Boom-Boom

I've shot Tac Pro, Tiger Valley, TDSA, and CCIDPA. I've also shot the TX State 3Gun in San Angelo. Dallas Pistol Club also holds a shotgun match every 2nd sunday. Tac Pro is a good match for the tactical minded, but twice a year isn't often enough. They have had good prize tables in the past. I like Tiger Valley in Waco, nice range facilities and crew, but so far not well attended. Nice stages. They have a match this weekend. TX State 3Gun in San Angelo is the 3Gun match to shoot in TX. Alex let me shoot his USAS12 after the '03 match. Worth the price of admission.

Speed Shooters also sells the DMW tube extension collar for $28: DMW Benelli collar for tube extension - Collar needed for post ban Benelli's to attach tube extension - made by DMW I have a 2001 postban M1S90, so do I need this to use the DMW 10rnd extension? My +4 Benelli OEM tube came w/ a collar. Does the threading on the DMW tubes not match the Benelli collar threading and therefore I would need the DMW collar? Also what length spring do I need for the 10rnd tube? Can I use the same one from my +4 (7rnd) tube?

Bill Wilson sponsored an IDPA 3gun match at his home range in Arkansas a few years ago. I went to the first one. Rule's were kind of iffy since it was kinda ad hoc. Any rifle you could haul up to the line could be used, shotguns could only hold 8 rounds max, no comps or ports, no tec-loaders, and any IDPA approved handgun. They were just trying out 3gun so the rules were pretty loose. I shot an AR15 that would be considered Open class in USPSA (JP tank brake w/ red dot), my limited class M1S90, and an STI 9mm. Most everyone else was new to 3gun and were shooting whatever they had in the closet. I walked away w/ the ESP plaque and Bill won CDP. They had another one the following year, which I didn't go to, and then the third year they tried to have it, they couldn't call it an "IDPA" 3gun match because there were no sanctioned rules. I don't think they've done it since. Most IDPA clubs that host a 3gun match make up their own rules based loosely on IDPA handgun scoring and other input from their local members and their range facilities.

During your regular dry fire practice (everyone dry fire practices, right?) setup the classifier in your house and "shoot" it just like you would on the range. Use 8" paper plates for targets. Make everything identical (magazine swaps, mental prep, ammo management, etc.) Since the classifier is several short strings of fire that require certain mag capacities, plan what mags to use and where you are going to top off mags. Nothing breaks your concentration or rythm worse than wondering if you have the right number of rounds in your mag. The classifier is also a group of specific shooting techniques. Dry fire practice each technique until it's smooth (not fast, just smooth). If you have a timer and can time your techniques, you can add up all your splits and estimate what your classifier score will be (minus points of course).

On the top of pg 30 in the final rule book: "ALL VERISIONS OF THE IWB STYLE HOLSTER ARE APPROVED FOR IDPA COMPETITION." So all you have to do is wear another pair of pants and another belt ontop of your current holster and it magically becomes an IWB.

It was 95deg and 79% humidity at last weekend's match. I wore a Cool Stuff brand long sleeve shirt that is marketed towards motorcycle riders (my other hobby). You're supposed to wear it underneath your body armor against your skin. It uses phase changing filaments weaved into the fabric to regulate skin temperature. The filaments in the cloth contain phase change "bubbles" that stay solid below 90deg and change to liquid above that. Your body releases heat through your skin to regulate core body temp and the shirt absorbs that heat so it feels cool against your skin. When your skin temp drops below 90deg, the shirt releases the heat back to your body so it feels warm. http://www.motocoolstuff.com/technology.htm# So back to the match. A couple people gave me grief about wearing long sleeves on a hot day before I told them what the shirt was. During the course of the match I noticed I wan't perspiring as much as I normally do. The shirt can only absorb so much heat so on really hot days your skin temp may go higher, but the shirt helps delay dehydration through sweating. The shirt also uses synthetic fibers to wick away perspiration to give evaporative cooling as well like the Underarmor shirts.

