Lunchboxx

My customer service experience hasn't been anywhere near this good. I noticed the frame on my gun had a crack in it, along the slide rail by the safety hole. You can see it pretty clearly in this picture: I contacted EAA, explained the situation, and was told to send it in. They recieved it back in October. I've called more times than I can recall since then, and while I'm thrilled that they say they are going to replace the entire pistol, it has been over six months without any solid response. When I call, my inquiries are met with a "Yeah, it shouldn't be taking this long, let me get your number and I'll have a manager call you back." I've been told to expect a call back from a manager at least four times so far and have not recieved any calls from EAA. To be fair, yesterday morning I did get an email asking if I still wanted to use the FFL I had originally told them I was going to use back in October. I'm really hoping that this means I can expect something soon. It's a shame, really. I love the Tanfos and can't imagine shooting anything else. I've got very large hands and I feel cramped with the controls and trigger position on the STI and SVI platforms. Even the CZ offerings feel small to me.

Any chance we will be seeing any large frame base pads in black or silver before this coupon expires?

A torch and a table vise later, and it seems to be working just fine for now. I'm still going to order a replacement mag catch, but I feel a lot better knowing I should be able to go another weekend without issue. Thanks again for the help.

That's pretty much what I was thinking, thanks. I've got to see if I can snag a new release asap though, I'm taking Stoeger's class next weekend and would like to not worry about my mags falling out. Hopefully I can bend mine without snapping it or rendering it useless in the mean time. And I'm keeping my K40s, they're solid enough and I'm not about to go back to the whole "load long and maybe they'll feed THIS time" game.

While cleaning my Limited 40 the other day, I swapped my base pads onto new mags with new followers and springs. I inserted them all into the gun to ensure there were no hangups, and found that all of them easily came free with a small amount of wiggling and pulling. Fiddling with the mag release button I noticed it was ever so slightly loose, in that it would rotate a degree or two around the trigger bar. I've attached a video to show this off. Now, when I apply pressure to the non-button side of the mag release, securing it in place, the mags will not come out no matter how much I try. I took everything apart and tried stretching out the mag catch spring just a hair to see if that would fix it. There was little to no difference. I've got some old 10mm shiny black mags that do NOT have this issue, but my MG WIT 40-LF marked used mags, and my brand new unused K40 marked mags both easily drop free with a bit of wiggling. Is it just time to replace the mag catch and the spring with new ones or am I missing a potential bigger issue? Thanks for the help! Video: Pics (click for megahuge):

Out of curiosity: Did you order the 21 round reloadable magazines ($95)? Yup.

I just ordered mags from Henning a month ago and they were the new K40 ones. I emailed ahead and asked as well to confirm this before I ordered, just to clear up any confusion.

Ditto on the one mag working. I can press on the valve on the non working one and it will release air, but it doesn't work in the gun. Gotta fiddle with it some more.

So if I purchase the Henning-Built Competition 40 S&W Magazines from Henning, would these now be the new Mec-Gar mags? Just wondering, want to make sure I get enough so I can retire my old ones and keep everything uniform.

Still waiting on my replacement ammo... getting kinda worried again. In the meantime, I did more draw and dry fire practice. Then I noticed my trigger was resetting kinda funky. The overtravel set screw had become loose, even though I'm sure I used locktite. Fixed that, did some more draw and dry fire practice. If the ammo doesn't get here tomorrow it looks like I'll be missing another match. I really need to get my own reloading gear.

5" it is then. My concern now is which model exactly? I recall reading that you want to avoid 625-2 and 625-somethingelse for whatever reason. Is that right, or would I be good enough with any old 625? Are the locks that big of a deal? Thanks for the advice guys!

I've been toying with the idea of a revolver setup for USPSA as well, and I was just wondering one thing. I know I want to get a 625, but what is racking my brain is whether or not I should look for an older 5" model or if the newer JM 4" one would be a better fit for me. It sounds like the JM is tuned more towards competition shooting, but the extra inch on the barrel sounds like something I'd want. Can anyone offer any insight on this?

Welp... I missed the combat shoot earlier in the week because UPS lost my ammo. A whole case of 1,000 rounds of 40sw long. I've ordered at least seven or eight cases and I have a hard time understanding how you lose a 40lb crate of bullets. Sure, maybe it broke open and they didn't care to put it all back together, but when I said I've ordered that many cases before, this was easily some of the best packaged stuff I've ever seen. And I work in the small package delivery business. So much thick packing tape and so many staples and reinforced cardboard and... Ok, I'll stop ranting now. They're sending a new case, the email I got back from the shipper suggests that this happens often enough that it isn't a big deal. Dry fire practiced for an hour on Monday and Wednesday, practiced with scale targets set up like CM 99-13 Quicky II. Looks like it will play out strikingly similar to parts of CM 99-46 Close Quarter Standards, just with more distance. I just shot CQS a few weekends ago, and if I can go at the same pace and get my hits, I should have no problem putting down a mid 60% on this one. However, the end result isn't my goal. My goal is to go in and just be aware of everything and try to recapture that feeling I got last weekend. Just let my body react to what my eyes are seeing.

