jmtyndall

Time for another match after action report! It will probably be another 4 weeks before I get to my next match with the move and everything going on. Hopefully I can find some time to practice during all of that. Finally picked up my Q5 Match from the gun store and have enough mags for it to shoot production. If I get lucky the wife might approve funds for me to pick up a red dot and a mag extension or two so that I can try out carry optics and see if I like that any better than production. Hoping to shoot a red-dot pistol a bit before I jump in and try it though. Anyways, on to the match! After last match I tried to push speed a bit here, letting points slide. I was...somewhat successful. I wasn't the slowest of the pack, but I didn't keep pace with the leaders either. A lot of reasons for that, but I don't expect to be able to match the stage winners just yet. I just want to stay in the same ballpark as them. I feel like I did that here. In the process of pushing speed, I screwed up a stage plan and forgot a target. Hefty penalty for that which cost me a couple of positions in the final standings (could have been 6th if not for that). The good news is, that should be an easy thing to fix in future matches. I mean...easier than learning to shoot I'm sure! Stage 1 9/13 Production Stage plan here I felt was pretty good, but I missed a couple of cues and that cost me some time. 1.6s on the draw to a moderate range open target, room for improvement but not that terrible. Confidence in my split times is improving. After the first reload the second array of open targets could have been taken on the move, and I should have started the reload as soon as I fired the last shot. That delayed reload caused me to stand in position for about a second before I was ready to fire on the target. Spent a little over a second on the long transition from far target to the near one right inside the port, which could easily be cut in half. I think I see the issue here is that I have to step left and in towards the port to make the shot and I don't do that very efficiently. After the second shot I go straight for my reload per plan and shoot the super-close targets while entering position. A weak point I had last match. Overall time ended up pretty middle of the road ~6 seconds slower than the stage winner. LOTS of charlies here put me pretty far down the standings. Stage 2 11/13 Production This is where I forgot the target. If I would have put even 2 charlies on that target while I was looking at it I would have been sitting in 6th for the stage. The plan here was to come into position, take the first target then shoot the plate rack right-to-left (in 6 shots :P) before making the exit towards the next few targets. For some reason I shot the plate rack left-to-right, probably a habit from practice. That's my preferred transition direction because I've been shooting with a little tape over the left eye. Plate rack itself went okay, but at that distance there's no reason I couldn't have gone 6 for 6 on the rack. Total time 4.0 seconds, and I know plenty of good shooters could clear that in 2.0. Steel (and plate racks) are a known weak point. Okay I was down on myself about the plate rack, but I'm pretty happy with this reload here! Sure I could have got my hand of the gun a bit quicker and maybe been able to shoot the second target without a pause, but it was pretty good. I see again I'm shooting the target moving into position which I like. Transition around the barrel and have a bit of trigger freeze, so I take 3 shots before making a long leaning transition to a target on the side. Transition time around a second. Sure I'd like faster but we're making progress. Into the final section I meant to take the first two targets on the move, but that position didn't go too bad. Turning to the right I had a bit of trouble finding this target through the port. The plan was to shoot this target moving into position, then the one on the left. Quick reload and take a target through the right port then left port again. That...is not what happened. First two targets fine. On the reload I moved a bit too far, back tracked to see the target I needed to shoot...then for some reason my brain thought I already shot it! Moved to the next window, shot a target I'd already engaged and finished off the stage. Knew immediately what I did wrong but decided fixing it would take too long. Looking back and doing the math if I had made it to the last target and shot 2 A's I would have recovered 40 points (FTSA -10, Mike -10, Mike -10, 2 Alpha +10). My Stage HF with those hits would have been about 5.1 meaning if those make-up shots took less than 7.5 seconds I would have been points ahead. Okay, lesson learned. A missed target in the last position is probably worth making up! Stage 3: CM18-06 3/13 Production This classifier looked really intimidating, but it actually plays to my strengths. I'm a bit of a turtle and tend to shoot a lot of points. Draw to 15 yard zebra target takes about 2.0 seconds, Which I'm sure I can improve, but I'm not too upset about it either. Shot cadence picks up a bit of speed here as I get more confident with sight picture returning (one of the few stages I actually put conscious effort into gripping the gun as hard as I could). Reload transfer to strong hand goes well but the first shot strong hand-only is very delayed. I was being super careful of my trigger pulls with that no-shoot hanging out. Turns out I put one shot just kissing the perf on the no-shoot. Shame, would have been a 64.5% classifier! Second string I'm not as happy with. About 1.5 seconds on the draw to an open target and the splits are a bit slower than I would have liked. Slightly bobbled the reload and transition to weak hand didn't go so great. But I'm fairly happy with the result. 