eric nielsen

yes: http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=160918 (post 19), but... this too: http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=160970&page=2 (post 48)

Someone at our match yesterday was quoting one of the recent studies that states there is no such thing as multi-tasking. True, at a conscious thought level, there is only task-shifting. But with learned-response training & experience, many things can be done at once at a subconscious level. Best proof of this for me was learning to land an airplane in a gusting, shearing crosswind. Lots of things all come together in one place at one time to pull that off. The reason it is considered okay to acknowledge the control tower's wind calls and clearance to land while on short final, with just 2 clicks of the mic button, is because frequently there is not enough spare brain circuitry left to compose a spoken response.

+1 on the CGW trigger pin - retains itself with just a step in the OD, not complicated, easy to use. Found out the hard way (scratched both sides of my frame) that for a CZCustom shop gun you MUST start the trigger pin out with a (pointed) center punch and a bigass hammer, FROM THE LEFT SIDE. If you get the Home Depot set, use the shallow-point first, then use sharper & sharpest center punches, then use a 2mm pin punch (nice to have 2 or 3 since they break easily) to drive the pin all the way out. Then install CGW spring & slave pin into trigger, then install trigger pin as shown in videos. Do something to protect your thumb safeties - either remove them or arrange wooden boards/blocks to leave the safeties out of contact with your bench. For the CZC pin, I had to put gun on the floor (safeties removed) and place one foot on the muzzle, one foot on the magwell area, big glove on my left hand, and bash away w/hammer.

STI slide, STI frame, SV mags, SV 5.5" bull barrel, Matt Cheely Ti extension (to 6"). About 2000 rounds, 0 (zero) malfunctions. Kicked the safety up in a match once, then again in practice.

In general loading 40 (or 9 major in Open) out to near the internal length of the 2011 or 1911 mag means that rounds do less of a back & forth dance and will rise up the mag consistently as you're shooting. The back of the rim will pop up into the feedlips the same on each round which lets the slide strip the top round forward the same each round. Less likely to nosedive, less likely to bullet strike off to the side of the chamber, the top of the chamber, less likely to shift around and strike the slide stop, probably some more reasons I forgot about. None of that means much if your barrel rifling isn't throated to accept a long round, and every bullet profile is different so you have to check. With a new-to-me bullet type I will always dial out the seating die anyway and slowly shrink the 1st round to the OAL I want and I'll chamber-check the round along the way. If it drops in & out smoothly (not sticking on the lands) at 0.020 longer than I want to load, I call that good. PS - regarding powder discussion - agreed, stay away from Clays (case failures, horrible accuracy in most guns, wildly inconsistent velocities: gun tipped up, tipped down might vary 150 fps, scary) and stay away from International (non-linear response, 10% increases in charge quickly lead to 0% increase in velocity, scary). Just my experience.

The Skimmer trigger, depending on the fit of all your parts, defeats at least one and maybe two of the safeties in the gun. This has been covered in other threads. Drop safety can be seen with the slide off. FP-block safety can be seen looking up empty mag channel using a flashlight. I've seen several guns dropped recently and prefer to not see the next one go "bang" when it hits the deck. $0.02.

Good thread. Prediction - You'll like your dry-firing more w/the shorty. You'll like your match scores better w/the TruBor.

I've posted this at least 6 places. One mag, same ammo recipe other than brass. Load 4 rounds nickel cased, load 4 rounds brass, another 4 nickel, another four rounds brass. Seat mag, rack slide, shoot as fast as you can put hits in the A-zone at 15-20 yards, 4 rounds at a time. Watch dot, see what happens. I don't have a conclusive answer why, it just is. Todd Jarrett once paid extra money to have his brass plated (1997?) with something even more exotic than the Remington nickel plating he'd been using. Said it helped him win the Open nationals, talked about it on tape for several minutes. I've only seen the difference with frame-mounted optics and a very efficient comp. For iron sights or slide-ride red dots, it's not worth the effort.

Forgot to say, whatever your powder charge was with SP2, you can use the same weight of 3N38, within a tenth, it will chrono the same and flip slightly more. For me, it is 10.3 gr with 115 JHPs. However, the Viht powders are significantly more bulky so you may have to crank CW a full turn or more (more volume of powder) to get to the same charge weight. As always, if you have it, the nickel-plated brass will allow your dot to behave better and not dance around so much.

3N38 is the closest thing in terms of muzzle rise and fast recovery shots. But it is louder and slaps your hand a lot harder. Requires compressed loads unless your OAL is way out there (VERY compressed loads in 9Major) but won't gum up your powder measure like SP2. Nothing is really close to SP2. It's the best Open powder ever, all the others compete for a distant 2nd place. I'm hoarding 6 lbs for major matches and when that is gone I will be sad.

The AFTEC once set up will not need adjustment or replacement. Standard extractor will eventually need both.

