Sac Law Man

First, determine if the issue is you or the gun. Shoot it off a rest and really work on fundamentals... Try and call your shots too.. You may shoot a few high and left, but then call a shot the hit the bullseye, this would tell you a lot. Adjusting your sights is an easy, fix, its a Band-Aid. With that said, and I agree with others that any time I change a load, ammo and especially get a new gun, adjusting the sights is probably necessary, I just want to make sure I am doing my part first.

Try some of the sprays like PROGRIP, or something similar.. They help..

armydad, that sounds plausible.. I can certainly benefit from better follow through.. Typical transitions for me at 10 yards, with targets 2 to 4 yards apart would be in the .3's (.34 +) I just feel like I'm not seeing the target well, and switching my vision to my sights to soon.

I think I have gotten into a bad habit that I discovered while dry firing at home. When transitioning from target to target, I think I have been giving the sights too much attention and not enough to the target. The last two matches I shot, I felt as if I was calling my shots well, but my hits sucked. I was dropping too many points. After the match, I looked back and don't really remember finding the spots on the target I wanted to hit. So, what good does aiming do, if the sights are aligned but confirmed on the target? Now, I'm trying to focus hard on the target, seeing it clearly, and only transitioning my focus to the sights when they're aligned and I'm ready to pull the trigger.. Sounds about right?

That a good drill, I use a popper at 20 yards set up so it wont fall and two shooting boxes or Bianchi Barricades..

If the SO touched the target, its most likely due to a questionable scoring hit,, perf or no perf for example. I think if the SO did touch the taget, the shooter would get the beneift of the lower scoring hit as opposed to a reshoot for the entire stage.. This makes the most sense to me..

What attachment are your referring to?

I can tell you from my experience, when I made a conscious effort to not touch the gun with the support hand thumb, my shooting improved drastically. I used to have my thumb ride the frame and would wear a spot out on the blueing. Little did I know I was stearing the gun with this thumb. When I stopped riding the frame, my shots would be off to the right (Lefty) because I was used to compensating with that thumb. It only took a week to get over this. Good for you for discovering this,, it was an eye opener for me..

I agree that Vogel's grip pulls the support hand palm away from the grip... His grip works for him, its not something I would encourage others to use. Its like the golf swing, some guys have funky lookin swings, i.e. Jim Furyk that work for him, but not something you would ask others to copy.. With that said, I advocate getting as much of your palms on the grips as possible, cant your support hand forward, grip the gun hard, but make sure the thumbs are not touching the gun. Gripping the gun hard and keeping my support hand thumb off the gun has been the biggest break through in my shooting.

Im also an advocate of shooting groups at 25 yards.. Next is Stoeger's excellerator drilll..

It cant hurt you.. All of the skills in the classifier are skills you will need and use in a match. Plus, the best way to shoot a low score is to practice and get good at it..

Educate him on the rules and the process in place per the rule book regarding PF. If hes resistant, 1. report him to the AC, and 2. dont shoot the classifier that day.

M1911, I a glad you get my point.. cant believe this is being discussed and no one is picking up on the problem..

First, the stage should never have been allowed.. . IDPA discourages shooters from having to count rounds and somehow figure out a good time to perform a reload to fall within the COF requirements. The whole idea behind the loaded chamber reload is we don't know how many rounds are in the gun, and to avoid going dry at an inopportune we perform this type of reload. This is also the same reason we cannot mandate these reloads during a scenario. A standard exercise should be the same for everyone, its a drill. In this scenario, you are penalizing the shooter for not counting his shots. To answer the question posed by the OP, the PE for the reload would not be the call, but failure to follow the COF should be.

If you do a search in this forum there is a Master Class classifier breakdown. I tried to copy and paste but it would not work..

Mark, It looks like you have your answer.. Like I said above, the old rule book defined SSP as 10+1, CDP 8+1 etc... for some reason IDPA decided to define it a different way in the new rule book. Take care..

Division capacity is mag capacity plus one in the pipe, unless specified in the COF. In CDP and ESP you can chose to use mags with 7 rounds and 9 rounds respectively. However, you would have to use those throughout the match.. You can pick and choose whether to top off/use lower capacity mags or not based on what the COF calls for. I think this rule is pretty clear. 8.1.3 Defines Div Capacity. 8.1.3.7 Says the shooter will start with one round in the chamber. Also, the old rulebook clearly states Mag capacity for SSP is 10+1.. The rule has not changed and is still in effect.

KSwift I am glad you got it all figured out... A winner was going to be chosen only if their stage was selected for the match.. We didn't choose any of the ones submitted. No one got stiffed.. If I wanted to stiff someone I could have easily said Joe Blow won and no one would know any different. Oh, and one more thing.. regarding your reference to our, "little club".. I am not sure where you shoot,, backwoods KY maybe, but we average 120 shooters per match, and The Western sold out (250 shooters) in less then two weeks.. No go troll somewhere else..

My target acquisitions are best when I visually pick up (take my time/visual patience) the target as I am transitioning the gun. Its easy to settle for a blurry target and fire when the sights are centered somewhere in the "brown". However, when I pick up the target early and clearly, the sights find their mark faster and I am able to fire when my sight picture is acceptable.

Yes they do,, I think they provided ammo for the Glock team, hence the Glock load.. 147 grain bullet at 132ish PF..

Although the SSP shooters tend to score better then ESP shooters in major matches, I don't see a reason why, other then the better shooters are shooting SSP. Now if you asked why SSP and ESP scores are better then CDP, that would be an easy, provable answer.

The heavy bullet/lighter bullet and light springs combo really applies to handloaders. Those who shoot IDPA and use 9mm tend to like the heavy bullet with a fast powder. A 147 gr bullet at 125 Pf (The min) is very soft shooting... The slide on a Glock with factory springs would feel sluggish with this load, so shooters experiment with the 11 and 12 Lb recoil springs and 4.0 and 4.5 striker spings. Other shooters favor the snappy feel of the 115 gr bullets. Since you are using factory ammo, I don't think you will notice that big of a difference between the two.

This was huge for me.. Once I worked on keeping my support hand thumb off the gun, the gun lifted and returned during recoil so quick and effortlessly. I think any time we come in contact with the gun, forward and above the trigger guard, we are going to negatively affect the guns ability to recoil and return.. An exaggeration would be (I'll use a revolver for simplicity sake) if we held onto the barrel with our support hand while we fired. There is no way the gun would rise and return during recoil.. the same thing happens when the support hand thumb comes in contact with the frame.

Ok, so if the COF says near to far, he can shoot them left to right or vice versa.. You cant require both.. The shooter can shoot them like this.. 9 7 8 3 4 5 6 1 2 If he shot 1,3,7 and 9,, that would be a PE

I am having a hard time picturing this scenario.. If the targets are shot near to far, why cant he shoot them all left to right as long as he doesn't shoot a further target out of order.. Given you description, I see the targets as such. X X X X X X X X X P1 Were the targets staggered like this? X X X X X X X X X P1 If so were they more then 2 yards apart distance? If the targets are within 2 yards they are equal threats.. If they were staggered, its a tough call, but FTDR could be the correct call.