ajpollme

I keep seeing all of this bad talk about Taurus 1911's. I bought a used one 4 years ago for around $300. I knew it wasn't going to be great but thought it would be a good start into 1911s. I started shooting USPSA in the fall of 2011 and have been shooting Single Stack almost exclusively (I own a Glock 17 but hate it with a passion). The Taurus was a good gun to grow with because the bad trigger taught me better control, the failures to feed and eject taught me malfunction clearing, and the low price made it not unthinkable to work on it myself when I wanted to change parts. I am an engineer and knew that I would want to tinker with whatever 1911 I purchased and the low price of the Taurus was appealing because I knew that even if I screwed it up I wouldn't be ruining a new Nighthawk or Wilson. So far I have fit Dawson Sights, a magwell, an extractor and firing pin stop, a trigger, hammer, disconnector, and sear, and I am in the process of undercutting the trigger guard and duracoating (and I removed the series 80 parts). As long as you know what you are getting into a Taurus can be a good purchase, just don't expect it to be great out of the box and enjoy the ride.

I agree, this is my first area match and I didn't know what to expect. The match is great and the ROs are the best. When I made a stupid mistake and stuck my Barney in my front pocket and got bumped from single stack to open, a really nice RO offered to loan me some 10 round mags so I would be a little less behind the equipment curve. I need to shoot 6 stages tomorrow and am definitely not setting the world on fire, but am having the time of my life. A big thank you to everyone involved in putting the match on.

I shot two matches yesterday. The first was the very first USPSA match at West Liberty, IA, and the second was at CRAPS. I had a day that was kind of up and down. I had a very rough time of it in the morning, I had a lot of malfunctions with the gun early. The RO pointed out that I was really hammering the mags into the gun and driving the feed lips into the slide. The bent baseplates on my mags and my torn up left palm are some good evidence of that. When I focused on being smooth with my reloads and taking more time, the problem (mostly) went away. I think though that I may have to try some new mags, I borrowed a Wilson mag from another single stack shooter and it worked really well, so I may need to invest in some. I did have some high points in my match though, because my match score was pretty well destroyed anyway I went for broke on a couple of stages and tried things I wouldn't have otherwise. Doing so I managed to do things I didn't think I could. On one stage there were two poppers and a drop turner activated by one of the drop turners. Since the pressure was off I shot the popper that started the turner, transitioned to the other popper, then back to the drop turner and got an Alpha Charlie. I was super excited about pulling that off, since the last (and first) drop turner I had shot at I sat on waiting for it to turn and still had two mikes. I also managed to shoot a faily close target (about 3 yards) while I was on the move getting two Alphas. At CRAPS, I had a much better running gun. I shot a stage with a lot of no shoots, and managed to keep all my shots in the brown. I was very glad about this, because before I have fixatted on the no shoots leading me to shoot them. I shot the classifier with a pretty good time but managed to throw a mike which will give me a D, but I was still ok with my performance. I had a great time with the third stage, which was all about speed draws. You had to draw and shoot two steel in order at about 5 yards. My first run was right at 2.6 seconds, which is a great improvement since as recently as last month my draw was a lot closer to 4 seconds. Overall my day was great, I shot upwards of 350 rounds, learned a lot, and had a great time. I need to focus on being smooth and not comparing myself to others (escpecially those way better than me).

Happy Days! The local range is going to start holding uspsa, and steel matches. Also, I started practicing with a few local shooters who usually meet every week. Only working with them a few times has shown me some things that I do well (very few), and some things I can change to improve. If I keep up like this I might just get better.

I have made a comitment to improve, I just purchased a dillon 550 so I can afford to do a lot more live fire practice (the wife didn't like me spending close to $200 per week on WWB). Now I will have to work up a load I like and get shooting. I also ordered Brian's book at the same time, from what everyone says it will probably be way over my head but hopefully I can find some great takeaways to help me improve.

I have done informal plinking for years, and tried USPSA for the first time two weeks ago. I had a blast but performed poorly. Shooting single stack I had good hits ( I had the highest points totals of the single stack shooters) but really slow times. I have spent the last two weeks working on reloads, transitions, and lowering my split times to try and speed things up. I will see how things improve in two weeks when I go to another club match.

While not the best 1911 by far, I have had a Taurus for a few years. And other than a failure to return to battery when I tried to use a recoil spring past its usefull life, it has performed great for informal plinking and with a Wilson magwell and a fo front sight has got me started in USPSA.