PS - if you skipped it, the above video is Eric Grauffel. A supposedly good shooter from Europe, that's what I hear...

Wish I had seen this before paying 12 bucks shipping on my new front sight.

Found a video (and screen shot) of what I'm talking about with the tap/tip reload. Back 3 sides (2 corners) of mag go into back 3 sides (2 corners) of magwell. When mag & gun first touch they are not quite at the same angle. You may have best results putting your focus on back 3 sides of gun, or, you may have best results doing the same thing but looking at front of magwell and touching your index finger to that. This is the best way I've found to reload the Shadow, it was the only way I could reload the XDm consistently. Dry fire drill that helps me is lateral movement plus mag change, putting a clock on it, took just under 4 minutes. Set up is anywhere that requires 2-4 steps of movement, like this: 1. On left target (no draw), click. Move to right target, changing mag from 1st pouch. Target 2, click. -- Repeat above, total of 3 reps, eyes on magwell (front or back, pick one). 2. Repeat above, total of 3 reps, 1st pouch, eyes closed during each mag change. 3. Repeat above, total of 3 reps, 1st pouch, eyes open again. 4. Repeat steps 1-3, (9 reps) moving left-to-right, from 2nd pouch. Adjust arm positions as needed. 5. Repeat steps 1-3, (9 reps) moving right-to-left, from 1st pouch. Adjust as arm positions as needed. 6. Repeat steps 1-3, (9 reps) moving right-to-left, from 2nd pouch. Adjust arm positions as needed.

I would recommend trying this: Lean on the thumb safety - a lot. For freestyle and for S.H.O. Devote a few dozen/few hundred rounds to this & see how it goes. If the left thumb needs a new position to accommodate this, so be it. Weak-hand-only seems to go better (for me) with the thumb curled down.

It's the original (too big for IPSC) DAA thumb rest. The front support post is supposed to go into one of the angled slots but I made a spot for it at the front of the horizontal (screw-in) channel. Need to dremel a distinct slot to just fit the support post, or the the whole paddle will slip and go beyond horizontal (see photo 2 above). I went to the thumb-under frame grip when borrowing an XDm 5.25 for our factory-gun tournament. (Great production gun by the way, just SO light compared to my other guns). If you look at the pictures the CZ has by far the most comfortable shape and layout for getting your fingers under the trigger guard and the left thumb under the frame, also love the the thumb safety position and I lean on that thing a lot - it's a beautiful frame design. FWIW my favorite thumb rest was the optional part that screwed into the bottom of the Allchin vertical mount. Something like this:

If you can build it in your garage, why not. I think if you compare it to a standard comp with 4,5, or 6 expansion chambers, you'll be very disappointed, and I would not pay someone significant $$ to build it for your. You may break stuff in just a few rounds, like your slide stop or barrel link or lower lugs. Just a guess. Might want to start out with an 18 or 22 pound recoil spring. I've been known to try stuff & then go in a different direction, more than once.

In SA mode the CZ75 sear spring has the biggest effect. Buy spares then widen out the leg spacing on the sear spring. I would leave the Cajun return spring in there, it has the biggest effect in DA mode. Leave the mainspring alone unless you commit to Fed 100 primers.

Reason for narrowing is odd effects on bullet flight. Like, the sights were spec'd out to hit point of aim at 25 yards with the 9" sight radius, but instead impact was about 10" low and I ran out of "up" adjustment on the rear sight. Also after shooting many FMJ bullets w/exposed lead bases, the holes in the target went from round and grouping 7/8", to egg-shaped and grouping 2" or more at 25. Something like the wake turbulence off an airliner's wing-tips was happening, best guess. After narrowing, both the above issues went away completely, rear sight is about a 1/2 turn from being bottomed out and bullet holes are perfect. I think the same would be true (zero problems) with a standard, Open-looking 2" cylindrical comp blank BUT unlike Open you can't get in & clean the interior or clean the muzzle crown, not without some custom Clymer reamer anyway. Reason for going to 6" barrel assembly (8" sight radius) is presbyopia, which sucks. Still not using reading glasses but that day is not far off. Relationship of the front sight, rear sight, and target beyond (seen with right eye) is worse than years ago. When I was mid-20's and got my first Limited gun (a G20) I'd hit any & all steel with speed and very little effort, annoying the old-timers to no end. Now I'm the old-timer. I still think a very long radius - 9, 10, 11 inches - is a legit way to game Limited if you have the young eyes for it. Go with cylindrical/traditional and build some sort of cleaning tool and go at it.

Two-time national champion goes from this: To this: Sounds fair to me.

