itlogo

I like the advice, "Shoot as fast as you can hit A's." One day, I hope to heed it

No, I even replaced that spring during the re-assembly just to be sure. BTW the misalignment in the picture is exaggerated to show the effect (I was purposely holding the shell plate for the pic). When I index the plate without touching it, the detent correctly locates it into position. It was just my early reaching and placement of the bullet that caused the misalignment.

I had this same problem of primers being crammed in sideways, and couldn't figure out what was going on. I took [most] everything apart, cleaned and lubed, and reassembled, but continued to get four or more primers (per 100) go in sideways. Finally, I stumbled upon what the problem was for me--my left hand was preventing the shell plate from indexing completely into position when I set the bullet in station #3. Since I set the bullet by hand, sometimes my left hand would get ahead of the plate and I'd get the bullet on the shell before it reached #3. This inadvertently slowed down the shell plate and when it reached its position, it would be slightly misaligned with the primer plunger. When I pushed forward to seat the primer, the left edge of it would catch the side of the primer pocket and it would get turned sideways. When I realized this and stopped reaching for the shell early, voila, no more sideways primers!

Thanks for the links!

+1 for Rudy. I have the Rydon package that came with five sets of lenses. They're a bit pricey, but I expect it'll be a long time before I need another set.

I'm going to be traveling to Houston in mid-August and was trying to see what matches would be taking place in the area. Has anyone been able to use the Practiscore Matches page to find matches by area? I put in a Houston zip of 77010 and it didn't return anything for the entire month of August?! Anyone have any tips on using the search, or any other way to find out what's going on around the area? Thanks in advance.

Now that shooting season is here, I'm grateful for all of the dry-fire practice I've been doing during the off-season. I've been working pretty much exclusively with transitions during my sessions, and can start to see some areas of that skill improving during my match performance. Most notably, I've realized that I've been tracking the sights from target-to-target much more than I thought that I was. While I knew that I wasn't supposed to do that, I wasn't quite sure how to get my eyes to the next target ahead of the gun. The two main things that I now pay most attention to are 1) am I seeing the target first and then the sights moving onto it, and 2) can I feel my legs pushing instead of my torso rotating? For getting my eyes ahead, a couple of things that seem to have helped: calling a good shot on the last target, and picking a specific spot on the next target at which to aim. Being able to call a good shot frees up my eyes to move the next target, and picking a specific spot on the next one makes it easier for me to tell when it's "close enough" to break the shot. As I started consciously paying attention to these things during my dry-fire, the skill of noticing when they didn't happen transferred to my live-fire and match runs, too. It's almost like that uneasy feeling you have when you get a bad grip on your draw--you know it right away that something's off. The other thing I've been working on is using my legs to transition instead of swinging my arms or twisting my torso. I'm starting to get a better idea of how far apart my feet ought to be, the feeling in my toes as they dig into the ground, the slight delay of my arms following to the target (instead of them leading). I'm still puzzled about how to simultaneously enter a position, shoot early (before I'm fully settled), and setup my feet for transitions. Often times, there seem to be extra footsteps that result in delays shooting or transitioning. In my latest match video, you can see that for almost every position with multiple targets, I enter and then take an extra step to move my feet further apart. As for this match, though, I'm mostly satisfied with my mindset throughout--I didn't try to go beyond what I felt comfortable shooting, and I shot 96% points (not counting the steel behind the barrel that I completely forgot about). Instead of feeling like I could've shot faster, I'm learning to critique the individual skills that'll eventually lead to lower overall times. Also, shoutout and free plug for @CHA-LEE on finishing his first book, Path Of Focused Effort. Many of us spend a lot of time thinking about this sport; few can break down the qualities needed for effective training like Big Panda. Hit http://www.bigpandaperformance.com/ and get your copy of the book!

And #4: competitor If that plan doesn't work out, I have a Burris FF3 that works most of the time. You only need to turn it on once, maybe twice per run.

I've managed to get mags stuck in my CK grip before. I guess my reloads are worse than yours

It's actually $4000. $2000 is the 50% deposit.

I put a Burris FF3 on my Ruger 22/45 Lite, but I'm probably going to switch it out for a DPP. The Burris is only 3 MOA and not very bright, making the dot sometimes hard to find. The DPP is 2.5 MOA, but its brightness makes the dot look like 6.

