motosapiens

IMHO there shouldn't be a gray area. It's either a dq or it's not a dq. Assuming they see the same thing, all RO's *should* make the same call. Obviously, there are occasions where 2 people might not agree on exactly what they saw, or might not be positive that's what they saw. IMHO the RO might be able to reasonably say "I thought about calling you for xyz, but I wasn't certain that you weren't aiming at a target while running with your finger in the trigger guard".

if i were going to file anything, it would be the bottom forward edge of the magazine. In my testing, that appears to be the part opposite the rear sight that touches the box edge.

I found the problem. I'm no better a shooter than you, so take my advice for what it's worth, but from a math standpoint, it makes sense to me to make up misses, and maybe even deltas, but not charlies. the length of time it takes to make an extra shot more than cancels out the extra points. You don't mention what division you're shooting. If major, there is even less reason to make up charlies. If minor it's probably worth slowing down enough to get mostly alphas, but I wouldn't stress over a reasonable percentage of non-alpha hits.

Do holsters for the sp01 generally fit the 75/85 as well, or are folks finding that it depends on the individual mfr? It seems like the only difference would be the front of the dust cover, and I wouldn't think most kydex holsters would be molded to fit to tight in that area.

I think it should depend on the specifics of your local situation, i.e. what division they're calling it. I'm assistant MD of our local weeknight steel series, and we don't have a 'production' division, just limited and open for centerfire pistols (plus revolver, 22 iron-sight, 22 open and 22 rifle). So if you shoot a cz, like I do, you are welcome to start it cocked and locked, and re-apply the safety after each string. The key is that you have to put the gun into a safe condition before you reholster it, whether that's hammer down or cocked and locked. If you actually have a division called 'production', then chances are it's based on uspsa production and you must start with the hammer down.

That's what I thought too until a month ago when I put one of the Buck Roger sights on my .22 steel gun... now I have to say, the appeal is there for me to put one on my real gun now... Hmm, that's a good point, because I have occasionally been tempted to look closer at a red-dot for my buckmark. Perhaps I'll end up eating my words sometime in the future.

Lol, if that *really* offends you, I'll happily edit my post and issue a written apology. I sort of assumed that people into open guns enjoy the high-technology non-traditional aspect of that division, but if I misjudged, let me know and the apology will be immediately forthcoming. I personally think the spaceman-spiff guns are pretty cool, I'm just not personally interested in owning/shooting one (yet).

After getting my feet wet in limited, I think I'm going to concentrate on production in uspsa and shoot pretty much the same equipment as I do in idpa (cz75b in .40). I've got 6 magazines, 2 of them are stock 10-rounders (my least favorite) and 2 of them have the +2 basepads on them. The +2 pads just barely don't fit in the box (stock sights, btw), so I was wondering if anyone else had tried just grinding a little material off the bottom front of the basepad. If I can get away with that, I can keep using the 14-round extended mags and just load them to 10 for production. Yes, I know I could just get more basepads, or more magazines, but if I can make what I have work, I can spend the extra money on beer and ammo. I'd rather not remove any more material than necessary, so if no one has tried it, I might just swipe the official box from our range for a day and see how much I need to grind off and report back.

Limited vickers is just to make the scoring easier, so you can shoot multiple strings and then score. I don't think the changes you suggest would make much difference. I'm curious what the field stages are typically like in your neck of the woods. Here, out of 7-ish stages in a typical match, we usually have 1 or 2 that are low round count, and pretty close, and we also have a couple that are 18 rounds and include some longer shots, even some longer shots with no-shoots obscuring part of the targets. The people that take lots of points on stage 3 of the classifier also get hammered on the 1/3 of our stages that require accurate shooting. Perhaps that's why I see a pretty strong correlation from classifier to match results in general.