You can see a lot of variation in dot movement with different loads. In general, more grains of slower powder give less muzzle rise, more slap in the hand, and more noise. If your movement is up/right instead of up & down, you can fix that with either modifications to your comp (slowly lower the walls on the right side of each up-port) or with your grip (cant gun slightly to the left to bring your elbows to the same level). These days I use the elbows-almost-level canted gun in Open and Limited and Production. Not much, just a 3-4 degrees is all it takes. Helps call low/left trigger slaps since you know it wasn't the recoil pattern to blame. For extra credit try this in Open, same powder/bullet: Load 4 rounds of nickel-brass ammo in mag. Load 4 rounds brass brass. 4 more rounds nickel brass. 4 more rounds of brass brass. Load gun and shoot 4-shot bursts at the berm or backstop. Watch dot.

post #27: http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=173950&page=2#entry1945085 Your mileage may vary.

Mostly copied from Rules subforum (topic was thumb rest in Limited): My two cents - use the lowest thumb rest position possible, at or below the bottom of the frame/dust-cover area. Or don't use a rest at all in Limited. Tried two different thumb-rest positions (DAA Adjustable) on my new limited STI, 3rd way was using my Production grip which is thumb curled down under the frame and alongside the trigger guard and hands torquing into the tops of both grip panels as done by Bob Vogel. Of those the Vogel grip (thumb tip not doing anything) gives me the best Limited recoil/recovery pattern, low/level thumb rest is 2nd best, high/angled thumb rest position the worst. Had to do a small Dremel job on the DAA thumb rest base to get a "level" position: I use the high/angled in Open and it's fine for that as the recoil impulse is mostly straight back and happens in very short time frame. Not so good for Limited, the recoil impulse is much more of a 15 or 30 degree angle and the thumb rest seems to just magnify that push of the gun and by comparison to the Open gun, the impulse seems to last forever. Such an eye-opener that I've been lugging Production, Limited, and Open guns to the range every practice session every time since that first Limited shake-down. In reality the thumb-under-frame grip is best with Open gun too but results in negative (downward) recoil until 1 or 2 mags of shooting to get used to it. I keep using the Open thumb rest because it recovers the same as Production gun. Also, thumb-under grip stings on the unmodified STI frame, luckily I asked Matt to smooth that corner near the trigger on the Ltd gun. Ranking the amount of "timing" or anticipation needed to return gun to line-of-sight: 1. Open gun, thumb-under-frame Vogel grip (zero anticipation) 2. Open gun high thumb rest, Limited gun Vogel grip, Production gun Vogel grip (all the same, small amount of anticipation) 3. Limited gun, level thumb rest (feels like 2x the anticipation of Vogel grip) 4. Limited gun, high/angled thumb rest (feels like 3x the anticipation of Vogel grip) Sent the barrel back to Matt to do the 3rd & final version of this EXF which will be a 6" gun. As is, I found a very noticeable sight-tracker effect using grip #2 above and a very firm amount of pressure. As in, I'm closing the Captains of Crush 1.5 and using about 85% of that force to shoot the gun.

My two cents - use the lowest thumb position possible, at or below the bottom of the frame/dust-cover area. Or don't use one at all in Limited. Tried two different thumb-rest positions (DAA Adjustable) on my new limited STI, 3rd way was using my Production grip which is thumb curled down under the frame and alongside the trigger guard and hands torquing into the tops of both grip panels as done by Bob Vogel. Of those the Vogel grip (thumb tip not doing anything) gives me the best Limited recoil/recovery pattern, low/level thumb rest is 2nd best, high/angled thumb rest position the worst. I use the high/angled in Open and it's fine for that as the recoil impulse is mostly straight back and happens in very short time frame. Not so good for Limited, the recoil impulse is much more of a 15 or 30 degree angle and the thumb rest seems to just magnify that push of the gun and by comparison to the Open gun, the impulse seems to last forever. Such an eye-opener that I've been lugging Production, Limited, and Open guns to the range every practice session every time since that first Limited shake-down. In reality the thumb-under-frame grip is best with Open gun too but results in negative (downward) recoil until 1 or 2 mags of shooting to get used to it. I keep using the Open thumb rest because it recovers the same as Production gun. Ranking the amount of "timing" or anticipation needed to return gun to line-of-sight: 1. Open gun, thumb-under-frame Vogel grip (zero anticipation) 2. Open gun high thumb rest, Limited gun Vogel grip, Production gun Vogel grip (all the same, small amount of anticipation) 3. Limited gun, level thumb rest (feels like 2x the anticipation of Vogel grip) 4. Limited gun, high/angled thumb rest (feels like 3x the anticipation of Vogel grip) Speed Ledges website looks just fine for a country slightly north of Madagascar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.sc Another option if you commit to not shooting that frame in Production is to dish out the frame area just forward of the take-down ledge (put frame in vise and hold on to Dremel very tight. Goal is to not slip and take plastic off the bottom of this area which is the bottom of your new ledge. Add grip tape

Once one round slips inside the ejector, the force of each follow-on round will bend it quickly. That part is trash, throw it away.