zsavage81

I'm glad I found this thread and I don't mean to hijack but how about $35 to shoot at a legit INDOOR run and gun range. Say someone was to purchase a former Costco/SAMs club/lowes/home depot and bring in dirt to basically build your typical outdoor range INSIDE. $35 bucks...... but when it's 104 degrees in July and 100% humidity outside its a shady 70 inside the range. $35 bucks but In December when it's 30 degrees outside its a toasty 70 in the range. No rain, no snow, no burning sun, is that worth it?

For .22 cans I have AAC Element II and the alum one that's a step down, Gemtech (can't remember the model but the one that retails for $300-350), SWR warlock II, and the 100% titanium .22 can from Tactical Suppressed Weapons. The TSW can is hands down the best but its also one of the most expensive at $550, after that in 2nd place on the same gun, same ammo, same day, the SWR can was noticeably quiet than any of the others. The SWR is also a $300-350 can. If you want the best you can get call Chad at TSW though, that guy is a suppressor wizard!

Oh for reference I'm running the X-Talon 190's and dude working at the running store said he just got 400+ miles out of his 100% road running.

+1 for Inov8's, I tried them and the ss3's on back to back and the Inov8's have way more grip and I thought were a lot more comfortable. I've been working on my posture and the reduced pitch of the inov8's seems to help me get into better posture shooting positions more naturally. They are as good on wet grass as a cleat but also give you excellent grip on hard surfaces too. I'm definitely sold on them.

There was a drill we did in Ben's class from 7 yards (I think, could have been 5) where he made us put our front site post just above the notch and shoot a shot, front site just below the notch and shoot a shot, and then 2 more shots from the front site far left and far right of the notch. What happened?...................4 A zone hits! This kind of drove home the "see what you need to see to make the shot" concept. I don't need to see as much at 5 yards as I do at 30, so I aim more or less depending on what I'm shooting at. The drill proves you don't need a perfect site picture to get A zone hits up close, so the second I see some fiber on close shots I'm ripping it! Seems like a waste of time to get a crisp front site up close.

I made this revelation a few months ago and picked up a good deal of time, now in recent weeks I've been working on my posture (less tactical turtle, more vertical stance like Ben) and that's got me from 1.05's down to .90's. As I was talking about this new improvement with a shooting buddy he says "hey you should focus on getting your weak hand over", apparently another guy we shoot with made the revelation also, had shared it with him, and he also thought it worked. Seems like this is pretty universal!

Never really heard anyone say not to leave on steel but that might be because I'm so green or just wasn't paying attention, either way it seems like pretty good advice! Gonna go watch some Robbie vids now!

Is this the place to talk about the candidates? As a newer USPSA member I haven't been around long enough to know first hand what kind of job the current director is doing or anything about the guy running against her which makes it difficult to make any kind of informed voting decision. So, who has the scoop of this?

This is something that I continually struggle with too! If you can carve out even 15 minutes a day to dryfire your going to start seeing huge gains. When I first started to regularly dryfire it was a complete cluster and if I'm honest with myself I wasn't actually learning anything. Do yourself a favor and go buy Ben Stoegers Dryfire book (it's his second book, i think it says Vol 2 on the cover), he isolates skills in the book, gives you the drill, and gives you times for different skill levels. After working that book since Jan I'm convinced that if you can do 70% of those drills in the advanced times he lays out you'll be a GM. Use the dryfire-live fire- dryfire loop! Basically you learn the skills in dryfire and then go live fire to measure your progression, do drills that are repeatable so you can actually measure performance gains. I agree with taking a class at some point, best money I've spent so far on shooting was taking a class from a top level production shooter. I was a IDPA SSP Master and USPSA Production B when I took my class if that means anything, I'm now Production A.

Not that it's going to be a favorite among the steel challenge crowd or anything, but ever thought about using a M&P22 then switch to a M&P9 when they master the .22? Ergos are the same, controls are the same, buy one holster, ect? I've got a 1.5 year old daughter and I'm already starting to think about these things!

