Doug S

I have the LW barrel and Carver 9mm major comp on a Gen 4 G17 and it works great with both major and minor loads. I have a LW guide rod and 13 lb recoil spring. I have ran 138 pf and a 168 pf through this gun and both have been flawless. I also used a CCF slide and Glockworx Ultimate trigger. I like shooting the 9mm so much that I just ordered a STI/Dawson enhanced Steel Master! All my other competition pistols are on STI frames so I only have to have 1 belt set up. My son has a SJC G17 with the KKM barrel and the SJC comp and we don't notice any difference in the recoil or accuracy. Both of these G17's run a slide mounted optic and haven't had any problems with keeping zero'd. His has a JP and mine has an STS. Doug

JJ but watch out for Kelly, he has great basic skills for all types of weapons.

Lea, Thanks for posting the "conditional" list. Is there any chance of the handguns being added? Just wanted to check on how the legal battle for the handguns is going. Is there anything, as competitors, that we can do to help? Doug

Have her go to the Rio Salado range and check with them. It is in Phoenix and they have a great facility and I am sure they have instructors available. Doug

Check the reset on your Fulcrum trigger. I had the same problem with my Gen 4 until I gave it a little more room on the take up. I was getting a light reset and you could hear a click but FTF. This fixed my problem and haven't had a light hit since. You can go to the Glockworx page and find the videos for adjusting your trigger. Doug

I think that the COF should be designed with a advantage/disadvantage for each division. ie. put in long range rifle targets but don't have a sandbag to shoot from. This would give advantage to Open Class with a bi-pod. Put in short range handgun, head shot, targets that would be a disadvantage to Open Class. Each competitor chooses thier division and must live with the handicaps of that division. We also need to get away from too many short courses in our matches. USPSA has limited the amount of shots that can be required from one position, I think it is no more than 9 shots for the handgun. Why have a COF that requires shooting from one box but from three different positions and requiring mandatory mag changes after six shots? Are we trying to make revolvers as competitive as limited and open? We have the different divisions to level the playing fields, we don't need COF's that do it also. As for targets, they should all be easily identified. If they are going to be hidden in the trees, paint them white! We are there to shoot them, not hunt for them. They can still be difficult targets without being hidden. By all means, still use barriers, walls, trees,etc. but when you figure out the obstical, make the targets visible/shootable. COF designers, remember, keep designing challenging stages and let the different divisions "Level the Playing Field". Doug

I will still be there and I am pretty sure the rest of the Minot Squad will still be coming! As much as DPMS has supported the shooting sports, it would be bad manners not to attend! Plus, a 2-gun Challenge is still ALOT better than a NO-gun Challenge!!! Randy, Lea and DPMS, keep up the good fight, we are all with you. Doug

In the past we have watched our credit/debit card charges to find out. Then shortly after that we would get the notice from Lea/DPMS. Along with the notification packets,the match hotel is usually listed, so you can make reservations. Doug

I know they keep raising the bar, but one can always hope!

I got it in in 7 minutes! Hope that was fast enough! If I get in it will be the 4th year in a row, one more and hopefully I will become an auto invite!! Good luck to all, this is a GREAT match. Doug

Sounds like you have the complete list of parts,but give Dillon a call and they can get you everything you need. I have a SD and this is the best company I have ever dealt with! I bought mine used and had to replace some worn out parts and Dillon sent them out "Free of Charge". They mean it when they say they have a no BS guarantee. Doug

I don't have this problem, BUT, I turned my scope 90 degrees so that my power knob would be where I wanted it. You could try that and see if it would make your scope adjust to POI, just have to remember that your EL is now your AZ and your AZ is your EL?!?!? I also agree with Jadeslade, not really a good scope for an AR, mine is on a S&W AR 15-22 and sighted in for 50 yards. Any thing farther than that and the dot gets to big for accuracy. It might cost more but look in the Blue Press (Dillon Precision) for the Millett DMS. This is a good Tactical scope that has the dot and circle reticle. Around $250. Doug

Tim, Could you send me the info on setting up one of these matches? I will take it to our club and see if we can get one going in North Dakota. These seem like a lot of fun for the family and cheap for people to get into. Thanks, Doug

