Vlad

In my experience the guns that stop working for this reasons are the ones modified with aftermarket parts. Also, given enough use every gun stops working, including all military an police guns. Springs are indeed wear parts last I checked.

To me the hearing thing is a safety issue. Permanent hearing damage is not a heck of a lot better then any other sort of a permanent injury, and this is supposed to be a fun game. I rather the shooter not injure itself in the name of "competition" so as an RO I rather give him a second chance at the stage as soon as it happens, then let them go deaf early. This is supposed to be a game, lets not let people get hurt and say well tough noogies, choose between a good run and your hearing loss.

Because they haven't been shooting this way with thin rule books for 30 years? That's a long nap. I think the (2) issue is bad RO'ing and that can happen regardless of rulebooks. Issue (1) .. well I wasn't there and frankly I'm kinda ok with the notion of having the option to use your handgun but being a significant advantage to using your shotgun. Its called planning and gaming the stage.

For me, it is the angle you can get. If you mount each quad and you angle each quad, they interfere with each other. If you angle the entire backer then the quads can be parallel with each other and not interfere. You can mount them very tightly (like in Jesse's picture) or looser like mine depending on preference. The whole thing is surprisingly light. It has mass, for sure, but it isn't as heavy as it looks.

Or his plan was different, or he remembered it, or he just saw it being up. I try to not read minds, and give the benefit to the shooter.

So to answer my question, you can stabilize Jesse's setup with a $5 of hardware from Lowes. In the hardware section, in those drawers of odd ball crap under the screws, they have these mending plates, they look like erector set pieces, 3" long. You can use two these across the top, two along the bottom, they overlap on one hole, and 6 screws with nylock nuts and some washers. Basically the plates overlap on the center quad and use one bolt there, then one end on the other quads for each plate. Do it at top and bottom and its rock solid. You can also probably do the diagonal setup above if you want. I'm sure its cheaper then chopping up the nicer bits from Invictus

1) 8.3.4.1 2) 8.6 covers coaching, you can't guess what the shooter heard or thought so you give him/her the benefit of the doubt, you penalize the coach.

I'm fairly certain ALL their barrels are .223 Wylde: http://www.jprifles.com/1.4.1_barrel.php

JP light weight: http://www.jprifles.com/buy.php?item=JPSM223-18L8 all the specs, makes your weight by 1oz.

I don't really expect that. I can wish for it, but I think we all need to be realistic. It isn't as if there is a milspec for that gun, the gun is whatever SW wants to be. That sear block has worked just fine for me for quite a while and when it went bad, it took a $1 spring to make it run again. I expect my gear to wear and break. I understand being miffed at S&W, and I suggest you calmly explain to them why you don't love them anymore, but realistically it is a working arrangement of parts. If it really bothers you, drill out the whole to the new spec, it isn't as if you aren't going to void the warranty by adding the Apex parts anyway.

queue Janice Joplin voice ... Oh lord won't you buy a Mercedes Benz, My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends. Nearly everyone I know uses a 650 or 1050 (or rarely a Hornady) but I'm holding on to my 550. It works, you can buy it as a plain turret and add parts later and it is generally trouble free. The other option is buy a SDB for 9mm and continue loading .223 on the Lee.

My reaction would have been, well lets try some closer targets. At 500 yards you can't know if he is shooting all over the place or you are not seeing the hits. If his groups where 2" at 100 yards for example, and then 4" at 200 then you could expect them to be 8" at 400 and low. So you would know where to look for the hits. But if you start at that distance, it is hard to tell if it the shooter/rifle or the spotter.

Keep shooting your G19. Right now you are drinking from the firehose and trying to do too much at once. Focus a bit on a few disciplines you like best, don't burn out, learn what you want out of a handgun, then decide.

You are worrying to much, my older M&P has the small sear block, not really an issue. After 4-5 years that spring got weak enough to have some failures to reset, put in a new spring, kept working. Keep in mind, their gun works fine with either sear spring, it only really becomes an issue with aftermarket parts AFAIK, so complaining that they don't support APEX is a bit odd.

What is the spacing on all those holes? I wonder if one can use erector/mecano parts to rig and jig those things?

I think setting up a match winning set of gear is expensive, on the other hand I don't think plain gear is what holds most people back, as most of us can't run the gear as well as it can. Shoot whatever you have and replace bits one at a time as you know they are holding you back, not as the fashion dictates.

I assume we've all seen this, a position at the end of the stage, where you have to engage some 200-300 yard target off some really shaky support, some half rotted wall, a creaky saw horse or similarly unstable support. You are sucking wind, you have no other available supports and prone doesn't let you see the targets. How do you stabilize to keep the muzzle from dancing all around the target. Obviously, cardio and being in better shape helps, but beyond that how do you deal unstable rifle supports?

Have you loaded this ammo recently? The reason I'm asking is that I don't know if I have a bum lot of TAC or if my nordic barrel doesn't like TAC, but I was having accuracy issues with my new barrel, trying all sorts of bullets and charges, all with TAC. Then I decided to use the same match bullets with 4 different powders I've had about the house, and Varget, BL-C2 and, 748 were all grouping roughly half of what TAC was. I dunno way, but I'm not curious enough, find out, different powder it is.

Hell, I'd pay double the membership fee if they promised me that they wouldn't change ANY rules for 5 years. FFS, we've had this game and its rules for some time, I think we got the rules down pretty good, instead we keep screwing with them adding new loopholes only to need new rules to fix the old ones. Seriously BoD, we don't need you to prove your worth via new rules, just sit on your hands for a bit, would ya?

I've used no5 in the past in 9mm and I found it very dirty. Its possible that this isn't an issue at higher pressures for major.

Start with cleaning the bar, make sure there are no burrs and the edges are clean of metal distoration. I find that every now and then I have to take a stone to the bar to clean up the edges. Make sure you don't over tighten the magazine to the press, don't crazy torque the screws. Make sure that the actuator arm (whatever its called, the long bent wire that moves it) is bent enough to move it back. Make sure the magazine plastic tip didn't get damaged and it is correctly seated in its notch.

I think you will find a general level or hostility and/or disinterest towards airsoft among USPSA shooters. They may even own them for practice, but it opens up the gates to certain types of regulations. Lots of folks are concerned that if we allow it, someone will decide we don't need real guns anymore. The other part is that for lots of people, these are games with roots in defensive shooting. We may be some long way from where this started, but you still have the notion that power factor matters. In the case of steel we are fine with .22 because who don't like to plink with .22 and the girlfriends needs something she can shoot at the match, but most of us like to think we are RealMen that shoot the weakest friking loads we can come up with anyway. Basically most people are going to not care, view airsoft as a gateway drug for internet commando's, like real gun, and have worries about the future of the game moving forward. There are plenty of airsoft games out there, we don't need to own every game that looks like hours.

Mark can you point us to an old thread discussing slotted issue?

As others have mentioned you DO NOT want to be in the law enforcement business as a MD. There are legal implications, because if you decide to go down that path and you don't enforce it equally it gets funny. This is as per lawyers clubs in my vicinity have consulted. Before you decide to get into the business of teachable moments and law enforcement you should think long and hard why you want to be an MD and consult a lawyer.

You could disassemble it, and put it back together correctly. I believe APEX has videos of the procedure as well as many videos from other people. It is a fairly simple procedure.