Yours might be the last match of the year for ECO, too. Hope to make it out before the freeze.

I reused my 9mm major brass as well, but my loads were relatively low-pressured compared to some others' so I didn't split cases too often. But I've also seen more than a few split cases from other open shooters, so YMMV.

Are you asking if the holes to mount the thumbrest are legal or if the rest itself is? Well, both are illegal in CO.

Awesome write-up! I didn't know that the Glock tungsten guide rod would fit, and I've been looking for the same for my CORE. I'm struggling with accuracy with my stock barrel, so I might end up doing the Apex drop-in, too.

These were from a rest.

I grip both hands firmly. One helpful thing that I’ve heard is that your strong hand should be gripping front to back, and your support hand is gripping side to side. For me, this lets me grip both hands firmly but still maintain dexterity in my trigger finger.

I know that there are already a few threads comparing the accuracy of the 1.0 barrel to the Apex, but I wanted to add another data point to that. The other day, I picked up a LNIB 9L Pro CORE, and went to the range today to zero the dot. This is a typical grouping at 25 yards: That's about a 5" group--at 25 yards (the other taped holes were at 15 yards). I tried both my match ammo and off-the-shelf factory ammo, and neither were particularly any more accurate. I also have another 9L Pro that I've shot in the past and it grouped similarly. I had thought that maybe I wasn't lining up the irons properly from shot-to-shot, but the red dot on this new one confirms it. And the fact that both of them group this poorly is more proof that it's not an isolated incident. I know the Apex barrel will really tighten up the group, but that's another $200. Just wanted to rant. Frustrating when new equipment doesn't work like it should.

Lol and procedurals for not scanning after shooting.

I just picked up a 9L Pro CORE with Burris FF3 that I'll be trying out this weekend in Carry Optics. I had seriously considered the Canik TP9SFx because of the good reviews and cheap price, but I got a really good deal on the M&P, and already have mags and holsters for that pistol, so made sense for me. I also like how the RDS sits low into the M&P slide due to the thin adapter plate. The stock trigger is horrendous, so I'm going to get the Apex (C)AEK for it.

I just started reading Ben Stoeger's, "Dry-Fire Training," and while this may be old knowledge for some, I hadn't really considered my dry fire sessions to be the main practice sessions, with live fire to reaffirm what I'm doing at home. I had always thought of dry fire as a time to work on things that I could do without live ammo--consistent draw times, reloads, movement, etc, so that I didn't have to focus on them during my live fire. With the book in mind, I'm going to dry-fire one or two drills throughout the week and then do the same drills at the range to confirm. To me, this seems like a very good way to ensure that my dry fire is effective. If my live fire times are close to my dry fire, then I know I'm simulating the drill properly in dry fire, and I can continue improving upon it every day. It also makes dry firing a bit more interesting now that I'm doing something that I'm purposely measuring at the range.

If you only need one, I'll take whichever one you don't want! But you can keep that budget red dot

If it's Cerakote'd, particularly if some of it has made it onto the rails, you'll have some break-in time until that extra coating can get rubbed off. I had some excess coating on one of mine so I took out the recoil spring and just racked it back and forth for ... a long time.

Thank you!

With the weather and holidays, it'd been nearly a month since my last match. Instead of the usual 3-field courses, 1-short, 1-classifier, the BOD decided to just do four field courses. During this month's practices, I'd been working on my transitions, specifically getting my eyes moving to the next target as soon as I broke the shot. While I think I did that (mostly) during this match, another thing I noticed about my transitions is that I'm still swinging with my arms/upper body instead of my hips/legs. It's apparent throughout all of the stages, but probably more visible at 2m08s where you can see my arms swing towards the left target, and then my hips follow. This is one of those bad habits that's really hard for me to break. I know that I should transition with my legs and hips, and I do it during practice, but not in the match. It seems that I'm standing too upright during transitions, which would make it harder to use my legs, even if I had consciously thought about it. Maybe it's easier to do during practice because I'm only working on that one skill and can start out with a wider/lower stance. Maybe the practice ought to be entering into position and getting setup wide/low enough before shooting? As for my other goal of shooting within my abilities at matches, I think I was able to maintain a steady performance throughout and didn't feel rushed in my shooting, but I did have one penalty for a no-shoot.