56.2% classifier all said and done. Stage 4 11/13 Production Oh man I have a love-hate thing with this stage. It was a lot of fun. But I did TERRIBLE at it. 5 seconds, 12 targets, 1 shot each. Being a turtle this goes completely against my strengths and that got a bit to my head. Luckily, mikes don't hurt you on par time stages. A little over a second on the draw, could have had that shot off sooner. Why in the hell did I take my weak hand off the gun? Don't know, couldn't tell ya, doesn't make no dang sense. Blast a couple targets weak hand only, throw a quick shot on the farthest target without enough lean then run to the other side and apparently take 4 shots at the first three targets. I lucked out and didn't get an extra hit on the third target. Is missing a 3 yard target luck? Well I fired 10 shots here and only got 6 hits, and was over-time by 0.1 seconds. I want a rematch on this stage, but it definitely got the better of me. Stage 5 11/13 Production I liked this stage. There were some interesting choices to be made and I felt like I could eliminate an awkward step in the last position by taking an extra target from the middle. It seemed like a good idea...nobody else shot the stage that way. My stage time was somewhat competitive (still 4 seconds off the production winner) but I had a couple Deltas, including one of the target I took through the port. What's with all the different timer noises? It was throwing me off a bit. Draw here was okay but I harp on that enough already. We get it, work on the draw/index/confidence! The rest of the stage I feel like went fairly well with regards to execution. Looking at the time it took me to make the extra shots from position 2 I am second-guessing the decision to take those targets from there. However with my reloads taking ~1.5 seconds I don't think that a flat-footed reload at the last position would have done me any favors. Overall I think I made the right planning choice, but just lost time on general efficiency of motion. This stage went pretty well considering my shooting level. Stage 6 6/13 Production So much steel. I just chrono'd my ammo and this stuff makes around 140 PF so there's no reason these steel pieces shouldn't have gone down. That threw me off a bit, and the texas star was really intimidating. Threw a fair number of mikes here on what should have been really easy shots. Also, I'm going to come right out and say I didn't have a good stage plan. I wasn't shooting with any of the experienced production guys, and a lot of the limited and open shooters were able to blow through this without being quite so punished by reloads. I tried to game out where to take targets from to make the reloads happen between positions, but wasn't having much luck without giving myself punishing leans. In the end I decided to shoot the same plan as the hi-cap guys and just live with the reloads. I'll come back to this stage some day when I'm better at planning and see what I come up with. On to the actual shooting. Not sure what happened with these poppers in front of the no-shoot. They didn't want to go down, but I just watched a guy lose a calibration call on one of them so I wasn't about to leave them standing. Reload goes fine but I hesitate in position to make sure those poppers are coming down. Second position has 3 poppers in a row, one backward falling and 2 forward. I can't take anything else from here, and I can't get these from any other spot. Made the decision to drive down popper number one then try to take the mini after hitting the second one (there was a little gap). I throw a lot of missed on that little mini-popper (5 I think) which shouldn't happen. Now I'm a bit flustered and throw a bunch of extra mikes as the stage rolls on. Coming up to the star it didn't go as bad as I expected. Yeah I through a few mikes, but I think I got a free plate to fall off. Not that that's what I like but it was fun to shoot moving steel for the first time. Anyways, threw a bunch of mikes on mini-poppers all at pretty close range which cost a fair amount of time. Stage 7 8/13 Production I actually had the 4th fastest time on this stage even though I think my stage plan wasn't the greatest. 3 deltas really dragged me down a bit in the rankings though. The first two targets got to my head. They were close, and they were open. I wanted to shoot them fast. They were mini's so the simulated distance really called for a bit more care to be taken. Also, I thought "downrange" meant facing forward, turns out that I could have started facing the minis. I think I could have marginally saved some time on the draw from that. Came into the center target a bit closer than I intended and really had to slow down to not bowl it over. That made my reload come late and slowed down the next position. Here is where I think the plan could have been improved. I think I probably should have taken all 4 of these targets from one spot and then backed out of position to shoot the other side. Instead I grab the first two targets and then move a bit deeper to take the 2 targets down range. Mistake here, I wasn't shooting into the position, I took a while to get set up then get my sight picture before I started shooting. Easy lost time there. Reload around the front of the stage was a little messy and I just threw shots pretty quickly at the last 2 targets (why 3 on each? we may never know). Other than the mini targets I don't think this really went that bad. A bit of extra care on those first 2 targets could have gotten me into the 5th-6th place range. Stage 8 5/13 Production Last, but not least. Actually my first stage of the day. The plan here I think was good. Again about 5 seconds off the winner, and very middle-of-the pack. I was a bit over-careful on the 3 close targets leaving position 1. I wasn't super comfortable shooting through the narrow port between walls. I actually planned to shoot the targets in position 2 from far to near, but I got nervous about breaking the 180 on a reload while leaving that position so I opted to shoot them near to far instead. Reload doesn't go too great and I don't exactly hustle enough to the last spot. I think I lost the most time here on transitions, and specifically the distance-changeup ones. The first transition from far to near takes about 1.4 seconds. On the other side the transition from near to far about 1.3 seconds. Then between the long targets I'm seeing about 0.75 seconds each. Match Take-Aways: 1) Work the draw. Work on index. Work on confidence. 2) Transitions! They will improve as index improves, and as I get used to moving my eyes quickly. That said, I still am going to focus on dry-training transitions a LOT. One of other thing that I think will buy me some easy time is moving my eyes as soon as the shot breaks. Right now I think I'm waiting for the gun to come down before looking for the next target. I saw a couple stages in here where I did better at this than others, but stage 8 is easy to see just how long I'm spending before moving my eyes. 3) Steel and Plates. I want to be able to go 1-for-1 on these, and clean a plate rack in 3 seconds. My time between shots here was about 0.5 seconds, that should be enough time to see the next plate and get a shot off. Also, I'm going to work these dry in both directions! 4) Strong hand, weak hand. I have a feeling this will always be on the list. I don't think it's going to take a lot to see big improvements here. Just need to spend the time getting comfortable with shooting with SHO or WHO and build good trigger pulls. 5) Don't doubt myself, and don't be afraid to make-up any missed target that's available from the last position! 40 points is a lot, and at my skill level I'm shooting mostly 3-5HF on most stages. That gives me a window of 7-10 seconds where it's worth it to make up a forgotten target even if I shoot 2 charlies!