Our club is basically pick up what you can when you can so long as you're helping paste and not in the next shooters way. Seems to work pretty well. I don't know anyone who marks their brass so you have really no idea what you've got when you get home. I usually sort per-clean and then give quick inspection when it comes out of the tumbler. Not uncommon to find a couple split cases.

Not sure I got the skills for that yet. I tried to take the poppers on the move coming in and you see how poorly that went. Might have to set something up in practice and see if I can run and gun.

here's the week before vid.

I also don't know why but on this day I took a ton of make ups. Gotta clean that up too!

Sometimes that's exactly what's happening. I'm shooting 147gr with a 900fps average and I still have steel that doesn't want to go down way more frequently than I'd like. Some of it is me trying to get my reload going before I take off. I'd prefer to get it done quick and haul butt than reload across the entire movement. I think my reloads are pretty terrible though.

Last two matches were 93.87% and 88.66%. Obviously I'm shooting production and also im in A class if that matters.

GA Sectional in 26 days, only a few months until NC Sectional and Nationals. I'm trying to get as much fixed between now and then as possible. What are the top three skills/drills I should be working from now until then? 1) 2) 3) GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyone do the track system with "T" bolts to mount your press, trimmer, swage, ect? I'm liking that concept and am pretty sure I'll incorporate some into my design. Since I know I don't know shit about reloading I'm liking the ability to move things around easily. I am still going to put a vice on it for working on guns and am not planning on it running the entire length of the bench. something like this:

Yea the chair I plan to use is way taller than a normal office chair so It's going to be stool height with office chair comfort. I do like the increased mobility of being up a little higher, way easier to stand up with minimal effort and a lot quicker. Oh yes, I've been through that one front to back about 4 times now looking hard at specific elements! I think there are a lot of people in there trying to take what they have and make it work or do it on the cheap using whatever they can find; as opposed to stepping back and saying I'm going to design this from the ground up with the sole purpose of making the best bench humanly possible and letting function drive form! (Note there are a few in there that appear to have taken this approach so it's not all of them that I'm speaking about, there are a few awesome setups!).

if you ever start getting double feed problems you're probably due for some spring changes. I alternate through 6 magazines that were all purchased new in December '11 and probably have a combined 6000 rounds through the lot (so like 1000 rds per mag) and have recently started having double feed problems with a few of the mags. New ISM plus P springs in all of them have fixed the problem. Just something to keep in mind for later.

Actually it's the opposite problem, since my 5 month old just started day school at like $800 a month and ammo isn't getting any cheaper I'm broke! So I had to get into reloading to keep being able to afford to shoot (or that's what I told the wife). Looks like I'll break even in around 6-7 months (I'm also a partner in a gun shop with a couple 3/75 Ranger buddies and was able to buy the 650 and all the componets at wholesale so that helps a lot too). I have a shop full of wood, I have mixer lifts and pull-outs that are strached up and didn't make the cut to use for customers, so I'm not paying for any of that, and I always have some inbetween time on projects where I have a guy who needs something to do so this bench shouldn't really cost me anything that isn't sunk already.