First off I would like to thank FN and the all the RO's for all their hard work to make this match happen. The RO's were outstanding! We, as shooters, only had to go through the mud on their stage once and while they had to go through them a couple hundred times. Great job on keeping your enthusiasm. FN, really good stages but I do have to agree with painting or marking the steel plates that are hidden in the shadows. Stage 10 would have been a fun stage if not for the mud and inability to see the targets. Maybe it should have had bigger targets that had to be engaged with slugs?!? Like big steel plates that didn't have to be reset!!!! Next, most of us travel a long way to SHOOT the match and not to game a stage. To those that just shot 6 quick shots on the long range targets, why go to a match if you don't want to shoot it? Our squad followed a squad of heavy metal shooters that took every shot and most of them hit the 400 yard bonus target with iron sights! I would rather watch someone try to make the hits over just getting a faster time by not even trying. Somebody said in an earlier post "Remember this is only a game" but the game is there to show everyone how good you are at shooting not just how fast you can get through a stage. I was a little disappointed that there wasn't an ALL FN gun stage. I had heard about this in past matchs and was looking forward to it, oh well, maybe nest year. Hopefully I will be able to make it back again next year. Even if it was a little bit on the damp side, it was still a fun match. Thanks again to FN, CMMG and all the RO's. Doug

I have the Winchester SX2 which is the same design and you can shoot the slugs through the 4 notch choke. Steel shot patterns 1 choke tighter than lead since the steel shot won't compress like lead shot will. The chokes that FNH supplies with thier shotguns are designed to handle steel shot and are made alot harder so they won't expand into the choke threads of your barrel. You could shoot slugs through either of your chokes but most of the guys I shoot with use the IC since they don't have to change chokes when they go back to shooting birdshot. My shotgun with the IC choke, off a rest, will shoot consistant 3 inch slug groups at 50 yards. If you still have doubts, e-mail FNH and they will let you know. They are a great company to deal with. Doug

I may have missed it in previous posts, but Front Sight magazine had 2 articles on different comps for the AR platform. I think that both articles appeared in the last year. There were sevearal different comps tested and all had thier good and bad points. I use a DNTC on my 16 inch, and I don't think that it reduces any recoil but my rifle doesn't rise at all. I have shooting partners that use JP comps, Cooley comps, Arredondo's, etc. and they all work about the same. Most of them bought them because they like the looks of them. I won mine at a match, tried it and liked it, so now I have been using it for 3 years and am completely satisfied. Again, try to find the articles in the FS mag, they had good info. Lots to choose from, Good Luck! Doug

Our club has a match every second Sunday of the month and on the second Friday, we have an intro to USPSA. We set up 2 short simple courses and have some of our local shooters teach and coach the safety and shooting fundamentals. We have a local shooter shoot the stage first (at a slower speed) then we show them how the stage is scored. When they get the chance to shoot it, we try to get them to go slow and get thier hits. After everyone has shot the stage once, we give them a chance to shoot it again at thier own pace. Our club charges for the indoor range intro but then we don't charge them match fees for thier first club match. Also at the club matches, we always put the new shooters at the bottom of the squads. This allows them to watch the stage and ask any questions before they shoot. We also encourage new shooters to shoot in Production since most new shooters don't have a modified gun, yet. Last month I had a long time friend shoot his first match and he had a blast! I will admit though, I pestered him for a loooong time and he finally gave in and came and watched a match. Then he shot the monthly intro match and regular match. He is already looking for a new pistol. Wait until we start 3 gun, his wife will really dislike me then! Doug

I moved back to Open in December and I don't think I will go back to Limited! I have shot 5 local matches since then and crashed and burned on the first match, then I have taken 1st or 2nd place in the other 4 matches! After the last match, all classifier, I am about .3% away from getting my "B" class. I have been shooting Limited for years and am still 4.5% away from "B" class. Old eyes, new dot, what a difference! I bought a used SVI Opengun to start with and just got another custom built (STI) one to continue with, the SV has the Tri-bred barrel and a Doctor sight melted into the slide. The sight being melted into the slide made the transition to Open alot easier since the dot is about the same height as iron sights. Also, the SV has the 6 inch slide which weighs about the same as my Edge making the feel and balance about the same. I offered to trade my son for his G17 opengun, then sell the Glock, but he won't part with his beloved Glock. So, my SV will probably go up for sale. If you are interested, send me a pm and I can send you pics and the price. Doug

If you have time, check out the Minot club. minotrifleandpistol.com Our calender is posted for all our matches. Doug

I have an SVI Open gun that has a 6 port, tribred barrel and a Doctor sight melted into the slide and if I wanted to make it a Limited gun all I would have to do is have a different top-end fitted to the frame. I don't have any sight mount holes drilled in the frame since mine is slide mounted. Go to the SVI home page and look at thier gallery, then contact Brandon with any questions. I'm sure he can help and this should be cheaper than a complete new gun. Good Luck. Doug

I installed one in my 16 in, fixed stock with a carbine length gas port and it has worked flawlessly for 3 years! My bolt locks back everytime when empty and I am not fast enough to notice the difference in the cyclic rate of my gun. I think it slows it down to 600 rounds a minute! My brother put one in his AR first and then we shot them side by side to see if it made a difference and the sharpness of the recoil was noticeably less in his rifle. That convinced me to buy one for mine and I wouldn't take it out now that I have it. Don't know if it is worth the money to you, but it was to me. Doug