Finally got around to compiling the match video from last week. I'm not real good at editing so it took a while. Other shooting diary related news, we're getting ready to move so my free time has been going towards packing and cleaning and fixing the place we're in now. When I do get free time I can't really set up the target arrays I've been using so I've been working reloads and transitioning between light switches. It works okay for now but practice is really going to slow down over the next couple weeks. I shot a match yesterday, hopefully I'll be able to rip the video and put together an AAR this week. My initial feelings are pretty good. I wasn't the fastest shooter by a long shot, but I went into the day pushing speed. Points suffered a bit, but only shot 1 mike. Didn't have as many stage execution errors, but I did have a FTSA because I missed a target, which hurt my score a good bit.

This one is going to be a long one. I found a few videos of others shooting the match, people I know were moving slower than me but had faster raw times. Clearly the issue is either a) the shooting, b) the stage planning, or c) the execution. I'm going to try and look at the videos from these points to determine the time lost due to each piece of the puzzle. Overall Production Results, the top shooter is an A class. He shot 95% of available points, I shot 90% of available points which is the second highest. Regarding stage times first place shot in 126.21 seconds and my time was 186.02 seconds, second slowest of any Production shooter. In fact only 10 shooters shot the match slower than me, and of those shooters 7 of them were seniors or super seniors. Stage 1: My time: 30.13 vs. Winners time: 20.87 Right away I see that I take some time once I'm in position to acquire the first piece of steel, then 2 shots per piece of steel. Splits on the two shots are about 0.75s then 1.25s. Then I take a pretty hard lean to engage a target that is actually available from a later position in an attempt to eliminate a flat-footed reload. I spend 2.5 seconds total getting into the lean and firing the 2 shots. Then...I miss the reload while moving into position, maybe half a second down to fix the reload. The targets in this position go fine, though a bit slow for their distance. Next reload into the set of 4 targets at the back goes okay and the shots were a little slow because I had trouble seeing the targets through the smoke. Bobbled the reload going into the final position but hard to tell how much it cost me to fix. Shooting at the last position comes together pretty okay. So looking at just the stage plan and execution portion of the stage, I cost myself at least 5 seconds from what I could have done with no improvement to my shooting. I believe a better stage plan would be to shoot the 2 steel and 2 paper from the first position and execute a reload while moving to the second position to take the 4 longer targets. With those shot a reload while transitioning to the targets on the right (hard cover and the two stacked targets). Then one step to the right to engage the semi hidden target on the move. Finally a reload into the last position to take the final 4 shots. I think this stage plan easily saves the ~3 seconds over the hard lean, another 2 seconds on the steel make-ups and another 2 ish from aggressive shooting on the closer targets and I would be in the 24 second range. The rest of the time must come from just generally moving faster, better shooting and indexing on transitions. I'm not positive this was a legal stage, I think more than 8 shots are required from the second shooting position though the fault lines just created 1 big box. I could be wrong, and this is really just a note to myself to learn how to apply that rule to stages. Stage 2: CM 99-33 My time: 7.92 vs. Winners time: 7.21 Okay, not a lot of time lost here to the winner, but definitely a lot of time given up in general considering a GM time on this stage is under 6 seconds. I have never practiced seated draws, so there is a bit of time there since I remember adjusting my grip as I was standing because where my hand landed initially was not correct. Also I had an issue after the reload where I couldn't get the sights aligned on the target. Took me a second to bring the gun down and get a proper sight picture on the body of the target. Looks like the shot-to-shot time on the reload was around 2.25 seconds and a standing reload at that distance ought to be about 1 second. In fact if my index had been better I can see that I've presented the gun back out to the target by 1.25 seconds. The nice thing about classifiers is that it's easy to see where you left time on the table. Hammer those reloads. Time with the gun in hand will improve the index. Stage 3: My time: 19.47 vs. Winners time: 14.15 Looking for 5 seconds this time instead of 10 like in stage 1. Unloaded table start so I grab a mag from pretty far back on the belt. Don't see any issue there, but right away I see a planning error. I move to the right to take a target, then turn left