Anyone else catch the S&W IDPA Winter Championship on Jim Scouten's new show on OLN? I have Tivo recording all the episodes. I especially liked Todd center punching the no-shoot while they were filming his run. Even GM's make mistakes. He still won the match.

Benelli removed the ghost loading capability on postban guns. You'll have to find a preban gun if you wanna try it. It is not something that can be done fast from slide lock. If you really wanna get 9 rounds, buy an 8+1 tube and you'll always have 9 available, but the tube will stick out past your 18.5" bbl.

So Benny, After cost of the gun, plus mag ext, plus having the barrel cut and chokes installed, and all the machining and work to lighten the bolt and tweak the springs to get it reliable for low recoil slugs, what was the grand total? I'm guessing somewhere in the neighborhood of $800? Still cheaper tha a stock M1S90. Was it worth all the effort? When are you gonna start building them up for the rest of us?

I'm glad the thread I started has gotten this much interest, but I still wanna know if it'll take the benelli extended mag tubes.

It's tough being a stage designer/MD/SO and try to please all the shooters. Someone will always get hacked at something you do. Keep up the good work and keep asking good questions like the ones above. Also when designing stages, try to figure out how a SSR/CDP/SSP/ESP shooter would do it. Then figure out how a NV/MM/SS/EX/MA would shoot it. People will interpret a stage differently depending on their skill level and equipment. Most of the stages I design are for revo shooters since it's easier for auto shooters to accomodate than it is for revo shooters.

For your second post, unfortunately, IDPA believes that you have to retain an empty mag if you still have one in the chamber, so you were correct. It is to dissuade round counting and round dumping.

According to the rule book, the procedural would have been justified because he moved from one cover position to another w/ an open cylinder. However, I think this is better described as poor stage design. The stage forces shooters to leave a cover position to retrieve ammo required to finish the stage. If it was an auto shooter and he took make up shots and emptied his gun on T4-6, he would also have to leave cover with the gun out of battery (slidelocked) to retrieve ammo at st2 and he would've gotten a procedural as well. I wouldn't have given him a procedural, because I would've done the same thing he did. When a gun's empty, it's just a paperweight, reload it as fast as you can even if you have to break cover. But I'd fix the stage design first.

Let me take a stab.... force = mass * acceleration So removing mass will reduce the force if the acceleration is constant. However, the hammer spring is what provides the energy to accelerate the hammer and w/ less mass, it is easier for the spring to overcome inertia to accelerate the hammer. This leads to faster lock times (good thing), but not necessarily reduced striking force. So my guess is that hammer spring weight has more to do w/ primer ignition than hammer mass. If you have good ignition w/ the hammer spring setup you have, you will probably have good ignition after you bob the hammer.

IDPA does not allow loading more than 6 rounds in the gun for revolver class. You can use a 7 shot 686+, but no moonclips are allowed and you'll have to leave a charge hole empty in you're speedloader. Nothing like going BANG ,BANG, click, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG.

As Duane noted, the tabs are to keep you from pushing the mag too far up into the gun which will cause the slide to hit the feed lips and cause bad things to happen to cycling and bend your feed lips. Since the officer's models have shorter grip frames, the wilson 10 rounder for the officer's model has a stop that fits these grip frames. So that's why they won't fit in full size frames. Normally Wilson denotes their officer model only parts w/ an "OM" after the standard part number. To get wilson 10 rounders that will fit a full size govt frame, you need to order the part that does not have the OM after it.

I called Choate last year and they told me that they make a youth/body armor straight stock for the M1S90 that has a shorter LOP than the factory benelli stock, but he couldn't tell me what the LOP was and it doesn't show up on their website. You could try to get more specifics from them. I think I've decided to just get the factory stock shortended and have a better recoil pad fitted to make up for my short arms.

Easter weekend's gonna be hard for me as well. The Dallas shooters that came w/ me last year will not be making it. Too bad since it would've been fun to shoot w/ the LA crowd again. Those trophies they gave out last year were awesome.

Thx, Phil.