I've very excited to have just joined the Big Blue Club, now I need to design a reloading bench. I'm planning to put my bench in my office and have about 14ft between my desk and door that is empty. That said I'm only looking to make a bench around 10ft long at the most, as I'll probably take this thing to my house (someday when I can afford to build a new house out in the country and have a room dedicated to guns). Here's my back story, I own a custom cabinet company and we also do a lot of metal work so I have cnc routers, plasma tables, welders, edge-bander, saws, sanders, and a spray booth full of finishing equipment at my disposal. Basically, the options here are endless and I can do just about anything you could dream of in wood, metal, or plastic. So here's what I'm looking for....Recommendations of what you'd like to have on your bench if you were able to do ANYTHING you wanted, basically describe your DREAM BENCH. I've never loaded before so even though I've seen buddies do it, watched all kinds of youtube vids, and even got Enos's video on competition reloading, I don't have the hours behind the press sitting there thinking about how I could make the set-up better/more efficient. At first I thought hey, I'll just do something temporary and after I've been loading for a while I'll know what I need to do and build something else. The more I think about it the more I'm thinking the closer I get to PERFECT on my first go around the better the second try will be. I've also been searching the internet high and low looking at pictures of other peoples benches and have a list of ideas I'd like to incorporate. Currently I've purchased everything to load 9mm and .223 but will most likely also load .40 at some point. Things I know I want/I know the bench needs to do: 1- I want to be able to load sitting down. I've got a tall draftsmen's office chair and with the strong mount I think a 32" finished counter-top height is just about perfect. Who else sits down and how tall is your bench? 2- I want space to be able to work on and clean my guns 3- On one end of the bench I am planning to build in a bench top vice. something like this: The idea is that I can use it assemble ar's, put sites on pistols, or in a reloading capacity I'm planning to mount things like my super swage600 and case trimmer to blocks that I can clamp up in the vice when in use and put away when I don't need them. 4- I want to do the tube to some sort of container that catches spent primers since just in setting my machine up I've already had a few end up in the floor. Any trick ways people have for doing that as it relates to the way the bench is built? 5- Storage for powder, primers, bullets, die's, armorer tools, cleaning supplies ect. I'm thinking I'll do some drawers with the craftsman toolbox inserts to organize my tools. Any other special considerations I should make for storing the rest of it? 6- I currently tumble at home and wouldn't really want that going in my office all day but have had a few thoughts about sound proofing a cabinet and attempting to do it that way. It's also pretty easy to leave it on a timer at the house and return home to clean brass then just bag it up and take it with me to work the next day. I guess I could also run it at night at the office when I'm gone and return the next morning to clean brass? How do yall do it and how would you LIKE to do it if you had options? I'm kicking around the idea of using a mixer lift for the tumbler to sit on with some sort of pull-out underneath for the separator. 7- I'm thinking I'll make a butcher block top that's about 2" thick, can anyone think of something that might be better than that or is butcher ideal? Corian, Metal, Plastic, Acrylic ect? That's all I can think of for now but will continue to update as I have more/new ideas. Any Pictures or sketches of suggestions/ideas are greatly appreciated!!!

So how does that work card wise? Does someone still have to sign it? If so who? Everything I could find said the match director from the match where the bump took place. Obviously I can't just ride 5 hours to get my card signed, so does it suffice that the bump shows up on the idpa site? Nick and I were talking about this the other day and he wasn't sure what I was supposed to do either. On another note, I hear we're going to be shooting in the same squad at Carolina Cup? From what Nick was saying it was you, Shep, Nick, and I among others?

Craig, It was great meeting you as well. I 100% agree I've been very luck to get to shoot with guys that are much better than I am. I'm even luckier they have been cool enough to help school me up. I definitely attribute the pace at which I've been able to improve to those guys. I assure you if I wasn't able to ask Nick questions about my game plan before stages and him steer me away from certain things I would have done otherwise, I certainly wouldn't have done as well. Being able to bounce ideas off him and him either reassure me that's solid ideology, or tell me no that's retarded is invaluable. The other good thing about it is I don't have the problem you say you've got. I've shot with them enough to KNOW I can't keep up with them (yet) so I don't even try. As you can see from the initial post before the match my game plan was exactly like yours, the difference being that you executed and I didn't. Pretty cool we got bumped, I looked at the site a few times but never saw the part where it said we were moving up! I'm planning to be at Cup as of right now so I guess I'll see you there! If you get a chance between now and then you should get up with Sheep and come to a local match, shooting with those boys is definitely making me better!

Chuck, I wondered what happened to you? Nick and I didn't finish shooting until like 4-430. That was my first non-squaded shotgun start experience also. From talking to the match director later in the day he was saying that over half the shooters started in that one bay on stages 3,4, and 5, which is exactly what we did. Nick was saying he thought it was going to be best to kind of warm-up on the standards stages before going to the harder ones. I think MOST people had that same game plan. So if you started where we did it was hard separating from the pack. We finally did it in the afternoon, and once the pace picked up I kind of found a grove and started shooting a lot better. I don't know what I'll do on the next one, I liked the warm-up, but I didn't like waiting 30-40 minutes on each stage to shoot. I did like the freedom to choose where to start and where to go next though. I just didn't manage it right, but that's all part of the learning I guess!