to engage a few targets. Then cross back to the right to get the final target in the forward position. Just an estimate that this stage plan cost me about 2.5 seconds with the long transition and retracing steps. I lose about a second when I come into the second position and look down to find the fault line and end up a little off-balance. Run back to the final position goes okay. Splits on these very close targets look pretty sporty (for me) but then...total brain-fart...I reload between targets. Now the reload didn't go horribly, in fact pretty smooth for me, but it wasn't needed! Easily 1.2 seconds lost there. I am not good (quick) at shooting in a lean and there were 2 of them on this stage which cost me. I see where I could make up at least 5.5-6 seconds on this stage. Stage 4: My time: 31.66 vs. Winners time: 15.44 I'm not going to lie, without watching the video I remember where most of this time is. Missed shots on steel and a pesky popper that gave half the squad fits about not falling. 2 other shooters hit it solid and then lost calibration calls so I just came back to it at the end. I think the "bones" of the stage plan is good. Start to the right with 9 shots, transition left with a reload take some shots, reload and engage the last array. So on to the actual breakdown. Missed the last popper in the first position, broke my grip and went to leave before rebuilding my grip and re-engaging which cost about 1.5 seconds. Moving to the second position for some reason I took the steel before the open paper. I should have taken the paper entering then transitioned to the steel being the harder shots. One mike on the popper cost about 0.75 seconds. Transitioned past the long array to a shorter popper array (because round count). I think if I shot this again I would go to the long target array first. Anyhow the close popper array is the one that was giving people issues. The last popper I missed the first shot then had a solid hit but didn't fall. Broke my grip to reload and noticed the popper wasn't falling so I shot it again (going to slide lock) and moved into a reload for the last array. First make up shot 0.75 seconds, second make up 1.5 seconds, bringing the gun up before noticing the gun was at slide lock 1.25 seconds. Took five shots to drop the long distance popper, accounting for about 5 seconds then about 1.3 seconds to come all the way back to that problem popper. Total execution issues here were about 12 seconds of stage time. And the RO told me that the one popper was falling after my first shot (but it was an incredibly slow popper) and my second shot knocked it back up. That's a bit frustrating, but the popper didn't exactly make or break my stage, spending 10 seconds on the long-distance array probably did break my stage. Stage 5: My time: 48.38 vs. Winners time: 35.62 My first "memory" type stage. There were several targets available from 2 different positions, and a couple target only available from one of those two. However you had to remember which targets were available from where because it was easy to re-engage or miss a target. I chose a fairly fat plan working from right to left as I believe it was less distance to run. Also there was an unstable platform at one of the positions (first or last depending on how you shot the stage). I thought it would be advantageous to hit the platform last since then I only have to enter, where using the platform first meant I had to enter and exit from it. I actually had to reshoot this stage because the plate rack kept dropping extra plates. The first time I shot 4 plates went down with 1 hit! I'm curious to see how much time I lose to execution and to see if my stage plan may have actually been better. The top CO heat in the match shot the stage right to left, same as I did. Okay in the beginning, good hustle to the gun and to the position. Fairly long run but the gun is loaded and ready before I enter position. I enter this position on a weird target in the middle and then go left before working back to the right. The first time I shot this I started to the left and worked my way right. Not sure why I changed on the second run. This definitely cost time, but hard to tell how much. In the second port I forgot a mini-popper and then when I re-engaged it I threw a mike on as I went to leave position. That little mini popper cost me 3.5 seconds. I reloaded heading into the second position and meant to engage targets from left to right here. I came in and started in the middle while working left, then did an unnecessary reload (at 8 rounds) while transitioning all the way right to engage a popper only available from this position with 2 shots. Make up shot 1.25 seconds, reload and transition 2.5 seconds, engagement order...some seconds. Head to the last position (this run is where that reload was supposed to happen) into the unstable platform. Mike on the first plate, 1 second make-up. Mike on second plate, 1.25 seconds (but I did get a bonus plate here). And the crown jewel of this stage...a 3.0 seconds standing reload on the