Who are those guys? I've heard of nils and adam tyc, because they shoot guns not all that far off from what I carry. I don't really follow the spaceman spiff division where the guns look they're from alpha-centauri. I've actually heard the most about sevigny and hobdell. Never heard of mr Racaza or Grauffel in my entire life. The search part of this forum can be your friend..... The point isn't "gee, will someone tell me who those guys are". The point is not everyone really cares about open division as much as some posters think, and some people ignore it completely.

I think it's pretty obvious that action shooting techniques do transfer to a large degree. Whether it's IDPA, steel challenge, USPSA, or something else, it's all about transitions, accuracy, focus, etc... Real life is probably more about not panicking than about pinpoint accuracy, so I wouldn't expect too much correlation between success at shooting sports vs success at real gunfighting. Don't much care either because shooting sports are funner than having other people shoot at you.

I've been shooting a year-ish, but around here it seems like there is a correlation between classifiers and match results. Perhaps that is because our matches typically have a mix of shorter and longer shooting distances. If your local matches are biased towards close-range stages, then people might not bother practicing at longer ranges. Many people who don't practice longer shots got hammered on stage 3 at our last classifier. Some people just have bad days, or bad stages (or really good days or stages) that can skew a particular result. I don't really see any issue with the current classifier setup. Assuming you actually try to do well at it, you have to do a little bit of everything, draw and shoot fast, shoot fast accurate splits, make fast transitions, longer shots, reloads, movement, etc... Yes, it would be cool if there was a reasonable way to have more dynamic targets (swingers, drop-turners, etc...), but that would not be feasible to standardize. The current COF can be replicated by anyone with a tape measure, barrel, and $50 worth of lumber. I think the whole point is to measure shooting skill. It's up to you how you apply your skill in competition with other people of similar skill.

Regardless of what the IDPA says, I'm competing with every other shooter that shows up. The classification system is mostly useful for me in evaluating my performance against shooters that I don't know well. I just qualified SS, and so my real competition is now the EX shooters, and my goal is to start catching them and classify EX in the future (don't care whether it's a match bump or a classifier). If that means I miss out on the fabulous cash prizes that go to the best MM, then bummer for me.

Reload with the finger in the trigger well you get the DQ Move with your finger in the trigger well and you get the DQ So explain the difference between the above infractions to taking a sight picture with a loaded gun with your finger in the trigger well. There is none and it should be a DQ offense. There is a major difference in that in the first two actions the muzzle may not be pointed in a completely safe direction. It might be pointed at a metal prop nearby, or over the berm, for example.

Lee is pretty uptight about safety stuff. I have used federal primers in my lee press, and I didn't die. One thing you might check is take the barrel out of your gun (preferably without cleaning it), and take 20 or so rounds and drop them into the chamber to make sure they make a nice solid 'thunk'. It is possible (tho not all that likely if you are using Lee dies) you could have some minor sizing issue that is causing the round to come up a fraction of a mm short from completely chambering, so the firing pin might be moving the round slightly further into the chamber instead of igniting the primer.

Yes, you're asking too much. Practice a little, then shoot another classifier, and see if you can improve. I've only been shooting competitively about a year, but here are a couple things I've noticed most newer competitors can do to improve in classifiers: 1. practice one-handed shooting, both weak-hand and strong hand. an evening or two of dryfire, watching your sight picture carefully, and a day or two on the range, and you'll pick up significant time and accuracy one-handed. Most people don't seem to practice that much at all. 2. Figure out where the down-zero zone is. Many people are shooting at center-mass on 15-20 yard shots, so they're picking up lots of down 1's. The down-zero zone is almost in the upper half of the torso. Just aiming a little higher can pick up many points if you are hitting low now. 3. practice your reloads with retention (or tac-reload, if you prefer) so you are not wasting time fumbling around. I find that my front jeans pocket is a perfect place to stow my magazine, and right next to my fresh mag, so I can minimize hand movement (and time) and stow the mag smoothly and quickly. 4. Practice your draw and accurate first 2 shots. This is something alot of people do practice, but since you only needed 1 more second, and you draw something like 15-20 times on the clock in the classifier, a small improvement in that one skill can translate to a significant reduction in total time.