I've noticed that as well. A friend of mine that I shoot with shoots a CZ75B SAO in 40 and shoots L10 since he can't fit a competative number of rounds in his mags to do Limited very well. It is always him and at most three other people at a big event doing L10. Guess I'll help bolster that number for a few weeks lol!

Sonofa... Welp, the monthly classifier routine was run, and the three scores from this past weekend were not in it. So looks like I am running Limited 10 for a month to practice my fundamentals.

Yeah, there ya go! I can absolutely see moving and shooting transferring over. Another thing I just thought of is when you're playing pump vs semis. It was common to find myself hunkered down behind a bunker or some other cover while someone would be bombarding me with paint. I would have to quickly raise my gun up, get a sight picture (my Phantom had a CCI Ghost Ring on it), and quickly fire off a shot while getting shot at. You could easily say that is not unlike what we do when we draw our pistols and get our initial sight picture. There's different reasons for having to do it quickly, but just having to do it in paintball certainly helped me doing it with pistols.

Thanks for the advice, that's partially why I wanted B so bad lol. Now that (I think) I've got it, I can slow it down just a little bit and just start doing my thing. I am attending Phil Strader's class next month and am REALLY looking forward to it. I hear he pushes you to the extreme. Depending on how things go, I might not just do the first two day class, but the next two day one after that. With that in mind, I've got about a month to prepare myself and try to get some parts of the game down to reflex. I want to have a very solid load and make ready. After seeing one of the local A class guys more than a few times, I just loved how automatic his load and make ready routine looked. He looked like he knew exactly what he was doing to the point where it was just his body doing it reflexively. That's what I want to practice. That and my reloads/malfunction drills. I've had a few REALLY good reloads but I don't feel that I am as consistent as I could be, and same with malfunctions. I had an awesome tap/rack/bang the other month on the first stage where I didn't seat my mag on a reload, it would be nice if I could get that all the time (not as nice as always having perfect reloads ). I'm trying to think of what transitioned between the two, and I'm coming up pretty short lol. I initially had problems with my grip since paintball has your weak hand supporting the entire gun while your trigger finger just fans the trigger for fast shooting. What I found was that my strong hand wasn't supporting the gun enough. There's definitely stuff that did transfer over, but it just isn't coming to me at the moment. Obviously, patience is a big one, especially when playing pump. You've got to take your time, know your marker, and adjust a bit after every shot. Sure, you can't quite do the "adjust after every shot" as easily with pistols, but trying to go faster than you should is punished equally in both. Now you're really really making me wish I didn't sell my Phantom two years back.

It just dawned on me... I think the reason I felt so good about this match is because I had absolutely zero equipment malfunctions/failures. The first rounds always chambered. My reloads were generally solid and I always properly seated my mags. I had one failure to feed, but it happened right as a steel popper fell due to a gust of wind, buying me a reshoot of the stage. I ran my mag dry once, but had a quick drop and tap, rack, bang before just going right on. Just had to add that so I can look back and remember this. Properly functioning equipment is really sweet, it means that the only place you can find fault is with the shooter themself.

Not much to say. Aside from the (completely unexpected) heat, it was a good day. I'm pretty sure I'll have my B class in Limited once the classification routine gets run this coming week. I don't remember if I heard it somewhere or if I just told myself that I needed to do it, but as early as the first stage I told myself that I needed to slow it down and "see the sights." Doing that just made something click and speed just wasn't a factor. My body was on autopilot and my eyes were just seeing these things happen and taking in all the info. I was going at the pace that my mind dictated while I was just "seeing the sights." Looking back at the video I was shocked to see how quickly I had busted through some of these stages while not even telling myself to push speed at all. I know that that was touched on, more than touched on in fact, in Brian's book Practical Shooting, but I never understood what it meant until it happened to me out there. My goal now (once I officially get that B classification) is to just sit back and let my body do what it does and let my eyes take in what is going on so my body can react to it. It almost felt like an out of body experience

Whoops, quote button is not the edit button.