plate rack that wasn't needed! Without counting any time for having a silly engagement order, execution errors cost me 12.5 seconds here. Fixing my engagement orders gets me more in line with the winner's time. Stage 6: My time: 48.46 vs. Winners time: 28.29 By far my worst stage. In fact....I was 10 seconds slower than the second slowest shooter. Shoothouse type stage and didn't have much time for trying to develop a plan, so I went into this with only one part of a stage plan which was "reload on the right." First shot I hit the popper, but I hesitated to make sure it went down then turned to engage some targets out the window to the right. I should have been taking the wide open target while moving into position, instead I waited until I was all the way up to and arms through the window. Definitely the slow way to go. Then on the final hard cover target I made up a shot after I broke my grip. Another 1.5 seconds breaking and rebuilding grip. This target was so close there was absolutely no reason for it. Reload into position 3 was a bit sloppy, I overshot and had to run back a little to get in position for the long popper. 7 shots at this popper taking 8.5 seconds. Huge strategic error here not taking one or two shots and then running. This stage was right around 5 HF, so losing 15 points (-10 for a mike and the 5 points lost for not getting a hit) was only worth 3 seconds on that target. I spent 3x that and drove my hit-factor and time way down. By leaving the target I would have brought my stage HF up by 10%. At this point I have to do an unplanned reload and move into the next position. I completely space that I didn't want to go all the way into the position. Both targets were available from the entry to the position. By going all the way into the position then backing out I believe I cost at least a second. Bobble the reload into the next position and end up standing still trying to fix the reload for almost 2.0 seconds. Missed the next position too and had to back track a bit to get into it. Coming into the final position I wait a long time until I'm completely stopped before I start engaging the final 3 targets instead of beginning to engage while settling into position. Hard to tell what this cost. The execution errors I can put a time to account for 12 seconds. Missing positions probably cost an additional couple of seconds. I'm still on the order of 5-6 seconds slower than the top guy, maybe made up by shooting on the move and not going quite so deep into positions. All of these targets were on the order of 3-5 yards except the long steel so I should have been splitting way harder on them and taking more risks like shooting on the move. TLDR and lessons learned: I showed up late for reasons outside of my control so I didn't get to walk stages or develop stage plans. Not having a plan, and not memorizing the plan lead to several errors including missing shooting position, forgotten targets, and unplanned reloads which cost me significant match time. I will show up early and walk the stages, develop plans, run them dry and visualize them. I was not seeing the sights, I was not pulling the trigger well, and I was not gripping hard enough. I was relying on the feedback from steel to tell me about my shots leading to make-up shots being needed after I broke my grip and committed to moving. Coming back into position and rebuilding grip cost me time on most stages of the day. The shots in this match were not that difficult and it is unacceptable to throw multiple mikes per target. I will always work on fundamentals. I will train hard gripping in practice until my forearms hurt and I will practice controlling the trigger at speed. I will practice accuracy on longer targets more often. Missed reloads cost me on several stages. Slow reloads and missed index cost me almost all stages I will work on improving my reloads, consistency and speed. I will work on improving my index so that I don't lose the sights while transitioning or reloading. Entries and leans to hit targets were a particularly weak point. I was slow getting into leans and way off balance exiting them. I entered positions too deep, not aggressively and wasn't shooting while entering even on open targets. I will work on entries and leans in dry fire. I will work on core strength to help stability during leaning shots. Aggressiveness. Iwas not aggressive in my shooting. Many targets were 5 yards and less, there was no reason I shouldn't be splitting much faster on those types of targets or shooting on the move. Overall this doesn't make up a ton of time in a stage but it adds up over 6 stages. I will work on my confidence to improve this. Confidence in knowing that when I see the sights and pull the trigger, the bullet will go where I intend. Confidence to know that shooting while entering position on a close open target will not cost me points. Also confidence that no-shoots are not bullet magnets. Some caution is warranted, but don't be scared to shoot aggressively on close targets just because they have partial no-shoots.

