that buzzer goes off is easier siad than done. I swear my IQ drops about 100 points in a match when the buzzer goes off! I really do some stupid ......
Good reference, Quag. I forgot about that and revisited that from his book. Funny how that happens to us all when the buzzer goes off!
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Dry fire (1.2.14)
I spent about an hour dry firing, starting with my "benchmark" stages which I blew the doors off of my normal cold times. Then I worked on building upon what Steve and I went over yesterday, trying to remember all of the little things he identified that I needed to do. Really trying to get back into that mode and recall the "feel" for lack of a better term. I got back to some nice draw times of .8 to the lower A zone. One thing I change with most of the drills I do is to make them harder than they actually are by increasing the distance and/or using smaller targets. I also will use the heads instead of the lower A for many of the drills to make up for the lack of feedback of dry fire. I always thought that I would be giving up something to increase my speed, but when I remove all of the inefficiencies and NOT TENSE UP, fast happens. I actually find my sights are rock solid when I go faster if I'm not tensing up.
I did find myself getting really sloppy trying to go too fast tonight and had to focus on staying loose and getting perfect A zone hits. Once I reeled it in just a wee bit I was doing great. My turn and draw from surrender was not what it was yesterday since I'm trying to remember all of the things he had me doing. Of everything I was doing, the turn and draw was the thing he changed the most and it's going to take me some time to perfect it and get it back to unconscious competence. Not a big deal, still .5 second faster than my best times prior to the Tune Up.
I practiced a ton of reloads really trying to get index on the magazine perfect. When I land on the mag correctly I nail the reload. If not, it's about 50/50. Did a bunch of El Prez's, shooting on the move, reloading and shooting on the move and finally the draw and transfer to the weak hand. Steve completely changed the way I did that, too. Way faster now, but I keep wearing the skin off of my weak hand thumb knuckle and bleeding all over the gun so with that, I called it a night.
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Sorry for the delay. Here is the link to my Dry Fire Tune Up with Steve Anderson:
http://www.recoilsports.com/2014/01/dry-fire-tune-up-with-steve-anderson/
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Dry Fire Tune Up with Steve Anderson (1.1.2014)
I received a Dry Fire Tune Up with Steve Anderson today and I have to say, it was probably the best money I've ever spent on training. The guy knows his stuff and got my times down significantly in very little time. There was just too much to try and post here tonight so I'm working on a blog post with more details and picture. I'll circle back and post the link when I finish up. It was a lot of fun and Steve is an outstanding coach. Looking forward to more training with him.
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Dry fire (12.30.13)
I spent about an hour dry firing tonight, starting with my "benchmark" stages. I have closed the gap between cold and warm performance it would seem. My cold times were well below my par times and actually just a hair faster than my warm times. I attribute that to most likely being tired from all of the drills tonight. I hit the Steve Anderson R&R book again tonight and really tried to be in acceptable sight picture mode while being fast. I laid down some blazing fast times (for me) and I'm sure my shots were A zone hits, some on the perf, but A zone none the less. I'm really hoping that I can connect with Steve on Wednesday. I finished up with a little shooting/reloading on the move and my "benchies." Good night of practice. Looking forward to getting some live fire and match time one of these days.
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Dry fire (12.29.13)
I had a really good night of dry fire tonight. My cold times on the "benchmark" stages were pretty good and I beat my par times. I then worked on about a half dozen of the Steve Anderson R&R drills, again, getting ready for my dry fire tune up (which looks like it's going to get pushed to Wednesday). I also worked on shooting on the move, weak hand shooting, and reloads while moving. I finished up with another round of my benchmark stages and probably had the best times I've ever had. Very fast!
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Speed on the draw (in most cases) is pretty worthless. The difference between mediocrity and fast is somewhere around .15 seconds. .15 seconds on a stage. Meaningless. Worth about 1 point on most stages.
OTOH, if you can reduce the target transition time by .10 of a second, and there are 10 transitions on a stage…now we are talking a real difference!
Indeed! Great advice, but why not speed up both?
Indeed! But not at the sacrifice of getting the correct grip on the gun to begin the stage.
Too many times while teaching I have had shooters tell me how fast their draw is or how fast they can shoot a split on an open target. Both things are fairly meaningless on the majority of the stages. The real work begins after stage analysis and understanding where the biggest chunks of time are spent, then coming up with a plan to reduce those numbers. I always remind them, (with very few exceptions) that you only draw the gun once on a stage.
I wouldn't argue with that statement at all! And actually with the little experience I have shooting I wouldn't argue with anyone here anyway.
I guess I would put the "super fast draw" as a component of shooting good classifier times since it seems that you have to go all zone 3 to get a good time on them (since the occasional "Hail Mary" gets lucky and pushes those out of match speed for the said class). Do you find you have a different draw speed for a classifier stage than you do for a field stage?
Thanks for the info!
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Just to follow up with this thread, I posted an update to my "Ultimate Production Glock" now that I'm 3 months in.
http://www.recoilsports.com/2013/12/three-months-in-glock-g34-update/
So far, it's been great and I'm happy I made the switch. I'm really looking forward to competing with it this next season.
Thanks again for all of the help getting this thing online!
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Speed on the draw (in most cases) is pretty worthless. The difference between mediocrity and fast is somewhere around .15 seconds. .15 seconds on a stage. Meaningless. Worth about 1 point on most stages.
OTOH, if you can reduce the target transition time by .10 of a second, and there are 10 transitions on a stage…now we are talking a real difference!