Anyone know if Dave makes moonclips for the 646? The ones that S&W makes will not hold any kind of brass tightly. I hate floppy moons. Anyone know how I can get in contact w/ him at Hearthco?

I thought I'd resurrect this thread since Underworld is now out on DVD. W/ the DVD I could pause, slo-mo, and rewind just to get all the nuances of the movie. First the guns: Kate uses Berretta 93r's w/ comps in 3rnd burst mode in alot of the close up, slow mo gun fight scenes. I guess the directors wanted us to see lots of brass in the air and lots of muzzle flash. She also uses Walther P99's when she's dispatching werewolves coup de gras style. In a few of the scenes that she uses the P99's, she's shooting semi-auto, but it sounds like multiple rounds go off. Those clever sound guys. She only uses the USP once during the firing range scene and then Kraven uses it at the end to shoot Lucian. Then of course the other cool gun was the Desert Eagle loaded w/ liquid sunshine. I had to roll my eyes at that one. Anyone notice that it is never daytime throught the whole movie? Anyone notice that you couldn't tell what country they were in? England? America? Eastern Europe? Anyone notice that the vamps cast reflections? I guess the directors thought everyone would be too mesmerized by Kate's leather clad bod to notice any of that. They were right.

The simple answer is that it goes to the ground. There are issues if you have a bad reload and rounds get hung up in your speed loader and you drop the loader and live rounds on the ground. The finer points of IDPA rules discussion says that you cannot leave live rounds behind and in this case an RO might ding you. There's another place in the rule book that says you can leave live rounds in the case of a malfunction. Whether or not the RO dings you depends on the RO, their interpretation of the rules, and the match. Just drop the speed loader and argue leaving live rounds after the stage is over. Most RO's are more lenient to revo shooters because they feel the rules are slanted towards auto shooters. That's until you smoke 'em enough times w/ the round gun.

I don't think anyone has mentioned the final gunfight in "Way of the Gun". It's a better shootout scene than Heat or Ronin. The gunfights in Heat and Ronin were a bit contrived. The last scene in "Way of the Gun" looked like the way a real gunfight might go down (eveyone gets hit, everyone reloads, nothing goes right, and there's never enough cover). The movie sucked, but the gun handling scenes are top-notch. Best use of a 50 BMG rifle : US Navy SEALs - Bill Paxton w/ a Barret: "God here..." Best use of an open gun: Wesley Snipes in "Rising Sun", or the assassin in Ronin with the wicked open Glock.

Nick, The 126mm SV mags are the one's to get for IDPA. As far as basepads, it depends on the magwell you get. A good combo is the SV magwell and the aluminium wedge shaped base pads that SV used to make. You may have to hunt around to find them, but the wedge shape makes a Govt length gun fit in the IDPA box. Another combo that works is the plastic STI pads w/ the plastic locking baseplate. Some have to be beveled to seat w/ most magwells. You'll have a problem getting positive seating w/ the 126mm magtubes and any deep/wide magwell. For IDPA it's better to have a shallower magwell (like the SV) and a properly shaped pad. Avoid basepads that are square in front. STI makes these and they will not allow a Govt length gun to fit in the box. If you don't use a magwell, any of the non-extended basepads will work. I have a commander length STI ESP gun so I don't have to worry about fat basepads or deep magwells being too big for the IDPA box. You can't use 140mm mags in IDPA, they won't fit in the box and they extend past the magwell. Some basepads will add capacity to 128mm tubes to make them hold as many as the 140mm so that's another option. You could use 126's and then swap basepads for IDPA and USPSA.

The switch hand reload is great if you have both hands on the gun to start out with, but what if you were shooting strong hand only, weak hand only, or grabbing an unloaded gun off a table and having to load it. In most situations, I do the switch hand reload, but in other situations that require my weak hand to do something else, I keep the gun in the strong hand to reduce the amount of motion both hands are doing. You may not always have the opportunity or ability to switch hands so learn a couple different techniques, practice them, and work them into your shooting style.