I've shot 3 matches in production. That's where I jumped in because my gun fit and I thought that was one of the most competitive divisions. The local match results show more shooters in CO including most of the M and GM shooters. Open has a few and limited has a couple too. I'll be in CO before my first year is over, because I want to compete in the larger pool against the higher talent, even though they'll destroy me every time.

Just a tip for people with this issue. Not all the pins are exactly the same length. For a while I had some troublesome pins but I started to throw them away instead of throwing them back into the tumbler and the issue went away after not too long by doing that. That said, I have been thinking about trying the little chips next time I buy media.

Can't see the step from the picture, but it certainly looks like the case broke right where the step would have been. Which makes sense because it's where the thick part of the case meets the thin part and there would be a stress concentration at that corner. I believe that will have been a piece of stepped brass. Next time try to find and keep everything so that you can properly diagnose the issue.

Shot a match yesterday. Haven't had time to rip the video and analyze it yet but after reviewing the scores I see that my stage times are incredibly slow. Actually looking back I see that this is the case for my 2 other matches as well. Now there were a couple stages where I threw several mikes on steel which took a few seconds, but there's other stages where I just don't know where the time went. In fact a couple of them I distinctly remember a couple of shooters that pretty much walked between positions(where I made a point to run) and they have faster times than me. I have a feeling that when I watch the video back I'm going to discover that my shooting was embarrassingly slow, or I'll find a couple scoring mistakes. But most likely the first. Feeling a little down about the match. Going to watch the video and then try to craft dry fire drills around whatever the worst parts of my shooting were. Lots of progress to be made.