Doug, Do I have this correct? Hold the pistol grip and push forward? Lisa, I use a push pull method. First insure you have the shotgun mounted in a snug mount, then pull back on the forend and push lightly on the pistol grip. Do not push hard enough to move the gun away from your shoulder because this will increase the felt recoil. What you are trying to achieve is to have your shooting hand and arm absorb some of the recoil. Another thing that my shooting buddy does to stop him from bruising is to use one of the PAST (I think that is what it's called) recoil pads that has its own harness. There is one made for female shooters that some how attaches to a bra strap so it stays in position. Some one also mentioned a 2 3/4 dram load, that is a very good idea but you might have to use a tighter choke to get harder hits on steel. I use the 100 round bulk Winchester 3 dram 1 oz loads in my auto-loaders and then if there are a lot of heavier plates I change to a 3 1/4 dram 1 1/8 oz load and I almost always use Improved Cyl. I thought I had read that your shotgun had a comp??? Are you shooting in Open division with a pump? Doug

Lisa, Your 870 will recoil all most always more than a semi-auto due to the fact that the action on the 870 is manually un-locked. Most semi's bleed off gas to actuate the action and the bolt is controlled by a recoil spring that is normally inside the stock. About the only way I know of to reduce the recoil of the 870 is to put a pistol grip stock on it. By holding onto the pistol grip and pushing forward, it will cause some of the recoil to be absorbed into your shooting hand and arm instead of your shoulder. All of the 870's in our agency have pistol grip stocks and it seems to help a little bit, though not alot. An advantage of the 870 is that it will run light loads since the action is manually operated. The 870 will run as fast as you can pump it, a semi will only run as fast as the action allows it to and may not function on light loads, since some of the gas has been bled off. The Benelli's, FNH's and Remingtons are very good choices for semi autos and used Remington 1100's can be found for around $300-400. There was one in the USPSA classifieds, 2 weeks ago, that was set up for open division and it sold for $450. You might want to consider selling yours and buying a used 1100. There are parts for these shotguns readily available and fairly inexpensive. I use a Winchester SX2 Practical (same as FNH) for Tactical and a Remington 1100 (that I bought for $325) for Open. I started with the 1100 in tactical and the only thing I added was the mag-tube extention, an Easy-loader and a set of fiber optic sights (about $120 more). When I converted it over to my open gun, I added a reddot sight and a speedwell/tec-loader (about $250 more). Probably not the answers that you wanted but hopefully they will help. Feel free to PM me if you have more questions. Doug

Jesse, We bought a used G17 open gun for my son and it came with a SJC frame mounted J-Point. My son wanted to go to a slide mount so we got one from JP and it is fantastic! The sight is as easy to find as iron sights and shoots flatter than my frame mounted J-Point on my STI. I also have a SV Infinity tri-bred with a slide mounted Doctor that also shoots flatter than the STI. We sight our pistols in at 10 yards on a 2 inch circle. At 10 yards we are dead center, at 5 yards we are in the lower half of the circle and at 15 yards we are in the top half of the circle. This makes it easy for dead on holds on most of our pistol stages. The Glock has a stainless guide rod and 8 lb spring, SJC major 9 comp, KKM barrel, ICE Magwell, J-Point 6 MOA (I think) dot and a J-Point slide mount and it will run on 125-170 PF without a spring change. We always put in a heavier spring for major loads to save abuse on the J-Point. It has been a great entry level open gun.

I have 2 open guns, an STI with a Caspian comp'd topend and a Infinity with the Tri-bred barrel. They are both in 38 Super and high quality (both were bought used from the classifieds on this site), but my next open gun will be in 9MM. I just returned from an outlaw 3 gun match that I shot with my Infinity and it hurt to leave my 38S brass laying on the ground. I pay between .10 and .15 for each 38S brass compared to about .03-.05 cents for the 9MM. In most non-USPSA 3 gun matches you need to nuetralize the target with 1 A/B hit or 2 hits anywhere on the target and it doesn't matter if you are major or minor power factor. Also, if you want to win most club matches, you need to shoot alot of Alphas and an Alpha with a minor PF is the same as an Alpha with a major PF. My 25 year old son shoots a G17/9MM Open gun that he can shoot a 125 PF or a 170PF without changing springs, so he can change the loads depending on the type match he shoots. If you decide to try the 9MM route, find a builder that can build you an open gun that will function in both PF ranges and most of all, HAVE FUN! Just my .02 worth. Doug