Indeed! Great advice, but why not speed up both?
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Dry fire (12.28.13)
I spent about 1.5 hours dry firing tonight getting some current par times by all of the drills from Steve Anderson's R&R book since I have a Dry Fire Tune Up scheduled with him on Monday! I'm hoping that he can identify my inefficiencies and errors so I can speed up my game and start kicking more butt. I watched a youtube video of him tuning up someone and it looked pretty amazing. I'm hoping for that kind of improvement.
I'll post an AAR from it once I've gone though it.
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I know more about IDPA than USPSA and that means almost next to nothing about both. IDPA was/is my first action pistol sport.I am only a Marksman but I'm still pretty new to IDPA.
I had an opportunity to participate in the 2103 BUG Nationals at S&W in Springfield MA but declined due to my lack of experience. My carry gun is a Walther P99AS compact. 3.5 inch barrel. Sweet gun. its all factory and no modifications and I'm keeping it that way. The guys running the nationals told me its ok. I sold my G19 (to buy the Walther) I believe the G19 has a 4 inch barrel. I think the BUG limit is 3.5 inches.
BUG matches are suddenly becoming popular. The nationals had a great turnout. Our local club Metro West Tactical is going to host a BUG match this year. Of course a number of us shoot our BUG guns in club matches for the hell of it. That way if we do not score well we have a built in excuse!
At the IDPA match I shot there was a couple of BUG stages that I shot with a G26. It was fun to try out a little BUG to see what I could do with it. I think they are going to put on a BUG match sometime and since it's just a club match I think I'll try it out if I can make it. And good point on having a built in excuse!
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Good call, Quag. I think my error was lack of live fire and not seeing the sights on the missed head (for stage 1). Stage 2 is just bad trigger control and the rapid decay of accurate shooting, especially at distance.
This was my first time trying out the classifier and I wanted to identify my weak point before attempting it officially. So I now know where I need to spend my time!
Ya, I hear you about the timer switching you to "doofus mode." I've had that happen, too. I really think all of the practice has really helped. It's not quite apparent in my scores yet, but I feel very confident in my abilities now and know what I'm capable of doing with a fair degree of accuracy. I've taken the "safe route" in matches where if I had known my capabilities I could have shot it a specific way that would have resulted in a much higher score, but opted for the safe way which is slow. Like running to the forward shooting area instead of engaging from the rear starting box.
Since you seem to know a lot about IDPA, do you know if a G19 is acceptable for a BUG stage?
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Great info guys! Glad to see I'm not the only one over thinking things on a regular basis.
I do have a good stance and NPA after tuning it a bit in dry fire and confirming with live fire. I spent quite a bit of time drawing to an upper A zone with my eyes closed, then opening my eyes and noting where the sights were. I had to grip the gun differently (rotating my hand in the direction that would have your thumb moving away from the mag release), as well as have my left foot a little forward of the right. I do find myself standing up too much and have to remind myself to keep my knees bent.
Anyway, I'm trying to do as you all have suggested and ingrain these mechanics into unconscious competency so there is no thinking on match day, so I want to get all of the mechanics perfect (as can be) and dry fire the bejesus out of them.
Of all of the pieces to learn, the grip has been the most wiley for me to master. I keep finding new things that change everything and never happy with any of it.
And great tip on the indexing!
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Live fire (12.27.13)
I went out to the range today for a little live fire practice with a friend of mine who shoots IDPA. He was gracious enough to run me through the classifier to show me what to expect. The first few shots were a little shaky and I pulled the first headshot just outside of the perf. Whoops. It's been a while since I did any live fire so the gun jumping caught me off guard and it took me a second to start tracking the sights. After that, I did pretty well. I would have shot master but that missed headshot pushed me down to expert for stage 1.
Stage 2 went pretty well, too and I shot a master time on it.
Stage 3 is where the wheels came off. It's hard to practice real trigger control in dry fire and even though the targets were only 20 yards I pulled enough shots to 7 o'clock that it really tanked my time. I also did a few bonehead things with my reloads since I'm just so used to USPSA. I should have easily made expert but all of those 7 o'clocks just tanked me and pushed me down just below expert with a 122.0.
I was great to take a crack at it see where I'd place if I actually shot it. Looks like I need to work on my long range accuracy. I shot groups at 20 yards and easily kept all of the rounds in the -0, so I know it's just me pulling the trigger.
Great to get out and send sound rounds downrange.
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I was reflecting a little on last night's dry fire session and something I noticed about my draw. I normally aggressively go for the pistol, then pull it and start to get it on target. I was experimenting with my draw and noticed something interesting that I'll try my best to describe. If I slowly/smoothly get my hand to the pistol, I can then "snap" the gun towards the target. It's a small thing but creates an entirely different draw/presentation. It "feels" more controlled overall and I bet I'd have less flubbed grips. I'll have to experiment with it more to see how it works out. The time doesn't seem to be any different like this.
Anyone ever notice this?
I've been constantly searching for a good starting point with my hands and how to index on to the pistol exactly the same every time, so any tips there would be great, too!
Gen 4 Zev Extended Magazine Release vs. Glock's?
in Glock
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One thing you can't really see in that picture is that there is a little less material on the inside where it contacts the magazine (opposite side of the button). That has is take a little less push to release the magazine. I was thinking about removing a little bit from my OEM extended to see if that would help me release it without extending the button too far out where it knocks out the mag unintentionally.