Seems more appropriate to a separate thread, but yes many people have used them with good results. Buy them and try them out for yourself

The barrels all look tight to the bottom of the slide. Sounds like your gun has tight lockup and you're not letting the slide close at full speed. Pull the slide all the way back and let go. Should go into battery fine. It might loosen up in a few thousand rounds, but tight lockup is good for accuracy

Same here. No issues on my 550

I guess to me it depends on interpretation of 3.3.1 If new magazines and new people to the sport are limited to 10 rounds, I'd say everyone should be. Why should new shooters or shooters competing in a match from out-of-state be at a disadvantage just because some guy is "grandfathered in"? The law restricts competitors entering the state or buying new mags from greater than 10 rounds, then all divisions would be limited to 10. Not sure how the MD's in those affected states interpret the ruling.

I think he said full easy, not full retard "You never go full retard."

Forgive me if I'm wrong but dont the rules limit all divisions to 10 rounds in states where that's the law? So doesnt limited become L10 in states with 10 rounds limits by default? What's the need for a whole other division if everyone at a given match is under the same limit anyways?

Preach. Hope people see this in the future and remember what kind of person he was when people offered help. Perhaps in the future he can buy some knowledge to match his fancy gear

Good for you. It's the solution to the issue in case anyone less bullheaded comes and reads this later. Go ahead and polish your powder funnel every thousand rounds. Should work okay for a while after you do it, slowly getting more and more difficult until you need to polish again. The fact is that stainless tumbling leaves the brass absolutely clean with no dust or lube. Metal on metal with no lube is going to gall eventually. I suppose you could graphite or dry tumble after you wet tumble.

Particularly in 9mm the Lee FCD isn't swaging the bullets down. I've measured before and after. 9mm is tapered so a larger diameter at the opening of the die than at the bullet. What it does do is swage down the case head in the region that the Dillon sizing die does not reach. The Dillon sizing die is flared at the base to allow better alignment and reliability of the press. Unfortunately I was getting 3-4% reject rate in my case gauge. I switched to the Lee FCD and now I'm running 0.5% reject rate. And 0 of those were sizing issues (3 shaved bullets, 1 sideways primer, 1 no primer).

I had some success buffing the funnel but over time it starts to stick again. A quick spray of One Shot per double fistful of brass and no issues. That's my recommendation

Or, and hear me out on this, change the rule to be more logical. Sure, argue ad absurdum that any bullet shot at a popper should count. That's not at all what I said. If you want people to put more powder in their bullets, petition your AD to make the minimum power factor 135. It's not, it's 125. A popper hit in the calibration zone with a legal round should fall. Period. Calibrate the popper however you want so long as that condition is met. I'll leave this topic here, since clearly you refuse to even entertain the argument that the rule may not be perfect.

Yes, I understand that. But it's still stupid. Competitor shoots the stage which is very weird because it has a chrono right in front of a popper. Competitor center punches(we measured to the thousandth of an inch) the freshly painted popper and it does not fall. The chrono tells us the round fired was 125 PF. RM walks over and shoots the popper and hits the very top of the circle (we drew the line and he hit right on it) and the chrono tells us his ammo was 115 PF. Popper falls over. The calibration challenge is not successful. You say that's fair, the competitor is a cheater and doesn't get a reshoot. Which, in your defense, is supported by the current rule. The shooter doesn't take this well. He takes all of his meticulously collected data to his college professor and crunches some numbers. The RM shot the popper with ammo that had 92% of the momentum that the competitors ammo had but the bullet impact location gave the RM's shot a 16% longer lever-arm than the competitors bullet. They do the math and find that the RM's bullet imparted 7.5% more torque to the popper than the competitors bullet did even though nobody broke any rules. According to the math that popper is calibrated too heavy. According to the rules the popper is properly calibrated. Too bad, so sad. Try again next year. The rule is dumb, we can mathematically prove that it's dumb. At the very least the calibration area should be a point located at the bottom edge of the calibration circle. Then we could do the math and see that if the popper doesn't fall then the competitor must have been using ammo with a PF under the limit. But wait there's more, that's only valid if the popper is in proper working order, hasn't shifted since it was calibrated, has no dirt in the mechanism etc. If any of that happens then the competitor's bullet could give the popper a different set, or have knocked a pebble out of the hinge or any number of other circumstances that would allow the popper to fall when struck a second time. A piece of steel is a poor way to measure the power of someones ammo. We have better ways.