IMHO, power pistol is a great beginner reloading powder (hard to blow yourself up, since even compressed loads with powder spilling out of the case are often safe), and is also a great powder to load to simulate self-defense loads, since it generates an impressive recoil to go along with the impressive velocities. It's not my first choice for competition because you can meet competition requirements with much less recoil, but I load up 50-100 rounds with PP every couple months to go shoot my carry gun. You can use pretty broad range of loads without getting into pressure problems. I like to keep it simple, so I just shoot the starting load for any particular bullet weight and call it good enough for training, and safe too.

Fixed, at no charge.

Who are those guys? I've heard of nils and adam tyc, because they shoot guns not all that far off from what I carry. I don't really follow the spaceman spiff division where the guns look they're from alpha-centauri. I've actually heard the most about sevigny and hobdell. Never heard of mr Racaza or Grauffel in my entire life.

BB, I agree the class system is useful for tracking one's progress, and as mentioned previously, I don't have any quibble with recognizing high class shooters, but I do think it's counterproductive (and insulting to shooters who try their best to move up) to give valuable prizes to those shooters because the class is such an arbitrary distinction. Really, how much pleasure could I take in being high D or high C when I know there guys in the next class up that are better shooters and who simply are being punished for being luckky, or practicing more, or making 1 or 2 fewer misses on their last couple classifiers. They're only the high shooter in that class because they really belong in the next class up but just lucked out in not getting bumped up there yet. I'd rather see a system that recognized high shooters in class, raffled off valuable prizes, and best of all offered some incentive for reaching higher classifications. I don't know what form those incentives could take, maybe somehow improving chances for acceptance into major matches that sell out or something. I think if there are no valuable prizes for high shooters in class, some sandbagging will still occur, but no one will really care. This discussion wouldn't need to happen because there wouldn't be any chance of a M in one division shooting A and getting valuable prizes in another division. But... whatever.... I recognize that my view is in the minority. I've been making the same arguments for years in other sports. In those sports I have managed to achieve and compete in the higher classes. I at least feel consistent that my opinion hasn't changed even tho I'm in the lowest classes of shooting. I'm still more interested in improving my skill and moving up through c, b and as far as I can get than I am in 'winning' my class of other people who weren't good enough to classify higher.

You make many good points that I can agree with. I only have comments on the above. Safety is the main issue in motorsports, and I think it's imperative to split up into ability levels (but counterproductive to offer big prizes to the support classes). I think golf handicaps make sense for fun, and giving you a motivational target, but I bet if they give out cool prizes based on them, then there is a similar problem of people sandbagging and intentionally limiting their own improvement to win the prizes. It's all good tho. I'll keep shooting and having fun.

Only mocking the idea of bragging about being 'best in class' or getting prizes for it. The concept of classes and classification in general imho has some merit in helping people to quantify their improvement and providing tangible goals.

if you shoot CDP, then yes, you are always required to be shooting major pf, and if you chrono below that you don't get scored. Shooting uspsa singlestack, you *could* shoot minor, but I can't think of any reason you would want to unless you were shooting 9mm and could take advantage of the extra rounds. I would probably just go ahead and bump up the load slightly to make major pf reliably and shoot that, since that's what the gun is designed for and you appear to like that gun. I don't think it will hamper your learning.

You make some good points, especially regarding shooters you don't know. Seeing the class next to their name in the overall standings helps provide some context to how you did. However, giving prizes to the High D or High C encourages people to be dishonest with their classifications, and cheapens the whole system. Even as a newb I'm already competing against A's and M's. If my percentage of their hit factor improves from month to month, then that means I must be improving.

Isn't 162 minor? I'd say if you want to shoot cdp you'd better use more powder or something.