Well, this certainly could have gone better. I couldn't sleep after work, and ended up going to the match not having slept for a solid 20+ hours. I was tired, yes, but I felt alright and figured an energy drink or caffeene would be enough to get me through the stages. The first stage was a litle bit of moving and shooting, and while I feel I did alright, I did have one Mike on the center paper. My time was easily well under the average, and I'm impressed with how I was able to hit most of my shots while on the move. The second stage was the classifier CM 06-04 Fluffy's Revenge. I needed to complete it in under than five seconds with all Alphas, or in under four and a half seconds with all Charlies on paper. Just my luck, I had a poor draw and it snagged, costing me about half a second for a final time of 5.28. Classifier calc puts me at 50% for this one. Ugh. By the time the last stage, a 12 round FAST drill, rolled around I was really looking forward to catching some sleep, and it shows in my shooting. I felt slow on the draw, I couldn't focus, I had some issues with one of my reloads and racking the slide. Lesson learned: I'm better off skipping the match than shooting it tired. With four more classifiers coming up on Sunday, I've either got to average 65% on the two best, or 60% on the three best. I'll cross my fingers and make sure I'm mentally ready for it. I'm almost wondering, can someone who has passed this milestone answer something for me. I was thinking that if I can nab my B classification that I might slow it down a little bit and shoot a few matches with the intent of re-focusing on the fundamentals a little more. Push nothing but solid draws, sight pictures, reloads, etc, without pushing for speed at all even though I know I can move faster.

Now, like I said before, feedback is more than welcome. I know I don't always focus on the same things someone else might, and I definitely don't see everything, even after watching some of the videos for the umpteenth time. Please feel more than free to point out anything or ask anything. I am only one set of eyes, and they don't necessarily work all that great, so... My intentions with all of these videos is to keep more than a written journey of where I started and where I currently am. Seeing is believing, and if I wasn't watching myself like I am now, I certainly wouldn't believe that I've made the progress that I have. Some day, my hope is that I can look back as an A or a Master or who knows, and have something that shows every step I've taken to get to where I am. Heck, it is inspiring to me, and hopefully someone else can actually see this and feel inspired themselves. That alone would make all of this worth it. My current goal, if it isn't obvious, is to push myself into B class. At that point, I'll slow it down a little bit and work on some technique and reestablish some of the fundamentals that I might be lacking on. I know for a fact that I need to work on my transitions, and I'd certainly like to get some cadence going on my shots. After that B class? Well, there's always A, right?

And that brings us up to date. This past Sunday, myself and my two shooting buddies made our way out to the North Porter County Conservation Club for an all-classifier match! I really didn't take the time to calculate out my scores beforehand, so I went in just expecting that if I did well enough on four of the stages, I'd likely get my B class. What ended up happening was not apparent to me at the time, but in retrospect, it was just. That. Close. I did good enough on three of the stages, bombed two completely (fine, since they won't count against most recent), and on the last stage I had one Mike. My estimated percentage on that stage was a 41%. Now, had that Mike turned into ANYTHING else, even those lovely no-penalty Mikes we like to call Deltas, it would have bumped that up to a 53%. Which, by my calculation, would have given me an average of 60.something% when the classification routine was run. Ouch. So maybe I just like doing things the hard way. I have five classifiers that I will run between today and this upcoming Sunday. I need to run an average of around 58% in my best three of those five. I can do this.

March is also home to St. Patrick's day. Protip: if someone offers to have you shoot a stage that has leprechauns on it, don't do it. It's bad news. They're tricky little ones. They're tiny, and they like to hide in PLAIN VIEW, right in FRONT OF NO SHOOTS. The classifier was good for me though, granted I should have pushed for AB panel shots instead, it would have netted me an extra few points. And we have come full circle this year. NISA held it's first match of 2011, and aside from one strange feed issue with my mags on one stage (seriously, they've never gotten stuck like that before or since), and a less than stellar (but better than the last time I shot it) classifier, I feel like this was a good one for me.

In February, I had switched from glasses over to contacts. In March, something possessed me to wear them to each of the indoor shoots this month. Also, in March, I learned that wearing contacts in an indoor gun range is a very, very bad thing. Back to the outdoor shooting! We ran at Schultz's this time. It is held at the same location as NISA, but by the Wisconsin folks instead of the Illinois. Lessons learned here: shooting with gloves is bad; shooting in the snow, while not terribly fun, is better than shooting in the mud; and for the love of God, SEAT YOUR MAGS LUNCHBOXX YOU FOOL! Maxon's + contacts + extended periods of time = I cannot focus on my front sights ohgod what is that texas star doing?! :cry: I am still looking into getting some prescription shooting glasses. The Rudy's seem nice, but the prescription side of things still boggles me. Namely, how to order it and what to order and... yeah.