The problem is the whole popper is a lever over the pivot point. Force applied times the distance to the pivot point is torque. As you move up and down, even within the circle, the amount of torque you put on the hinge changes. Also, high in the calibration zone and high out of the calibration zone are different things, I never suggested that calibration was being done by shooting outside the cirle. High in the calibration zone still has a longer lever-arm when compared to low in the calibration zone. The center of the calibration zone is ~5" (if you draw a straight line across the popper) to 6"(if you use the radius of the circle) higher than the center of the calibration zone. That's a 16% longer lever-arm compared to center striking the popper. Hitting the popper at the top of the circle(but still within it) with 125 PF ammo would have roughly the same effect as hitting the center of the calibration circle with 145 PF ammo. The difference between hitting the top of the circle and the bottom of the circle(but still within it) is double that, almost the difference between major and minor. 115-125 PF ammo is supposed to be used, debatable if it was or not. After all, the chrono only tells you what the PF was at the chrono.

This is how I tend to feel about it. I'm new to the sport, but we have the technology to measure and calculate PF and it's done at the match already. Poppers aren't needed to make sure you're making PF. They should be treated as other steel. If they insist on keeping poppers as some sort of method of "keeping people honest" then they ought to require calibration be done with ammo at or below the PF floor, or the popper to be shot below the calibration circle. Shooting the popper at the top of the circle with 140 PF ammo after it's already been struck once by a competitor isn't keeping anyone honest. In fact it screws over people who are following the rules because shooters are explicitly allowed to use ammo that's lower PF than the calibration ammo, plus the popper may take a different "set" after it's been struck. It's an antiquated rule from a time before chronographs. Take it behind the barn and shoot it.

I feel like a couple weeks would be really impressive. Some people never get to 1 second reloads. Anyways, getting from 1.5 seconds to 1.2 seconds was relatively easy for me as the speed came from just moving the support hand to the mag faster. Trying to push any speed faster than this and my reloads fall apart. Mags fly across the room, feed lips jam into the frame of my gun etc. I think it will likely be months before I ever see a sub second reload.

And hard to tell either one from the X-axis.

It's not. The state has already asked for a stay of the ruling (which may or may not be granted), but I believe they will get a stay once they file an appeal to the 9th. The 9th hates the second amendment so the will likely overturn the decision which will reinstate the PC sections in question. It then gets appealed again (PC still in effect) to the SCOTUS where they can decide whether or not to take the case. This issue is far from over. Buy what you can now, but be ready for that to disappear at a moments notice. Also don't forget that if this initiative is upheld in the end, simple possession of 10+ round mags will be illegal in CA, and even legally purchased magazines would need to be surrendered (per the PC). Whether or not L10 is dead, or if it should be a division is a separate discussion entirely. Don't forget by the way, something like 9 other states also have magazine capacity limits. It would take a SCOTUS ruling to strike all of them down and make it a non-issue.

I'm new to the game so I just went through this. In my opinion there's a couple different paths. If they've never shot any games and aren't sure if they're going to like it and stick with it, they should wear their strongest leather belt, and grab a $30 plastic holster and a couple cheap double mag pouches (or 2-3 of the ReadyTactical Mag pouches for around $20 each). Wear that to your first match, it's not going to hold you back. Once you know if you like the game you're going to upgrade all of it anyways. By that time hopefully you've held a few guns and have an idea what you like. Buy that gun and set up a rig for that. You'll be in for less than $100. If you know your going to like the game but don't know what gun you're going to want to use I would go ahead and spring for a double belt setup now, and grab a Comp-Tac or Blade-Tech plastic holster for now since they are compatible with the fancy BOSS holster hanger later. Buy the holster for the longest gun that matches your frame (in this case OP has a Glock 19, he should buy a holster for a 34 since it gives him flexibility). Then I'd grab 2-3 DAA Racer pouches. They're really affordable, fit a lot of guns, adjustable. Everything listed here can grow with you in the sport but won't cost you a fortune. If you change guns later you're going to keep the belt and the pouches, you're only out the cost of a holster ($35 I think for the Blade-Tech Signature, and not even that if you buy something that fits the same holster like the Glocks). Add a $50 BOSS hanger and shoot for a year, then re-evaluate if you think you need to upgrade anything.